The sad thing is that once they find a substitute term it will eventually be considered problematic too. This is the "euphemism treadmill." [1]
[1] -https://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/1994_04_03_newyo...
Human geneticists curb use of the term ‘race’ in their papers
21–30 of 92 posts
Re: Human geneticists curb use of the term ‘race’ in their papers
#22Absolutely absurd, and shows how politicized by the state, and its official ideology, science has become. It reminds me of this example of life immitating satire: https://twitter.com/TitaniaMcGrath/status/142161970031280947...
This is sort of like when doctors prescribe ibuprofen without explaining the research backing their decision. Are these decisions based on research or purely ideology?
I'm starting to see my faith in these institutions erode at an alarming rate. The other day I rewatched an old episode of Bullshit, and it turns out smoking bans in the early 2000's were predicated on bad science. There was no significant evidence that second hand smoke causes cancer. Throw in COVID, political correctness, Omicron and the reproducibility crisis hitting cancer research and I'm suddenly feeling really fucking alone on the plane of authority.
Re: Human geneticists curb use of the term ‘race’ in their papers
#23Is this effort shared by, for example, Chinese and Russian geneticists, or is it purely a Western endeavor? Edit: It seems my suspicion was correct, and at least Chinese anthropology does not share the Western aversion to 'race': https://lesacreduprintemps19.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/on-...
The latter. The problem with this line of thinking is that race is a genetic term. Crime investigators can determine race from a blood droplet. NHS has a monthly begging campaign for "black blood" donations. And the biggest thing is that race corresponds to generic ancestry with 99.86% accuracy: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1196372/
They can also distinguish at a much finer level than the typical black, white, asian races. It's a social construct because the cutoff for being one or the other is determined by whatever matters to people in a society, not because science can distinguish them.
Re: Human geneticists curb use of the term ‘race’ in their papers
#24Of course all the initial commenters are going to declare that this is political correctness gone amok who haven't actually read the article (it was behind a paywall for me), but here are some things that I know from my own reading:
1. "Black" is a not especially useful categorization as there are multiple genetically distinct strains of ancestry within Africa. It's likely that there's a greater difference genetically between an African-American (who is likely of Western African origin mixed with European genetics) than, say, a recent immigrant from South Africa or East Africa.
2. As a sociological term, most people would consider Indians and Europeans to be of different races, but it turns out that genetically they're very similar (which should not be surprising to anyone who's made it through a 100-level course in anthropology or linguistics).
3. That said, the peoples of the Indian sub-continent are also genetically diverse within themselves as there were multiple waves of in-migration there (so you might find some Indians who are not genetically similar to Europeans, and yet, they would end up being treated as the same race as their neighbors who are genetically similar to Europeans).
4. Many of the markers of race end up being selected out in a surprisingly short period of time. Lactose tolerance, for example, evolved in just 2,000–20,000 years and it's likely that a lot of things that we consider fundamental to race similarly appeared in relatively short time frames like this.
Re: Human geneticists curb use of the term ‘race’ in their papers
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
The latter. The problem with this line of thinking is that race is a genetic term. Crime investigators can determine race from a blood droplet. NHS has a monthly begging campaign for "black blood" donations. And the biggest thing is that race corresponds to generic ancestry with 99.86% accuracy: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1196372/
That's what confuses me. Some people say race is a construct, but then why do ads for sickle cell medicine only have black actors in them? I don't see how cloaking or censoring ideas of race benefits humanity. I know there's specific problems that are more common in my race. I WANT doctors and scientists to acknowledge that and use that information to improve treatments. I don't feel outraged, just sort of confused a…
what they're trying to convey is that certain phenotypes have correlations to an overly broad construct, and with your example it is only showing that certain debilitating evolutionary paths are correlated or exclusively within a subset of people with those phenotypes
not that hard, to me, let me know when you get there though
Re: Human geneticists curb use of the term ‘race’ in their papers
#26I don't understand how the criticisms in the comment section here are at all related to the actual journal article. From the abstract of the paper: Throughout The Journal’s 70-year history, “ancestry” and “ethnicity” have increased in use, appearing in 33% and 26% of articles in 2009–2018, while the use of “race” has decreased, occurring in 4% of articles in 2009–2018. Although its overall use has declined, the odds…
Yeah, I'm really not following all the talk of "wokeness" here. Race is a social category that often says something about your ancestry, and about certain traits like skin color and statistical predisposition to certain genetic diseases. But ancestry is the actual genetically meaningful thing. So why would we want researchers to use the outdated concept of race? Is it woke to prefer oxygen to phlogiston?
Re: Human geneticists curb use of the term ‘race’ in their papers
#27Absolutely absurd, and shows how politicized by the state, and its official ideology, science has become. It reminds me of this example of life immitating satire: https://twitter.com/TitaniaMcGrath/status/142161970031280947...
>Human geneticists have mostly abandoned the word “race” when describing populations in their papers, according to a new study of research published in a leading genetics journal. That’s in line with the current scientific understanding that race is a social construct, and a welcome departure from research that in the past has often conflated genetic variation and racial categories, says Vence Bonham, a social scientist at the National Human Genome Research Institute who led the study.
>But alternative terms that have gained popularity, such as “ancestry” and “ethnicity,” can have ambiguous meanings or aren’t defined by genetics, suggesting researchers are still struggling to find the words to accurately describe groups delineated by their DNA, according to the study.
>In the 19th and 20th centuries, many geneticists embraced the idea that there were races, such as “Negroid” or “Caucasian,” that were distinct biological groups; such “race science” helped perpetuate discrimination and inequality.
Which part of this is absurd, exactly?
Re: Human geneticists curb use of the term ‘race’ in their papers
#28Quoted post unavailable.
What information does "race" tell us that "ethnicity" and "ancestry" does not? Does saying something is of Ghanian or Inuit origin less informative than saying they're black or native-American?
Re: Human geneticists curb use of the term ‘race’ in their papers
#29I'm cool with that. Now if governments can not ask what my race is on forms...
Re: Human geneticists curb use of the term ‘race’ in their papers
#30I don't understand how the criticisms in the comment section here are at all related to the actual journal article. From the abstract of the paper: Throughout The Journal’s 70-year history, “ancestry” and “ethnicity” have increased in use, appearing in 33% and 26% of articles in 2009–2018, while the use of “race” has decreased, occurring in 4% of articles in 2009–2018. Although its overall use has declined, the odds…
You're not missing anything here.
The article is about race, so there's all these comments who already know what the article says without reading it, what their pre-established attitudes are, and why they are superior.
It would be funny if it wasn't so sad.