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Genetic data from over 20k U.S. children misused for 'race science'

nytimes.com

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Re: Genetic data from over 20k U.S. children misused for 'race science'

#51

Post by dismalaf »

bigbadfeline wrote: post #49
terminalshort wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I know you mean eugenics. But that fundamentally isn't science. It's government policy. You are blaming this on science, so please point me to the science that you blame this on.

Eugenics is the name of a scientific theory, part of "scientific racism", first formulated by Francis Galton, a half-cousin of Darwin. See 1865 article "Hereditary Talent and Character", and 1869 book "Hereditary Genius". Make sure you research on the science and history of eugenics instead of seeking support for your prejudice about it. Of course, it's a shameful example of accepted but disastrous "science", which s…

No one considers eugenics science. Just because some guy in the 1800s said it was science doesn't make it so. Next you'll say Scientology is science... Or astrology, or whatever. We have a pretty defined view of what science is today and any random person calling something science doesn't discredit actual science.

Re: Genetic data from over 20k U.S. children misused for 'race science'

#52

Post by [deleted] »

bigbadfeline wrote: post #49
terminalshort wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I know you mean eugenics. But that fundamentally isn't science. It's government policy. You are blaming this on science, so please point me to the science that you blame this on.

Eugenics is the name of a scientific theory, part of "scientific racism", first formulated by Francis Galton, a half-cousin of Darwin. See 1865 article "Hereditary Talent and Character", and 1869 book "Hereditary Genius". Make sure you research on the science and history of eugenics instead of seeking support for your prejudice about it. Of course, it's a shameful example of accepted but disastrous "science", which s…

[deleted]

Re: Genetic data from over 20k U.S. children misused for 'race science'

#53

Post by conception »

terminalshort wrote: post #33
dragonwriter wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Races are not genetic groupings, they are social constructs whose boundaries evolve over time, which is particularly clear when they are formalized in a way which resista change and that formalization drifts increasingly far from the current common usage, such as the way the White racial category in common usage in America currently roughly corresponds to the the subset of the White racial category that excludes the…

You are 100% correct, but also 100% missing the point. When I say white people are more likely to carry the gene for cystic fibrosis, or black people are more likely to carry genetic risk factors for kidney disease, nobody will reply with a long winded explanation claiming that statement is invalid because "white" and "black" are not scientifically valid because... Comments like yours appear only when the topic of in…

You mean people are more sensitive on sensitive topics? What? The topic used to justify horrible atrocities over time has a higher bar of scrutiny? What? Why’s that?

And are you sure there aren’t studies on genetic groupings and intelligence? That seems quite a claim.

Re: Genetic data from over 20k U.S. children misused for 'race science'

#54

Post by bigbadfeline »

dismalaf wrote: post #51
bigbadfeline wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eugenics is the name of a scientific theory, part of "scientific racism", first formulated by Francis Galton, a half-cousin of Darwin. See 1865 article "Hereditary Talent and Character", and 1869 book "Hereditary Genius". Make sure you research on the science and history of eugenics instead of seeking support for your prejudice about it. Of course, it's a shameful example of accepted but disastrous "science", which s…

No one considers eugenics science. Just because some guy in the 1800s said it was science doesn't make it so. Next you'll say Scientology is science... Or astrology, or whatever. We have a pretty defined view of what science is today and any random person calling something science doesn't discredit actual science.

> No one considers eugenics science.

No one considers eugenics science NOW, but it was considered science back then and we're commenting on modern scientific studies that would be adopted wholesale by the eugenics scientists of the time.

It doesn't matter what you call it, if it walks like eugenics, if talks like eugenics it is eugenics even if that word was thrown out as politically inconvenient. Go back to my first comment in this thread and understand it in this light.

> Just because some guy in the 1800s said it was science doesn't make it so.

It continued well into 1900's up until WW2 and it was a social theory as scientific as any other at the time, otherwise it would not be used for justification of government policies.

Re: Genetic data from over 20k U.S. children misused for 'race science'

#55

Post by terminalshort »

bigbadfeline wrote: post #49
terminalshort wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I know you mean eugenics. But that fundamentally isn't science. It's government policy. You are blaming this on science, so please point me to the science that you blame this on.

Eugenics is the name of a scientific theory, part of "scientific racism", first formulated by Francis Galton, a half-cousin of Darwin. See 1865 article "Hereditary Talent and Character", and 1869 book "Hereditary Genius". Make sure you research on the science and history of eugenics instead of seeking support for your prejudice about it. Of course, it's a shameful example of accepted but disastrous "science", which s…

That's not science. The actual study of genetic inheritance is science. Eugenics is just saying "hey, that means we can breed humans like any other animal." And forced sterilization is an implementation detail that isn't even inherent in the concept itself. Blaming this on science is like blaming a shooting on science because ballistics, chemistry, and metallurgy are sciences.

Re: Genetic data from over 20k U.S. children misused for 'race science'

#56

Post by TMWNN »

There was a 2018 op-ed in the Times https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-r...> by a geneticist, warning society that at that moment, and increasingly in the next few years, his field would find things about humans that people wouldn't like to hear. Things like, racial differences are real, intelligence is mostly inherited, etc. (Bonus: Men and women are different, and there are only two sexes.)

The tone was not "these are breakthroughs to look forward to"; rather, "things are coming that people we disagree with are going to exploit, but they are nonetheless real". Another interpretation would be "please don't yell at us for discovering these things".

Re: Genetic data from over 20k U.S. children misused for 'race science'

#57

Post by TMWNN »

rustyhancock wrote: post #39
rahimnathwani wrote: post #9

It seems weird for the government to collect data useful for research, but then to gate access based on the viewpoints of potential users. This restriction doesn't support the search for truth. Whatever people think of Lasker (Cremieux) and his views, isn't data being available to all interested parties the best way to find the truth? The article mentions this towards the very end: Adam Candeub, the top lawyer at the…

Scientists, are not quite like explorers, just venturing off in direction and see what they find. They have interests, that align with funding, which aligns with actionable data. And they follow them. So who would even do such research? The best you could find is some meaningless difference in mean scores that is likely swamped by environmental factors. And the fact that "race" is far fuzzier than our intuition leads…

> So who would even do such research? The best you could find is some meaningless difference in mean scores that is likely swamped by environmental factors.

Yes, I too find it easy to avoid doing research when I assume what that research is going to find out ahead of the time.

Re: Genetic data from over 20k U.S. children misused for 'race science'

#58

Post by tptacek »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #9

It seems weird for the government to collect data useful for research, but then to gate access based on the viewpoints of potential users. This restriction doesn't support the search for truth. Whatever people think of Lasker (Cremieux) and his views, isn't data being available to all interested parties the best way to find the truth? The article mentions this towards the very end: Adam Candeub, the top lawyer at the…

There's a lot of problems with this perspective, but a very simple pragmatic one is that these data sets depend on volunteer consent, which will be withheld if people believe their contributed data will be used this way. At the end of the day, human consent is the paramount concern.

Re: Genetic data from over 20k U.S. children misused for 'race science'

#59

Post by tptacek »

hubber wrote: post #13

[flagged]

This is a category error. Our definition of "race" is, to the extent it's genetically constructed at all (it's at least as much social as genetic), based on a small, superficial subset of the whole genome, mostly selected ages ago in response to climate. The idea that the rest of the genome would be strongly correlated to these phenotypical traits is in fact the extraordinary claim; not only is there not extraordinary evidence for it, but the evidence we have is mostly countervailing.

Re: Genetic data from over 20k U.S. children misused for 'race science'

#60

Post by tptacek »

dismalaf wrote: post #32

> Jordan Lasker, who often writes about race and intelligence under the name Crémieux It's funny because this guy is center-left, he just happens to actually be intellectually honest. Anyhow, either we do science or we just admit that we don't like the social implications of the evidence. Trying to hide data and gaslight the public isn't science.

I don't think any reasonable person can follow Lasker and believe he's "center-left".
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