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In the section on "Scale of race research" there is a very instructive point that gets pretty well muted for lack of a few words of explication that I believe would be justified by the original material quoted.
The writere quoted uses the verb "to sample," which is fine in context of a professional journal, but it may suggest a rather trivial process of "taking a taste." That's not really what is being described here. The author is looking at the difference in characteristics, e.g., the palette of skin tones, that one would get by following two procedures. The first would consist of drawing a line from Sweden to Indonesia, drawing 1000 equidistant dots along that line, and taking a human specimen from each point on that line — which would result in an obviously clinal picture. The second would result from drawing four equidistant points on the line and taking 250 individuals from each of those four points. You would end up with a new population that could pretty reliably be divided into four groups of people with very similar characteristics. The author is saying that in the United States we find a population that is largely drawn from a few centers that are remote from each other. That fact may have practical consequences for public health policy and other such activities, e.g., "Devote part of the money to the white ones for skin cancer scanning and part of the money to the black ones for sickle-cell anemia scanning.
In other words, by taking people only from the peaks and valleys we artifically obscure the fact that there are inclines between those two kinds of extremes. We create a "clearly different kinds of people" from what was in fact a clinal distribution, and until the U.S. population reaches genetic equilibrium there will be some utility in treating people as though they belong to discrete groups.
Is there some way we can economically emend the text to bring out what the original researchers were trying to get across? P0M 07:23, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
There may be a way but it is going to be hard to come across. -Michaela M. —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
70.217.24.127 (
talk)
20:07, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
..."but it shews that they graduate into each other, and that it is hardly possible to discover clear distinctive characters between them." Should it not be shows or is that the magnificent wording of the time in where no one really gave a stuff? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.173.4.56 ( talk) 12:46, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
From memory,he spelled a lot stuff that way and that was not a singular typo but how he spelled "show" throughout at least two of his works. You can see the original scans and check for yourself with Google books. [usemasper] 65.8.157.26 ( talk) 23:11, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
The revert war is over the following addition to the second paragraph of the article: "This despite the fact that the human code analyzed was of only one person, hence could not, by definition, show any variation. [1]". The claim of those reverting this sentence is that the link is to a discussion group and that this is therefore not a "reliable source". The wiki article "WP:RS" is cited as the guideline for "reliable source". That article, however, states: "Reliable sources are authors >OR< publications regarded as trustworthy or authoritative in relation to the subject at hand." and the source of the quote is Henry Harpending of the National Academy of Sciences -- specialist in population genetics. No one disputes the authenticity of Henry Harpending's comment and it would be unreasonable to do so since Harpending has been participating in the evolutionary psychology group for years and that group is among the highest traffic groups with the most reputable participants. Moreover, what Harpending is saying, on the face of it, can't be disputed by any reasonable person and therefore hardly requires citation. As Harpending says "my little kid can figure out that that makes no sense." The only reason it might be disputed is the whole point of the second paragraph of article -- which is that people like Venter are so averse to being caught up in the controversy over "race" that they can go to great lengths, in this case making absurd statements to highly regarded publications like the Washington Post, which then makes them the basis of major stories it carries. The whole intellectually dishonest situation is reflected, of course, in this revert war which makes up rules about "reliable sources" as it goes along to suppress the simple and obvious facts of the subject matter regarding "race". Jim Bowery 22:20, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
See WP:CIV, WP:AGF, and WP:TINC. Also see WP:RS, which like I have said, you are in violation of. If you continue this hostile and anti-policy behavior and rudeness towards other editors, you could be blocked from editing. You might want to read WP:UHB, but refrain from making ad hominem attacks -- L onging.... 23:58, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
"Exceptional claims require exceptional sources
Certain red flags should prompt editors to examine the sources for a given claim.
- Surprising or apparently important claims that are not widely known.
- Surprising or apparently important reports of recent events not covered by reliable news media.
- Reports of a statement by someone that seems out of character, embarrassing, controversial, or against an interest they had previously defended.
- Claims not supported or claims that are contradicted by the prevailing view in the relevant academic community. Be particularly careful when proponents say there is a conspiracy to silence them.
Exceptional claims should be supported by multiple high quality reliable sources, especially regarding scientific or medical topics, historical events, politically charged issues, and in material about living people."
- Jeeny Talk 00:06, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
Both of you, stop this. Jeeny, this is not necessarily a fringe theory, and Jabo, this is not a reliable source. You don't need to go flinging shit around at each other, it's just making you look bad. Now calm down, go reread WP:AGF, WP:CIV, WP:RS and WP:NPOV a few times, this applies to both of you, you need to calm down and get a better understanding of policy -- L onging.... 00:32, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
The burden of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material. All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged should be attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation. When content in Wikipedia requires direct substantiation, the established convention is to provide an inline citation to the supporting references. The rationale is this provides the most direct means to verify whether the content is consistent with the references. Alternative conventions exist, and are acceptable when they provide clear and precise attribution for the article's assertions, but inline citations are considered "best practices" under this rationale. For more details, please consult Wikipedia:Citing_sources#How_to_cite_sources. The source should be cited clearly and precisely to enable readers to find the text that supports the article content in question.
Your original insertion was not backed by a verifiable source, it was a message board, one that people had to join a group to read. - Jeeny Talk 00:47, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
That is very much your opinion. Ask another scientist and they'll opposite. In fact new data is beginning to reveal that populations have been mixing significantly in the past for example when whites prove to be black. Muntuwandi 04:04, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
I am very skeptical of this sentence: "whereas a new opinion among geneticists is that it should be a valid mean of classification, although in a modified form based on DNA analysis.[12][13][14][15]" The sources are newspapers, which at best tells you what journalists think geneticists claim. But this aricle itself cites a variety of recent peer-reviewed articles by geneticists and few if any of them advocate the validity of race, and when they do, they make it clear that they are not claiming that race is a valid way of classifying groups of humans. Some of the articles start with race as a way of classifying humans (in their sample) and then show how mtDNA or Y-linked haplogroups actually cut across self-defined racial lines. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:14, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
Rubenstein reverted my last edit and replaced it with his false interpretation of the differences between Livingstone's and Dobzhansky's positions. Dobzhansky does not say in the paper that the "race concept" is "a matter of judgement." His actual views are more accurately expressed in his comment to UNESCO:
The Biological Concept of Race. Race as a biological term expresses the fact that there are populations of mankind like those of Africa and of Europe, for example, which differ in some of their hereditary characters. Anthropologists reserve the term “race” for those groups of mankind which regularly show extensive physical differences. Race, based on hereditary group differences has thus become a device for classifying and thereby describing in simpler terms the great variety existing in mankind. Biologists also recognize racial differentiation as a part of the process by which local populations become fitted or adapted to their environment. Race as a biological category is thus based on the most universal of biological processes, that of evolution. MoritzB 18:02, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0007/000733/073351eo.pdf —Preceding unsigned comment added by MoritzB ( talk • contribs) 18:03, August 29, 2007 (UTC)
My version states clearly that TD believes that racial differences are biological, so you are agreeing with me. But you are disagreeing with TD who does say that the decision to name races and the decision about how many races there are is a matter of judgement. That is his view, like it or not. Do not censor Dobzhansky's view. TD ALSO believes that in his judgement races are worth naming and my version says this too. But he makes it clear it is ajugement call. his judgement is just different from Livingston's. Your version is a bad faith edit and violates our policies. Slrubenstein | Talk 20:23, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
MoritzB is simply ignorant. H does not realize that it is possible for Dobzhansky to claim that racial nomenclature is a matter of social convention, and for him to argue for using a certain nomenclature. In fact, he does hold both positions, and I present both positions in my summary of his view. He makes it very clear that the race concept - whether people name races, and how many races if any people chose to name, is a matter of the judgement of a comunity. He further argues that in his judgement, his community ought to use a certain nomenclature. This is a reasonable argument, even if others do not share his judgement. But MortizB wouldn't recognize a reasonable argument if it bit him - evident in the fact that MoritzB has never made a reasonable argument at Wikipedia, just repeats dogmatic assertions. No wonder he misunderstand Dobzhansky. Slrubenstein | Talk 12:21, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
Okay, whose sock is it now?-- Ramdrake 19:31, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
What do you mean? I'm noone's sock. User11111 —Preceding unsigned comment added by User11111 ( talk • contribs) 20:00, August 29, 2007 (UTC)
Let's discuss it. Rubenstein made a bad edit and I wanted to change it back. User11111.
Ramdrake, I have read Dobzhansky's article and SIRubenstein's version was inaccurate.
What do you mean? I'm not MoritzB. User11111 20:22, 29 August 2007 (UTC) Sock-puppe or not, you clearly have not read the comment - it is not an article which leads me to think you really have not read it - and you certainly did not understand it. It is an exchange between two scholars, and the agree on some points and disagree on others. You cannot fully and accurately represent either position just by singling out what they disagree on, you need to be clear about what they agree on too. This is simple, accuracy. The only motive I can imagine anyone would have for deleting any mention of areas of agreement is if someone just wants to stir up conflict. Is that what you want? Don't say you want all points of view represented because the recent edits by me and Alun kept the points of view you refer to, and merely added more contextual information and other points of view. So you are not motivated by any love of NPOV. So is that what is motivating you, a desire to stir up conflict? If that is your motive please go away. If it is not, please make constuctive suggestions about edits we can all agree will improve the article, rather than simply reverting any edit to something you put in. NO ONE owns this article. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:11, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
I added some information of their study: "When enough loci are considered, Europeans, East Asians, and sub-Saharan Africans always are more genetically similar to members of their own group than to those of the other groups; the overlap in genetic similarity between these groups is ~ 0%"
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1893020 MoritzB 03:50, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
Alun 04:19, 8 September 2007 (UTC)Thus the answer to the question ‘‘How often is a pair of individuals from one population genetically more dissimilar than two individuals chosen from two different populations?’’ depends on the number of polymorphisms used to define that dissimilarity and the populations being compared. The answer, v, can be read from Figure 2. Given 10 loci, three distinct populations, and the full spectrum of polymorphisms (Figure 2E), the answer is ~0.3, or nearly one-third of the time. With 100 loci, the answer is ~20% of the time and even using 1000 loci, v ~ 10%. However, if genetic similarity is measured over many thousands of loci, the answer becomes ‘‘never’’ when individuals are sampled from geographically separated populations.
On the other hand, if the entire world population were analyzed, the inclusion of many closely related and admixed populations would increase v. This is illustrated by the fact that v and the classification error rates, CC and CT, all remain greater than zero when such populations are analyzed, despite the use of 10,000 polymorphisms (Table 1, microarray data set; Figure 2D). In a similar vein, Romualdi et al. (2002) and Serre and Paabo (2004) have suggested that highly accurate classification of individuals from continuously sampled (and therefore closely related) populations may be impossible. However, those studies lacked the statistical power required to answer that question (see Rosenberg et al. 2005).
It is clear that clustering analyses do not account for the very real similarities between people from different clusters. Therefore it shows that medical treatment should not be based on "cluster" membership, because for significant proportions of the population these clusters are irrelevant. If you want to claim that individuals from geographically distinct regions can be perfectly discriminated from each other using >10,000 polymorphisms then please make this claim, but in order to be neutral you absolutely need to include the other qualification, or else it is merely taken out of context and POV pushing. You do not address my concerns about your obvious bias at all in your above post, which is that you are not giving a proper account of the article and you are taking quotes out of context. Indeed you seem to be proud of the fact that you are distorting this research by the use of contextomy. I wouldn't be, this is a clear case of POV pushing, and you have been constantly warned about this. It is not being clever to take quotes out of context, it is not being clever to try to imply some research supports a position when it is clear that the research actually supports a completely different conclusion, and it is not being clever to ignore the findings of the research in order to promote your personal beliefs. Alun 05:39, 8 September 2007 (UTC)The population groups in this example are quite distinct from one another: Europeans, sub-Saharan Africans, and East Asians. Many factors will further weaken the correlation between an individual’s phenotype and their geographic ancestry.... The typical frequencies of alleles that influence a phenotype are also relevant, as our results show that rare polymorphisms yield high values of v, CC, and CT, even when many such polymorphisms are studied. This implies that complex phenotypes influenced primarily by rare alleles may correspond poorly with population labels and other population-typical traits (in contrast to some Mendelian diseases). However, the typical frequencies of alleles responsible for common complex diseases remain unknown. A final complication arises when racial classifications are used as proxies for geographic ancestry. Although many concepts of race are correlated with geographic ancestry, the two are not interchangeable, and relying on racial classifications will reduce predictive power still further.
The fact that, given enough genetic data, individuals can be correctly assigned to their populations of origin is compatible with the observation that most human genetic variation is found within populations, not between them. It is also compatible with our finding that, even when the most distinct populations are considered and hundreds of loci are used, individuals are frequently more similar to members of other populations than to members of their own population. Thus, caution should be used when using geographic or genetic ancestry to make inferences about individual phenotypes.
Thus the answer to the question “How often is a pair of individuals from one population genetically more dissimilar than two individuals chosen from two different populations?” depends on the number of polymorphisms used to define that dissimilarity and the populations being compared. The answer, can be read from Figure 2. Given 10 loci, three distinct populations, and the full spectrum of polymorphisms (Figure 2E), the answer is 0.3, or nearly one-third of the time. With 100 loci, the answer is ~20% of the time and even using 1000 loci, 10%. However, if genetic similarity is measured over many thousands of loci, the answer becomes “never” when individuals are sampled from geographically separated populations.
Having arrived here from ANI, I took a look at the passage in dispute:
"When enough loci are considered, Europeans, East Asians, and sub-Saharan Africans always are more genetically similar to members of their own group than to those of the other groups; the overlap in genetic similarity between these groups is ~ 0%." [7]
The flaws of this passage are that 1) the second clause is very misleading 2) it is not attributed, but stated as a fact.
"Other geneticists however have shown that even when classification in such a way is possible it does not accurately reflect the clinality of global human genetic diversity and claim that classification of continuously sampled populations may be impossible." [8]
The flaws of this one is that 1) it misrepresents a (well-warranted) caveat as the central finding of the paper, which judging from what has been presented here, it is certainly not, but rather a caution against reckless construal of the central finding, 2) it falsely attributes (by footnote, as the in-text attribution is weasel worded) to Witherspoon et al. a conclusion that they mean to rebut:
In a similar vein, Romualdi et al. (2002) and Serre and Paabo (2004) have suggested that highly accurate classification of individuals from continuously sampled (and therefore closely related) populations may be impossible. However, those studies lacked the statistical power required to answer that question."
Proabivouac 08:08, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
So they are concuring generally with these papers, that their observation regarding continuous sampling is in a similar vein to these previous papers. Then they state that the previous studies lacked the statistical power to answer the question. They did not state that the question could not be answered, or that the conclusion of these previous papers was wrong. Indeed Witherspoon goes a long way to support this assertion. What neither Witherspoon nor the previous studies have done is to obtain samples that are continuously sampled. To claim that Witherspoon is attempting to rebut these papers that they obviously agree with is incorrect. Alun 10:19, 8 September 2007 (UTC)This is illustrated by the fact that ω and the classification error rates, CC and CT, all remain greater than zero when such populations are analyzed, despite the use of >10,000 polymorphisms (Table 1, microarray data set; Figure 2D). In a similar vein, Romualdi et al. (2002) and Serre and Pääbo (2004) have suggested that highly accurate classification of individuals from continuously sampled (and therefore closely related) populations may be impossible. However, those studies lacked the statistical power required to answer that question (see Rosenberg et al. 2005).
Proposal: When enough loci are considered, Europeans, East Asians, and sub-Saharan Africans always are more genetically similar to members of their own group than to those of the other groups according to Witherspoon et. al. (2007). MoritzB 08:56, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
and by Darwin and his coauthor Alfred Russel Wallace. This observation is not new and continues to be the most important consideration when discussing human variation, whether it is physical variation or genetic variation. Alun 10:19, 8 September 2007 (UTC)Anthropologists long ago discovered that humans’ physical traits vary gradually, with groups that are close geographic neighbors being more similar than groups that are geographically separated. This pattern of variation, known as clinal variation, is also observed for many alleles that vary from one human group to another. Another observation is that traits or alleles that vary from one group to another do not vary at the same rate. This pattern is referred to as nonconcordant variation. Because the variation of physical traits is clinal and nonconcordant, anthropologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries discovered that the more traits and the more human groups they measured, the fewer discrete differences they observed among races and the more categories they had to create to classify human beings. The number of races observed expanded to the 30s and 50s, and eventually anthropologists concluded that there were no discrete races (Marks, 2002). Twentieth and 21st century biomedical researchers have discovered this same feature when evaluating human variation at the level of alleles and allele frequencies. Nature has not created four or five distinct, nonoverlapping genetic groups of people. [9]
MoritzB 13:01, 8 September 2007 (UTC)We contrast two choices: sets of populations that have been relatively isolated from each other by geographic distance and barriers since the earliest migrations of modern humans out of Africa and sets that include populations that were founded more recently, are geographically closer to one another and therefore more likely to exchange migrants, or have recently experienced a large genetic influx from another population in the set. Sampling only from the more distinct populations yields lower -values, as expected. Figure 2, A, C, and E, shows the results of using only the three most distinct population groups (Europeans, East Asians, and sub-Saharan Africans). Figure 2, B and D, expands the samples used in Figure 2, A and C, to include recently founded and/or geographically intermediate populations (Indians in the insertions data set and New Guineans, South Asians, and Native Americans in the microarray data set) and “admixed” populations (i.e., those that have recently received many migrants from different populations, such as the African American and Hispano–Latino groups in the microarray data set). With just 175 loci, choosing to sample distinct populations vs. more closely related ones makes only a modest difference (insertions data set, compare Figure 2A to 2B; Table 1). The effect of population sampling becomes more pronounced when ≥1000 loci are available. In the microarray data set, drops to zero at 1000 loci if only distinct populations are sampled. With geographically intermediate and admixed populations added, however, reaches an asymptotic value of 3.1%, CC remains well above zero, and even CT does not reach zero (microarray data, Figure 2, C and D; Table 1).
This discussion is absurd. Witherspoon et. al. are talking about "populations," which are unequivocally not races or ethnic groups. Europeans do not constitute one population, Europe itself (and Africa and Asia) are divided into many populations. MoritzB, stop using the word group, which is imprecise, and use the word population, which is precise. Slrubenstein | Talk 11:12, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
"DISCUSSIONS of genetic differences between major human populations have long been dominated by two facts: (a) Such differences account for only a small fraction of variance in allele frequencies, but nonetheless (b) multilocus statistics assign most individuals to the correct population. This is widely understood to reflect the increased discriminatory power of multilocus statistics. Yet Bamshad et al. (2004) showed, using multilocus statistics and nearly 400 polymorphic loci, that (c) pairs of individuals from different populations are often more similar than pairs from the same population. If multilocus statistics are so powerful, then how are we to understand this finding?
All three of the claims listed above appear in disputes over the significance of human population variation and “race.” In particular, the American Anthropological Association (1997, p. 1) stated that “data also show that any two individuals within a particular population are as different genetically as any two people selected from any two populations in the world” (subsequently amended to “about as different”). Similarly, educational material distributed by the Human Genome Project (2001, p. 812) states that “two random individuals from any one group are almost as different [genetically] as any two random individuals from the entire world.” Previously, one might have judged these statements to be essentially correct for single-locus characters, but not for multilocus ones. However, the finding of Bamshad et al. (2004) suggests that an empirical investigation of these claims is warranted.
In what follows, we use several collections of loci genotyped in various human populations to examine the relationship between claims a, b, and c above. These data sets vary in the numbers of polymorphic loci genotyped, population sampling strategies, polymorphism ascertainment methods, and average allele frequencies. To assess claim c, we define ω as the frequency with which a pair of individuals from different populations is genetically more similar than a pair from the same population. We show that claim c, the observation of high ω, holds with small collections of loci. It holds even with hundreds of loci, especially if the populations sampled have not been isolated from each other for long. It breaks down, however, with data sets comprising thousands of loci genotyped in geographically distinct populations: In such cases, ω becomes zero. Classification methods similarly yield high error rates with few loci and almost no errors with thousands of loci. Unlike ω, however, classification statistics make use of aggregate properties of populations, so they can approach 100% accuracy with as few as 100 loci."
—Preceding unsigned comment added by MoritzB ( talk • contribs) 11:23, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
Correct: they confirm that the model developed by population geneticists, which makes populations their object of study and category of analysis, is scientifically valid and racial taxa are not scientifically valid. All this article does is demonstrates the robustness of the population concept and supports the calim made in the article that virtually all scientists have rejected as unscientific the concept of race in favor of population. So? Slrubenstein | Talk 11:43, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
You are mixing up geographically circumscribed/defined populations and race. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:33, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
However, we simply report what Witherspoon says and make no conclusions about subspecies. Proposal: "When enough loci are considered, Europeans, East Asians, and sub-Saharan Africans always are more genetically similar to members of their own group than to those of the other groups. according to Witherspoon et. al. (2007) When more recently founded, geographically intermediate or admixed populations like New Guineans, South Asians, Native Americans, African Americans and Hispano–Latinos are considered the size of the overlap in similarity is 3.7%." MoritzB 17:23, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
Your proposal is no better than before, it lacks any attempt at impartiality because it does not discuss Witherspoon's conclusions, it only gives a few results. It is inappropriate to present the results of a research paper without also presenting the conclusions the authors have drawn. It also presents these results in a misleading manner. What Witherspoon does is claim that clustering analyses mask a great deal of similarity between individuals from geographically distant regions and show that a great deal more loci are required to produce anything approaching differentiation at the level of the individual, even from geographically distant populations. When intermediate groups are sampled this amount of loci is insufficient, and even 10,000 loci are insufficient to produce a very good distinction. But intermediate groups do not represent continuous sampling. Witherspoon concludes that the only way to fully understand the extent of variaion and how human groups relate to each other is to sample continuously, something no one has ever done. He also speculates that attaining anything like discrete populations may well be impossible if sampling continuously were to be done. The discussion and the introduction of any research paper are the key sections, not the results section. The only reason to go to the results section is to present the data in a misleading or confusing way and to avoid the uncomfortable (for you) conclusion that human populations do not form discrete groups. Alun 18:30, 8 September 2007 (UTC)'Race' is a legitimate taxonomic concept that works for chimpanzees but does not apply to humans (at this time). The nonexistence of 'races' or subspecies in modern humans does not preclude substantial genetic variation that may be localized to regions or populations. More than 10 million single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) probably exist in the human genome. More than 5 million of these SNPs are expected to be common (minor allele frequency >10%). Most of these SNPs vary in frequency across human populations, and a large fraction of them are private or common in only a single population. Other genetic variants are also asymmetrically distributed. This makes forensic distinctions possible even within restricted regions such as Scandinavia. Anonymous human DNA samples will structure into groups that correspond to the divisions of the sampled populations or regions when large numbers of genetic markers are used. This has been demonstrated with autosomal microsatellites, which are the most rapidly evolving genetic variants. The DNA of an unknown individual from one of the sampled populations would probably be correctly linked to a population. Because this identification is possible does not mean that there is a level of differentiation equal to 'races'. The genetics of Homo sapiens shows gradients of differentiation. [12]
Thus the answer to the question "How often is a pair of individuals from one population genetically more dissimilar than two individuals chosen from two different populations?" depends on the number of polymorphisms used to define that dissimilarity and the populations being compared. The answer, ω, can be read from Figure 2. Given 10 loci, three distinct populations, and the full spectrum of polymorphisms (Figure 2E), the answer is ω~0.3, or nearly one-third of the time. With 100 loci, the answer is ~20% of the time and even using 1000 loci, ω ~10%. However, if genetic similarity is measured over many thousands of loci, the answer becomes ‘‘never’’ when individuals are sampled from geographically separated populations.
In what follows, we use several collections of loci genotyped in various human populations to examine the relationship between claims a, b, and c above. These data sets vary in the numbers of polymorphic loci genotyped, population sampling strategies, polymorphism ascertainment methods, and average allele frequencies. To assess claim c, we define ω as the frequency with which a pair of individuals from different populations is genetically more similar than a pair from the same population. We show that claim c, the observation of high ω, holds with small collections of loci. It holds even with hundreds of loci, especially if the populations sampled have not been isolated from each other for long. It breaks down, however, with data sets comprising thousands of loci genotyped in geographically distinct populations: In such cases, ω becomes zero.
...
The power of large numbers of common polymorphisms is most apparent in the microarray data set, comparing the European, East Asian, and sub-Saharan African population groups (Figure 2C). approaches zero (median 0.12%) with 1000 polymorphisms. This implies that, when enough loci are considered, individuals from these population groups will always be genetically most similar to members of their own group. In general, CC and CT decrease more rapidly and to lower values than ω
DISCUSSIONS of genetic differences between major human populations have long been dominated by two facts: (a) Such differences account for only a small fraction of variance in allele frequencies, but nonetheless (b) multilocus statistics assign most individuals to the correct population. This is widely understood to reflect the increased discriminatory power of multilocus statistics. Yet Bamshad et al. (2004) showed, using multilocus statistics and nearly 400 polymorphic loci, that (c) pairs of individuals from different populations are often more similar than pairs from the same population. If multilocus statistics are so powerful, then how are we to understand this finding?
All three of the claims listed above appear in disputes over the significance of human population variation and “race.” In particular, the American Anthropological Association (1997, p. 1) stated that “data also show that any two individuals within a particular population are as different genetically as any two people selected from any two populations in the world” (subsequently amended to “about as different”). Similarly, educational material distributed by the Human Genome Project (2001, p. 812) states that “two random individuals from any one group are almost as different [genetically] as any two random individuals from the entire world.” Previously, one might have judged these statements to be essentially correct for single-locus characters, but not for multilocus ones. However, the finding of Bamshad et al. (2004) suggests that an empirical investigation of these claims is warranted.
In what follows, we use several collections of loci genotyped in various human populations to examine the relationship between claims a, b, and c above. These data sets vary in the numbers of polymorphic loci genotyped, population sampling strategies, polymorphism ascertainment methods, and average allele frequencies. To assess claim c, we define ω as the frequency with which a pair of individuals from different populations is genetically more similar than a pair from the same population. We show that claim c, the observation of high ω, holds with small collections of loci. It holds even with hundreds of loci, especially if the populations sampled have not been isolated from each other for long. It breaks down, however, with data sets comprising thousands of loci genotyped in geographically distinct populations: In such cases, ω becomes zero. Classification methods similarly yield high error rates with few loci and almost no errors with thousands of loci. Unlike ω, however, classification statistics make use of aggregate properties of populations, so they can approach 100% accuracy with as few as 100 loci.
Witherspoon establishes that three major human populations are genetically completely distinct and there is no overlap between them except in studies which examine too few loci to reliably determine the population membership of an individual belonging to aforementioned three major human populations. MoritzB 12:11, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
A new compromise:
"When enough loci are considered, Europeans, East Asians, and sub-Saharan Africans always are more genetically similar to members of their own group than to those of the other groups. When more recently founded, geographically intermediate or admixed populations like New Guineans, South Asians, Native Americans, African Americans and Hispano–Latinos are considered the size of the overlap in similarity is 3.7%. Still, even when the most distinct populations are considered and hundreds of loci are used, individuals are frequently more similar to members of other populations than to members of their own population. Thus, enough genetic data is needed to assign individuals of European, East Asian or sub-Saharan African ancestry correctly to their populations of origin." Witherspoon et. al. (2007)
MoritzB
21:27, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
Thank you Rubenstein for introducing Mayr's opinion although it was different from your personal point of view. MoritzB 18:19, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
Let's examine this version and compare it to what Witherspoon actually says:
Conversely Witherspoon (2007) has shown that while it is possible to classify people into genetic clusters this does not resolve the observation that any two individuals from different populations are often genetically more similar to each ther than to two individuals from the same population:
Discussions of genetic differences between major human populations have long been dominated by two facts: (a) Such differences account for only a small fraction of variance in allele frequencies, but nonetheless (b) multilocus statistics assign most individuals to the correct population. This is widely understood to reflect the increased discriminatory power of multilocus statistics. Yet Bamshad et al. (2004) showed, using multilocus statistics and nearly 400 polymorphic loci, that (c) pairs of individuals from different populations are often more similar than pairs from the same population. If multilocus statistics are so powerful, then how are we to understand this finding? All three of the claims listed above appear in disputes over the significance of human population variation and "race"...The Human Genome Project (2001, p. 812) states that "two random individuals from any one group are almost as different [genetically] as any two random individuals from the entire world."[14]
Risch et al. (2002) state that "two Caucasians are more similar to each other genetically than a Caucasian and an Asian", but Bamshad et al (2004) used the same data set as Risch to show that Europeans are more similar to Asians 38% of the time than they are to other Europeans. Witherspoon et al. conclude that the answer to the question "How often is a pair of individuals from one population genetically more dissimilar than two individuals chosen from two different populations?" depends on the number of genes studied. With ten loci and three distinct populations the answer is about 30%, with 100 loci it is about 20% and with a thousand loci it is about 10%. For individuals from within a group to never be more different to each other than to members of a different groups, thousands of loci need to be studied form geographically separated populations. Witherspoon also concludes that if the world population were studied with it's many closely related groups varying clinally, the use of even 10,000 loci does not produce the answer "never". Witherspoon also makes the observation: "In a similar vein, Romualdi et al. (2002) and Serre and Paabo (2004) have suggested that highly accurate classification of individuals from continuously sampled (and there fore closely related) populations may be impossible."[14]
"Conversely Witherspoon (2007) has shown that while it is possible to classify people into genetic clusters this does not resolve the observation that any two individuals from different populations are often genetically more similar to each ther than to two individuals from the same population: Discussions of genetic differences between major human populations have long been dominated by two facts..."
Witherspoon really says that these major populations are completely distinct and two individuals from different major populations are never genetically more similar to each other than to two individuals from the same populations except in studies which fail to use enough loci to be reliable.
Witherspoon's actual results: "The power of large numbers of common polymorphisms is most apparent in the microarray data set, comparing the European, East Asian, and sub-Saharan African population groups (Figure 2C). approaches zero (median 0.12%) with 1000 polymorphisms. This implies that, when enough loci are considered, individuals from these population groups will always be genetically most similar to members of their own group. In general, CC and CT decrease more rapidly and to lower values than ω."
Discussion: Thus the answer to the question “How often is a pair of individuals from one population genetically more dissimilar than two individuals chosen from two different populations?” depends on the number of polymorphisms used to define that dissimilarity and the populations being compared. The answer, can be read from Figure 2. Given 10 loci, three distinct populations, and the full spectrum of polymorphisms (Figure 2E), the answer is 0.3, or nearly one-third of the time. With 100 loci, the answer is ~20% of the time and even using 1000 loci, 10%. However, if genetic similarity is measured over many thousands of loci, the answer becomes “never” when individuals are sampled from geographically separated populations. If genetic similarity is measured over many thousands of loci, the answer becomes “never” when individuals are sampled from geographically separated populations."
And conclusions:"In what follows, we use several collections of loci genotyped in various human populations to examine the relationship between claims a, b, and c above. These data sets vary in the numbers of polymorphic loci genotyped, population sampling strategies, polymorphism ascertainment methods, and average allele frequencies. To assess claim c, we define ω as the frequency with which a pair of individuals from different populations is genetically more similar than a pair from the same population. We show that claim c, the observation of high ω, holds with small collections of loci. It holds even with hundreds of loci, especially if the populations sampled have not been isolated from each other for long. It breaks down, however, with data sets comprising thousands of loci genotyped in geographically distinct populations: In such cases, ω becomes zero. Classification methods similarly yield high error rates with few loci and almost no errors with thousands of loci. Unlike ω, however, classification statistics make use of aggregate properties of populations, so they can approach 100% accuracy with as few as 100 loci."
"The fact that, given enough genetic data, individuals can be correctly assigned to their populations of origin is compatible with the observation that most human genetic variation is found within populations, not between them."
Discussions of genetic differences between major human populations have long been dominated by two facts: (a) Such differences account for only a small fraction of variance in allele frequencies, but nonetheless (b) multilocus statistics assign most individuals to the correct population. This is widely understood to reflect the increased discriminatory power of multilocus statistics. Yet Bamshad et al. (2004) showed, using multilocus statistics and nearly 400 polymorphic loci, that (c) pairs of individuals from different populations are often more similar than pairs from the same population. If multilocus statistics are so powerful, then how are we to understand this finding? All three of the claims listed above appear in disputes over the significance of human population variation and "race"...The Human Genome Project (2001, p. 812) states that "two random individuals from any one group are almost as different [genetically] as any two random individuals from the entire world."[14]
Here Witherspoon describes certain established views he intends to prove false. They are not Witherspoon's views although the article attributes them to Witherspoon.
He continues:
All three of the claims listed above appear in disputes over the significance of human population variation and “race.” In particular, the American Anthropological Association (1997, p. 1) stated that “data also show that any two individuals within a particular population are as different genetically as any two people selected from any two populations in the world” (subsequently amended to “about as different”). Similarly, educational material distributed by the Human Genome Project (2001, p. 812) states that “two random individuals from any one group are almost as different [genetically] as any two random individuals from the entire world.” Previously, one might have judged these statements to be essentially correct for single-locus characters, but not for multilocus ones. However, the finding of Bamshad et al. (2004) suggests that an empirical investigation of these claims is warranted. ...
In what follows, we use several collections of loci genotyped in various human populations to examine the relationship between claims a, b, and c above.
These data sets vary in the numbers of polymorphic loci genotyped, population sampling strategies, polymorphism ascertainment methods, and average allele frequencies. To assess claim c, we define ω as the frequency with which a pair of individuals from different populations is genetically more similar than a pair from the same population.
We show that claim c, the observation of high ω, holds with small collections of loci. It holds even with hundreds of loci, especially if the populations sampled have not been isolated from each other for long.
It breaks down, however, with data sets comprising thousands of loci genotyped in geographically distinct populations:
In such cases, ω becomes zero. Classification methods similarly yield high error rates with few loci and almost no errors with thousands of loci. Unlike ω, however, classification statistics make use of aggregate properties of populations, so they can approach 100% accuracy with as few as 100 loci.
"Risch et al. (2002) state that "two Caucasians are more similar to each other genetically than a Caucasian and an Asian", but Bamshad et al (2004) used the same data set as Risch to show that Europeans are more similar to Asians 38% of the time than they are to other Europeans. Witherspoon et al. conclude that the answer to the question "How often is a pair of individuals from one population genetically more dissimilar than two individuals chosen from two different populations?" depends on the number of genes studied.
Witherspoon also concludes that if the world population were studied with it's many closely related groups varying clinally, the use of even 10,000 loci does not produce the answer "never".
Witherspoon also makes the observation: "In a similar vein, Romualdi et al. (2002) and Serre and Paabo (2004) have suggested that highly accurate classification of individuals from continuously sampled (and there fore closely related) populations may be impossible."
This refers to the excellent observation Witherspoon makes: "On the other hand, if the entire world population were analyzed, the inclusion of many closely related and admixed populations would increase This is illustrated by the fact that and the classification error rates, CC and CT, all remain greater than zero when such populations are analyzed, despite the use of >10,000 polymorphisms."
Of course, when comparing any closely related and admixed populations like Germans and Englishmen ω >> 0. This is a trivial issue in the context of this article.
No anthropologist has ever claimed that such closely related and admixed populations don't have common racial elements. The question is whether the racial definitions of traditional physical anthropology (Negroid, Mongoloid, Caucasoid) are consistent with the findings of modern population genetics. Witherspoon conclusions regarding them are clear: the major populations of Europe, sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia form discrete genetic clusters. MoritzB 14:15, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1893020 MoritzB 17:08, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
In all honesty witherspoon presents nothing new. Using enough loci any two endogamous groups can be distinguished from each other, even if they are within the same race. Two groups living on separate islands after a several generations can be easily distinguished. Just as one can distinguish any two individuals with enough loci. That is the basis of DNA fingerprinting. You can use this technology to distinguish two families, or for paternity testing. It does not change anything. The fact is that people who live nearer to each other will in general be more related than those who live further away. With enough loci there would be no overlap. One could probably distinguish the chinese from the Japanese, or North Chinese from Southern chinese. Does that mean that these groups are all separate races, well if you believe Moritz. Nobody disputes that there is human variation, it exists or that europeans and africans and east asians will have different gene frequencies. But if we apply any standard for race, then we will find that there would be several races within the so called races. Muntuwandi 17:40, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
What piece of research would clarify and simplify this article? What is the question that needs answering? —Preceding unsigned comment added by David Witherspoon ( talk • contribs) 22:08, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
These long-winded passages on this talk page could be avoided and more beneficial work could be accomplished in other ways in Wikipedia if editors would recognize the fact that the strongest people on earth are able to make whatever claims about race that they please because the weak people cannot control what the strongest people say or do. SgtVelocicaptor 11:21, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
Let's not turn this into an edit war. Moritz seems to have the most reasonably worded position.
71.197.5.27 15:53, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
"The proposal to scrap the concept of race altogether is currently only one extreme in a range of views. It is certainly not shared by all anthropologists and is by no means the majority opinion of the public at large. It appears to be a conclusion reached more on the basis of political and philosophical creeds than on scientific arguments. Correspondingly, anthropologists who do hold this opinion often attempt to shout down their opponents rather than convince them by presentation of facts. Their favored method of argumentation is to label anybody who disagrees with them as racist. The public, however, seems unimpressed by their rhetoric."
"Where Do We Come From? The Molecular Evidence for Human Descent, 2002, p. 384"
I will add their comment. MoritzB 18:23, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
Isn't that kind of specious? Artificial selection and natural selection are apples and oranges. The dog and the wolf are classified in the same species; it's not surprising that there is little variability in dogs compared to humans, which do make up a species of their own. FilipeS ( talk) 19:57, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
I undid an edit with the commentDon't remove authentic anthropological plates from the relevant section section. That is vandalism. They are not. It is not. Cygnis insignis 23:01, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
Hi, I wanted to tell those who are knowledgeable in Anthropology to help out in the whole Race discussion. Please, if you know about Anthropology, do a little section on the four major races (Mongoloid, Caucasoid, Negroid and Australoid) and edit anything that suggest "Latino" being a RACE. So many folks are confused about what is a Race versus a Cultural/Linguistic group and they end up pouring all their confusion on Wiki. So let's try to do a nice discussion on the four races. Thanks. Prophetess mar ( talk) 07:02, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Latino is certainly not a 'race' as traditionally defined. But i think that proponents of the 'latin race' idea are not trying to argue inside the same definitions of race that you or knowledgeable anthropologists have. I think they are attempting to reinvent the definition of 'race', to move it towards meaning the 'human' race, rather than a section of it. Thus, a person who derives from every sub-racial group (Mongoloid, Caucasoid etc) is more 'human' than one who is 'purely' one sub-race. this new 'human' race is as far as can tell the ideal of the 'new latino'.
I don't know how scientific this idea is, but it sounds nice. Unassuming09 ( talk) 12:06, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
Jeeny deleted it and said that it was "POV-pushing" which is strange because most mainstream biologists use that concept in taxonomy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Race&diff=157493085&oldid=157486104 MoritzB 23:44, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
Phylogeography is the most accepted way to identify subspecies in modern taxonomy. It uses systematics and a range of evidence to support the existence of subspecies. It has greater validity over previous systems because it requires so much more evidence for subspecies to be recognised. Both genetic and morphological data are required, together with evidence for the subsepcies being geographically circumbscribed. The best definition I have come across goes:
On the other hand there is the Phylogenetic Species Concept, which is gaining popularity in taxonomy. In this concept the idea of subspeces does not exist at all, only species exist, but there would be many more species. All species would have to be geographically restricted though. In this concept all humans would be the same species, and no subspecific classifications would exist at all. I think we should change the section on "subspecies as clade" to a discussion about the phylogeographic subspecies concept. The main thing about the phylogeographic subspecies concept is that it is not a "one size fits all" concept, evidence that is relevant for some populations may not be for other populations, there are no hard and fast criteria, it recognises that species of organisms are all ecologically unique, and so we cannot use the same set of criteria for all classifications. hence discussion about what is the appropriate level of FST to identify differentiation are pointless, the level of differentiation both morphologically and genetically that is considered significant will depend on the environment and ecology of the populations being studied. Alun 06:54, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
Let us avoid using pov images in this article, there will just be an unnecessary distraction from the article. If users have expressed concern, they are better off not used. The insistence on using these photos is counterproductive. Muntuwandi 18:27, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
Strothra, I have several issues with them. There is no associated text to know what they are talking about and what is defunct about their classifcation system. They are just a collection of old photos, many taken stereotypically. I am not attacking editors, they made those edits themselves, with their own fingers. I am just letting you know of the editors that you are agreeing with Muntuwandi 19:06, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
Af for this argument: "They are not authenic anthropological plates on races, but compilations of ethnicities and a couple of races. "
I can tell you, "Menschenrassen" means "human races" in German. And please trust me on this, and don't accuse me of making up false translations, which you have done before. Funkynusayri 19:50, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
I am somewhat ambivalent about the disputed photographs. On the one hand they serve to give an historical view of how physical types were perceived, on the other hand they may be seen as little more than presenting a group of individual people as "examples" of a given population or ethnic group, but it is known that there is great variability within group for all human groups. As an example of old fashioned anthropology that concentrated on "physical types" I think these photos could be considered appropriate, though it should be noted in the text that the concept of "physical types" is not currently accepted anthropological orthodoxy, I also suggest that this should be clearly stated in the caption to the photographs, i.e. that this is an out of date perspective. I wonder how it is necessarily so different to the set of photographs that exists in the
Race in law enforcement section? On the other hand people complaining about Wikipedia being "censored" like Strothra does is inappropriate, Wikipedia works by consensus, if these is a consensus not to include these photographs then there is no point in complaining about "censorship". If an individual editor wants to include some point of view that is not supported by a consensus position, then they have to accept it, like it or not. Wikipedia is not censored in the sense that there are any rules banning any given point of view or image, on the other hand Wikipedia editors are entitled to omit any image or information if there is a consensus to do so.
Alun
04:45, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
That's wrong. There were several sub-races of the main races too which scientists believed in then, even in America, where you have countless divisions of Caucasoids, for example. Back then, when this German book was published, only "Caucasoids" had been studied enough, and had been given "scientific names" (Nordid, Mediterranid, so on), other peoples (or "races" then) were just named after their ethnicity. So please, people, ask about the context instead of coming up with wrong interpretations.
If you read the accompanying text in that German lexicon, the peoples on the images are referred to as sub-races of the three main-races, Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid.
To Wobble, the reason why we use a German image is because it's the only one we can use for free. There simply doesn't seem to have been released such books in English early enough for their copyright to have been expired, but the German plates are pretty much identical to what would had been in an English one, apart from the names (later, names like "Capoid" were invented, but not in the 30s). I've seen some in English, but they're all from much later. Funkynusayri 06:52, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
So far the only defense I see for including these images is that they illustrate a point of view. I have asked people to specify the point of view and have gotten only vague answers (like "mainstream") which I can only interpret to mean "I do not know." We need facts about the point of view. Who compiled the photos? Who wrote the article in which it appeared? Who edited the book in which it appeared? What do we know of its audience? How was the book marketed? Until we can properly identify the point of view it represents, i do not see how we can include it. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:37, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
And Rubenstein, the images represent what the scientific opinion was at the time, which the text is also about. And yet again, you simply have to click on the images, and you'll be lead to the lexicon itself through them. But just to be sure, here is a direct link: [16] Funkynusayri 12:16, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Anyhow, here's an introduction to the lexicon, in German: [17] "Meyers Blitz-Lexikon ist ein sehr kompaktes Nachschlagewerk in einem Band, das mehrmals zwischen etwa 1928 und 1940 erschien. Hier wird die Ausgabe von 1932 präsentiert. Dieses Buch ist als gemeinfrei zu betrachten, weil es keine angegebenen Autoren oder Illustratoren hat und vor mehr als 70 Jahren erschien.
Das digitalisierte Exemplar wurde in einem Antiquariat in Frankfurt während der Wikimania-Konferenz im August 2005 gekauft. Es kostete nur 12 Euro, ist aber sehr gut erhalten. Es hat an einigen Stellen Bleistiftanzeichungen, die nicht entfernt wurden, z.B. bei Österreich: "seit 1938 deutsch" — und danach wieder durchgestrichen!
Die 443 Seiten wurden von LA2 in September 2005 als 300 dpi JPEG Farbbilder mit hohem Kontrast eingescannt und auf Wikimedia Commons hochgeladen. Die Papierseiten sind 155 mm breit, die Bilder etwa 1830 Pixel. Der {{Vorlage:LA2-Blitz}}
präsentiert sie 700 Pixel breit, einer Bildschirmauflösung von etwa 120 dpi entsprechend. Um die Bilder hoch aufgelöst zu sehen muss man zweimal auf sie klicken. Der OCR-Text ist noch korrekturzulesen. Als Hilfe dafür gibt es zwei Kategorien: völlig und noch nicht völlig korrigierte Seiten. Die Textmasse ist etwa 2,8 Megabyte (ohne Markup; 6,4 Kilobyte pro Seite), die Bilder sind zusammen 700 Megabyte (1,6 Megabyte pro Seite).
Dieses Werk ist das erste, bei dem Wikisource mit Faksimile-Bildern kombiniert wurde. Das zweite ist The New Student's Reference Work, Chicago, 1914. Eine weitere Diskussion gibt es auf Meta, Digitizing books with MediaWiki."
As for public domain templates: [18] [19]
Funkynusayri 12:27, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
And how is it only an explanation of why it is fair use? In short, it is described as having several authors, and just being a lexicon. I can't answer who wrote it, because of this. Funkynusayri 12:50, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Apparently, Funkynusayri has not done any research. All he knows is, "The captions of the images simply state that they are examples of human races in a German lexicon from 1932." If this is all we know, here is the solution I suggest: we work on a new section called "Social Construction of Race in Germany" and really find out what the different views were and how this discourse emerged out of the nationalist project with its origins in Herder and perhaps Goethe and Von Humboldt, and how it developed through the 19th century and debats among Germans in the early 1900s. This would provide a menaingful context for the image. I realize it would require actual research, but this is an encyclopedia after all so how could anyone object to that? Slrubenstein | Talk 13:10, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Man, you really seem to resist any suggestion that requires research - an odd view for someone who wants to write an encyclopedia. Anyway, you are missing the point. What point of view will the image illutrate? I see no reason to illustrate Coon's image of races in this article, given that his views are marginal (maybe in the article on Coon). if you want to illustrate scientific debates about race in the 20th century, we would need a variety of contrasting images to illustrate the multiple points of view effectively. Slrubenstein | Talk 13:36, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
http://www.snpa.nordish.net/bilder/FischerLex1.jpg ~ http://www.snpa.nordish.net/bilder/FischerLex2.jpg
http://www.snpa.nordish.net/bilder/FischerLex3.jpg
http://www.snpa.nordish.net/bilder/FischerLex4.jpg
I reverted to what the page was like when it was protected, no more, no less. Of course when the page is unprotected I want to see the image removed for the obvious reasons. Slrubenstein | Talk 00:34, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
So we seem to have arrived at a situation where we are discussing whether we need consensus for removal or consensus for keeping the image. I'll give my opinion. Funkynusayri claims that these images have been on the page for some time and that it is strange that they should suddenly become a bone of contention. I'm not sure that this point is valid, these images have been on the page since the 20th of August, [20] and considering that this is sill a time of year when many people in the northern hemisphere are busy doing Summertime things I don't think one can claim that a couple or three weeks represents anything like a stable inclusion. On the other hand there seems to be no consensus one way or the other. Opinion seems about equally divided. Strothra's comments about censorship are totally irrelevant as I stated earlier, wikipedia works by consensus, it is illogical to claim that consensus doesn't overide censor because censorship is not the issue, consensus is the issue. It nowhere claims in the censor policy that a consensus not to include any image or text must violate CENSOR and therefore be included anyway, this is akin to claiming that anything, however irrelevant should be included because any objection to any inclusion is automatically censorship. Personally I suspect that it is best to keep the images out of the article until a better images can be included. I am relatively ambivalent about this, I don't think these images are particularly illuminating, except perhaps to illustrate the absurdity of the concept of "racial type", how can any single individual be considered "representative" of the whole gammut of local diversity seen in any human population? After all it is well known that diversity is greatest at the population level, however it is measured. But in this case the image should probably be used to illustrate the point about diversity in it's historical context, including a discussion about how environment affects morphology. This is a bad image because it comes from a "lexicon", which as far as I can tell just means encyclopaedic dictionary, these sorts of sources are not necessarily written by an expert, and may well be factually incorrect. In this case we do not even know what it is supposed to be illustrating not who actually wrote it. So some sort of primary source would be much better. On the other hand the utility of any such images is also important, what do they illustrate? How is it relevant? What is the political/historical/cultural background to the image? At the least I think we need to find a better example. Alun 06:31, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
Take a look at this image on the left. If only the text on the image was readable. And here's a mirror of an older revision of this very page, seems to have had a lot of maps: [21] Funkynusayri 18:02, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
And hey, why don't we just revert this piece of crap back to the version which was featured? Funkynusayri 18:36, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
The intro is a mess and Wobble just reverted the latest improved version I made. The current version is factually inaccurate (see discussion about Witherspoon's article) and far too technical for the general audience. MoritzB 10:23, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
which implies that the Serre and Pääbo (2004) supports this statement, he has used it as references for the statement after all, he states this above as well. But Serre and Pääbo (2004) state explicitly in their paperPopulations which exist at the boundaries of these continental divisions can be difficult to categorize simply.<ref name="serre">''Evidence for Gradients of Human Genetic Diversity Within and Among Continents.'' by David Serre and Svante Pääbo (2004) ''Genome Res.'' '''14''': 1679-1685 {{doi|10.1101/gr.2529604}}</ref><ref name="romauldi">''Patterns of Human Diversity, within and among Continents, Inferred from Biallelic DNA Polymorphisms'' by Chiara Romualdi, David Balding, Ivane S. Nasidze, Gregory Risch, Myles Robichaux, Stephen T. Sherry, Mark Stoneking, Mark A. Batzer, and Guido Barbujani1. ''Genome Res.'' (2002) '''12''': 602-612 {{doi|10.1101/gr.214902}}</ref><ref>http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=139378 Categorization of humans in biomedical research: genes, race and disease by Neil Risch, Esteban Burchard, Elad Ziv, and Hua Tang. Genome Biol. Volume 3(7); 2002</ref>
This is at best dishonest. The concept of "clustering" is stated and cited in the introduction, this is a controversial concept that has it's critics as well as it's supporters, in order to maintain neutrality we need to put both points of view. MoritzB was attempting to remove the alternative point of view, while citing Serre and Pääbo (2004) as a supporting reference for Risch's statement, but Serre and Pääbo's paper clearly does not support Risch's statement. The argument is really about whether human genetic diversity is better represented as a small island model or by isolation by distance. A small island model would support clustering, isolation by distance would support clinality. The current understanding of human genetic variation is incomplete and different analyses support different conclusions. We need to present both points of view, and not ignore those points of view that we disagree with. It certainly cannot be considered impartial to claim that a scientific paper supports a position that it categorically contradicts. Alun 16:46, 28 September 2007 (UTC)It is noteworthy that the discrete clusters described by Rosenberg et al. (2002) from analyzing more than one thousand individuals of the CEPH diversity panel might be caused by discontinuities in the sampling, because when samples that have equal numbers of individuals of each population are analyzed (Fig. 2), the inferred populations yielded by Structure do not match continents or geographical regions but represent theoretical “populations” in which all individuals show admixture to at least two such “populations.” Therefore, when the aim is to investigate genetic diversity on a worldwide scale, we recommend an approach in which individuals from as many localities as possible are sampled. Sampling schemes based on populations should only be used if the aim of the study is to unravel the history of these specific populations or their relationship with surrounding populations... It has recently been claimed that "the greatest genetic structure that exists in the human population occurs at the racial level" (Risch et al. 2002). Our results show that this is not the case, and we see no reason to assume that "races" represent any units of relevance for understanding human genetic history.
"...clustering analysis of 326 microsatellite markers can accurately place individuals in the USA into different groups.[12][13] Other geneticists, however, have shown that many more than 326 loci are required in order to show that individuals are always more similar to individuals in their own population group than to individuals in different population groups, even for three distinct populations" MoritzB 16:07, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
This page is huge, and this section is bloated; so, I'm proposing a split to Personalized genetic history and leave the section with a summary of the concept, but move the bulk of the detailed content onto its own page. Lemme know if you have any objections. Cheers =) -- slakr\ talk / 11:35, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
I am strongly opposed. This section is not about genealogical DNA tests. It is about discussions among anthropologists who see gnealogical tests as evidence of a new concept of "race" in the West, and is thus an essential part of this article. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:05, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
In an effort to trim the page back some, I removed what seemed like a philosophical blurb. Feel free to restore if it's crucial to the section, as I'm not an expert in this area. -- slakr\ talk / 11:49, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
I added a {{ mergeto}} for Race#Race_in_the_United_States to Race in the United States, as the former is absurdly long and needs to be summarized, with the detailed information being moved to Race in the United States. -- slakr\ talk / 11:59, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
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In the section on "Scale of race research" there is a very instructive point that gets pretty well muted for lack of a few words of explication that I believe would be justified by the original material quoted.
The writere quoted uses the verb "to sample," which is fine in context of a professional journal, but it may suggest a rather trivial process of "taking a taste." That's not really what is being described here. The author is looking at the difference in characteristics, e.g., the palette of skin tones, that one would get by following two procedures. The first would consist of drawing a line from Sweden to Indonesia, drawing 1000 equidistant dots along that line, and taking a human specimen from each point on that line — which would result in an obviously clinal picture. The second would result from drawing four equidistant points on the line and taking 250 individuals from each of those four points. You would end up with a new population that could pretty reliably be divided into four groups of people with very similar characteristics. The author is saying that in the United States we find a population that is largely drawn from a few centers that are remote from each other. That fact may have practical consequences for public health policy and other such activities, e.g., "Devote part of the money to the white ones for skin cancer scanning and part of the money to the black ones for sickle-cell anemia scanning.
In other words, by taking people only from the peaks and valleys we artifically obscure the fact that there are inclines between those two kinds of extremes. We create a "clearly different kinds of people" from what was in fact a clinal distribution, and until the U.S. population reaches genetic equilibrium there will be some utility in treating people as though they belong to discrete groups.
Is there some way we can economically emend the text to bring out what the original researchers were trying to get across? P0M 07:23, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
There may be a way but it is going to be hard to come across. -Michaela M. —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
70.217.24.127 (
talk)
20:07, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
..."but it shews that they graduate into each other, and that it is hardly possible to discover clear distinctive characters between them." Should it not be shows or is that the magnificent wording of the time in where no one really gave a stuff? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.173.4.56 ( talk) 12:46, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
From memory,he spelled a lot stuff that way and that was not a singular typo but how he spelled "show" throughout at least two of his works. You can see the original scans and check for yourself with Google books. [usemasper] 65.8.157.26 ( talk) 23:11, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
The revert war is over the following addition to the second paragraph of the article: "This despite the fact that the human code analyzed was of only one person, hence could not, by definition, show any variation. [1]". The claim of those reverting this sentence is that the link is to a discussion group and that this is therefore not a "reliable source". The wiki article "WP:RS" is cited as the guideline for "reliable source". That article, however, states: "Reliable sources are authors >OR< publications regarded as trustworthy or authoritative in relation to the subject at hand." and the source of the quote is Henry Harpending of the National Academy of Sciences -- specialist in population genetics. No one disputes the authenticity of Henry Harpending's comment and it would be unreasonable to do so since Harpending has been participating in the evolutionary psychology group for years and that group is among the highest traffic groups with the most reputable participants. Moreover, what Harpending is saying, on the face of it, can't be disputed by any reasonable person and therefore hardly requires citation. As Harpending says "my little kid can figure out that that makes no sense." The only reason it might be disputed is the whole point of the second paragraph of article -- which is that people like Venter are so averse to being caught up in the controversy over "race" that they can go to great lengths, in this case making absurd statements to highly regarded publications like the Washington Post, which then makes them the basis of major stories it carries. The whole intellectually dishonest situation is reflected, of course, in this revert war which makes up rules about "reliable sources" as it goes along to suppress the simple and obvious facts of the subject matter regarding "race". Jim Bowery 22:20, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
See WP:CIV, WP:AGF, and WP:TINC. Also see WP:RS, which like I have said, you are in violation of. If you continue this hostile and anti-policy behavior and rudeness towards other editors, you could be blocked from editing. You might want to read WP:UHB, but refrain from making ad hominem attacks -- L onging.... 23:58, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
"Exceptional claims require exceptional sources
Certain red flags should prompt editors to examine the sources for a given claim.
- Surprising or apparently important claims that are not widely known.
- Surprising or apparently important reports of recent events not covered by reliable news media.
- Reports of a statement by someone that seems out of character, embarrassing, controversial, or against an interest they had previously defended.
- Claims not supported or claims that are contradicted by the prevailing view in the relevant academic community. Be particularly careful when proponents say there is a conspiracy to silence them.
Exceptional claims should be supported by multiple high quality reliable sources, especially regarding scientific or medical topics, historical events, politically charged issues, and in material about living people."
- Jeeny Talk 00:06, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
Both of you, stop this. Jeeny, this is not necessarily a fringe theory, and Jabo, this is not a reliable source. You don't need to go flinging shit around at each other, it's just making you look bad. Now calm down, go reread WP:AGF, WP:CIV, WP:RS and WP:NPOV a few times, this applies to both of you, you need to calm down and get a better understanding of policy -- L onging.... 00:32, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
The burden of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material. All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged should be attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation. When content in Wikipedia requires direct substantiation, the established convention is to provide an inline citation to the supporting references. The rationale is this provides the most direct means to verify whether the content is consistent with the references. Alternative conventions exist, and are acceptable when they provide clear and precise attribution for the article's assertions, but inline citations are considered "best practices" under this rationale. For more details, please consult Wikipedia:Citing_sources#How_to_cite_sources. The source should be cited clearly and precisely to enable readers to find the text that supports the article content in question.
Your original insertion was not backed by a verifiable source, it was a message board, one that people had to join a group to read. - Jeeny Talk 00:47, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
That is very much your opinion. Ask another scientist and they'll opposite. In fact new data is beginning to reveal that populations have been mixing significantly in the past for example when whites prove to be black. Muntuwandi 04:04, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
I am very skeptical of this sentence: "whereas a new opinion among geneticists is that it should be a valid mean of classification, although in a modified form based on DNA analysis.[12][13][14][15]" The sources are newspapers, which at best tells you what journalists think geneticists claim. But this aricle itself cites a variety of recent peer-reviewed articles by geneticists and few if any of them advocate the validity of race, and when they do, they make it clear that they are not claiming that race is a valid way of classifying groups of humans. Some of the articles start with race as a way of classifying humans (in their sample) and then show how mtDNA or Y-linked haplogroups actually cut across self-defined racial lines. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:14, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
Rubenstein reverted my last edit and replaced it with his false interpretation of the differences between Livingstone's and Dobzhansky's positions. Dobzhansky does not say in the paper that the "race concept" is "a matter of judgement." His actual views are more accurately expressed in his comment to UNESCO:
The Biological Concept of Race. Race as a biological term expresses the fact that there are populations of mankind like those of Africa and of Europe, for example, which differ in some of their hereditary characters. Anthropologists reserve the term “race” for those groups of mankind which regularly show extensive physical differences. Race, based on hereditary group differences has thus become a device for classifying and thereby describing in simpler terms the great variety existing in mankind. Biologists also recognize racial differentiation as a part of the process by which local populations become fitted or adapted to their environment. Race as a biological category is thus based on the most universal of biological processes, that of evolution. MoritzB 18:02, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0007/000733/073351eo.pdf —Preceding unsigned comment added by MoritzB ( talk • contribs) 18:03, August 29, 2007 (UTC)
My version states clearly that TD believes that racial differences are biological, so you are agreeing with me. But you are disagreeing with TD who does say that the decision to name races and the decision about how many races there are is a matter of judgement. That is his view, like it or not. Do not censor Dobzhansky's view. TD ALSO believes that in his judgement races are worth naming and my version says this too. But he makes it clear it is ajugement call. his judgement is just different from Livingston's. Your version is a bad faith edit and violates our policies. Slrubenstein | Talk 20:23, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
MoritzB is simply ignorant. H does not realize that it is possible for Dobzhansky to claim that racial nomenclature is a matter of social convention, and for him to argue for using a certain nomenclature. In fact, he does hold both positions, and I present both positions in my summary of his view. He makes it very clear that the race concept - whether people name races, and how many races if any people chose to name, is a matter of the judgement of a comunity. He further argues that in his judgement, his community ought to use a certain nomenclature. This is a reasonable argument, even if others do not share his judgement. But MortizB wouldn't recognize a reasonable argument if it bit him - evident in the fact that MoritzB has never made a reasonable argument at Wikipedia, just repeats dogmatic assertions. No wonder he misunderstand Dobzhansky. Slrubenstein | Talk 12:21, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
Okay, whose sock is it now?-- Ramdrake 19:31, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
What do you mean? I'm noone's sock. User11111 —Preceding unsigned comment added by User11111 ( talk • contribs) 20:00, August 29, 2007 (UTC)
Let's discuss it. Rubenstein made a bad edit and I wanted to change it back. User11111.
Ramdrake, I have read Dobzhansky's article and SIRubenstein's version was inaccurate.
What do you mean? I'm not MoritzB. User11111 20:22, 29 August 2007 (UTC) Sock-puppe or not, you clearly have not read the comment - it is not an article which leads me to think you really have not read it - and you certainly did not understand it. It is an exchange between two scholars, and the agree on some points and disagree on others. You cannot fully and accurately represent either position just by singling out what they disagree on, you need to be clear about what they agree on too. This is simple, accuracy. The only motive I can imagine anyone would have for deleting any mention of areas of agreement is if someone just wants to stir up conflict. Is that what you want? Don't say you want all points of view represented because the recent edits by me and Alun kept the points of view you refer to, and merely added more contextual information and other points of view. So you are not motivated by any love of NPOV. So is that what is motivating you, a desire to stir up conflict? If that is your motive please go away. If it is not, please make constuctive suggestions about edits we can all agree will improve the article, rather than simply reverting any edit to something you put in. NO ONE owns this article. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:11, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
I added some information of their study: "When enough loci are considered, Europeans, East Asians, and sub-Saharan Africans always are more genetically similar to members of their own group than to those of the other groups; the overlap in genetic similarity between these groups is ~ 0%"
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1893020 MoritzB 03:50, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
Alun 04:19, 8 September 2007 (UTC)Thus the answer to the question ‘‘How often is a pair of individuals from one population genetically more dissimilar than two individuals chosen from two different populations?’’ depends on the number of polymorphisms used to define that dissimilarity and the populations being compared. The answer, v, can be read from Figure 2. Given 10 loci, three distinct populations, and the full spectrum of polymorphisms (Figure 2E), the answer is ~0.3, or nearly one-third of the time. With 100 loci, the answer is ~20% of the time and even using 1000 loci, v ~ 10%. However, if genetic similarity is measured over many thousands of loci, the answer becomes ‘‘never’’ when individuals are sampled from geographically separated populations.
On the other hand, if the entire world population were analyzed, the inclusion of many closely related and admixed populations would increase v. This is illustrated by the fact that v and the classification error rates, CC and CT, all remain greater than zero when such populations are analyzed, despite the use of 10,000 polymorphisms (Table 1, microarray data set; Figure 2D). In a similar vein, Romualdi et al. (2002) and Serre and Paabo (2004) have suggested that highly accurate classification of individuals from continuously sampled (and therefore closely related) populations may be impossible. However, those studies lacked the statistical power required to answer that question (see Rosenberg et al. 2005).
It is clear that clustering analyses do not account for the very real similarities between people from different clusters. Therefore it shows that medical treatment should not be based on "cluster" membership, because for significant proportions of the population these clusters are irrelevant. If you want to claim that individuals from geographically distinct regions can be perfectly discriminated from each other using >10,000 polymorphisms then please make this claim, but in order to be neutral you absolutely need to include the other qualification, or else it is merely taken out of context and POV pushing. You do not address my concerns about your obvious bias at all in your above post, which is that you are not giving a proper account of the article and you are taking quotes out of context. Indeed you seem to be proud of the fact that you are distorting this research by the use of contextomy. I wouldn't be, this is a clear case of POV pushing, and you have been constantly warned about this. It is not being clever to take quotes out of context, it is not being clever to try to imply some research supports a position when it is clear that the research actually supports a completely different conclusion, and it is not being clever to ignore the findings of the research in order to promote your personal beliefs. Alun 05:39, 8 September 2007 (UTC)The population groups in this example are quite distinct from one another: Europeans, sub-Saharan Africans, and East Asians. Many factors will further weaken the correlation between an individual’s phenotype and their geographic ancestry.... The typical frequencies of alleles that influence a phenotype are also relevant, as our results show that rare polymorphisms yield high values of v, CC, and CT, even when many such polymorphisms are studied. This implies that complex phenotypes influenced primarily by rare alleles may correspond poorly with population labels and other population-typical traits (in contrast to some Mendelian diseases). However, the typical frequencies of alleles responsible for common complex diseases remain unknown. A final complication arises when racial classifications are used as proxies for geographic ancestry. Although many concepts of race are correlated with geographic ancestry, the two are not interchangeable, and relying on racial classifications will reduce predictive power still further.
The fact that, given enough genetic data, individuals can be correctly assigned to their populations of origin is compatible with the observation that most human genetic variation is found within populations, not between them. It is also compatible with our finding that, even when the most distinct populations are considered and hundreds of loci are used, individuals are frequently more similar to members of other populations than to members of their own population. Thus, caution should be used when using geographic or genetic ancestry to make inferences about individual phenotypes.
Thus the answer to the question “How often is a pair of individuals from one population genetically more dissimilar than two individuals chosen from two different populations?” depends on the number of polymorphisms used to define that dissimilarity and the populations being compared. The answer, can be read from Figure 2. Given 10 loci, three distinct populations, and the full spectrum of polymorphisms (Figure 2E), the answer is 0.3, or nearly one-third of the time. With 100 loci, the answer is ~20% of the time and even using 1000 loci, 10%. However, if genetic similarity is measured over many thousands of loci, the answer becomes “never” when individuals are sampled from geographically separated populations.
Having arrived here from ANI, I took a look at the passage in dispute:
"When enough loci are considered, Europeans, East Asians, and sub-Saharan Africans always are more genetically similar to members of their own group than to those of the other groups; the overlap in genetic similarity between these groups is ~ 0%." [7]
The flaws of this passage are that 1) the second clause is very misleading 2) it is not attributed, but stated as a fact.
"Other geneticists however have shown that even when classification in such a way is possible it does not accurately reflect the clinality of global human genetic diversity and claim that classification of continuously sampled populations may be impossible." [8]
The flaws of this one is that 1) it misrepresents a (well-warranted) caveat as the central finding of the paper, which judging from what has been presented here, it is certainly not, but rather a caution against reckless construal of the central finding, 2) it falsely attributes (by footnote, as the in-text attribution is weasel worded) to Witherspoon et al. a conclusion that they mean to rebut:
In a similar vein, Romualdi et al. (2002) and Serre and Paabo (2004) have suggested that highly accurate classification of individuals from continuously sampled (and therefore closely related) populations may be impossible. However, those studies lacked the statistical power required to answer that question."
Proabivouac 08:08, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
So they are concuring generally with these papers, that their observation regarding continuous sampling is in a similar vein to these previous papers. Then they state that the previous studies lacked the statistical power to answer the question. They did not state that the question could not be answered, or that the conclusion of these previous papers was wrong. Indeed Witherspoon goes a long way to support this assertion. What neither Witherspoon nor the previous studies have done is to obtain samples that are continuously sampled. To claim that Witherspoon is attempting to rebut these papers that they obviously agree with is incorrect. Alun 10:19, 8 September 2007 (UTC)This is illustrated by the fact that ω and the classification error rates, CC and CT, all remain greater than zero when such populations are analyzed, despite the use of >10,000 polymorphisms (Table 1, microarray data set; Figure 2D). In a similar vein, Romualdi et al. (2002) and Serre and Pääbo (2004) have suggested that highly accurate classification of individuals from continuously sampled (and therefore closely related) populations may be impossible. However, those studies lacked the statistical power required to answer that question (see Rosenberg et al. 2005).
Proposal: When enough loci are considered, Europeans, East Asians, and sub-Saharan Africans always are more genetically similar to members of their own group than to those of the other groups according to Witherspoon et. al. (2007). MoritzB 08:56, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
and by Darwin and his coauthor Alfred Russel Wallace. This observation is not new and continues to be the most important consideration when discussing human variation, whether it is physical variation or genetic variation. Alun 10:19, 8 September 2007 (UTC)Anthropologists long ago discovered that humans’ physical traits vary gradually, with groups that are close geographic neighbors being more similar than groups that are geographically separated. This pattern of variation, known as clinal variation, is also observed for many alleles that vary from one human group to another. Another observation is that traits or alleles that vary from one group to another do not vary at the same rate. This pattern is referred to as nonconcordant variation. Because the variation of physical traits is clinal and nonconcordant, anthropologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries discovered that the more traits and the more human groups they measured, the fewer discrete differences they observed among races and the more categories they had to create to classify human beings. The number of races observed expanded to the 30s and 50s, and eventually anthropologists concluded that there were no discrete races (Marks, 2002). Twentieth and 21st century biomedical researchers have discovered this same feature when evaluating human variation at the level of alleles and allele frequencies. Nature has not created four or five distinct, nonoverlapping genetic groups of people. [9]
MoritzB 13:01, 8 September 2007 (UTC)We contrast two choices: sets of populations that have been relatively isolated from each other by geographic distance and barriers since the earliest migrations of modern humans out of Africa and sets that include populations that were founded more recently, are geographically closer to one another and therefore more likely to exchange migrants, or have recently experienced a large genetic influx from another population in the set. Sampling only from the more distinct populations yields lower -values, as expected. Figure 2, A, C, and E, shows the results of using only the three most distinct population groups (Europeans, East Asians, and sub-Saharan Africans). Figure 2, B and D, expands the samples used in Figure 2, A and C, to include recently founded and/or geographically intermediate populations (Indians in the insertions data set and New Guineans, South Asians, and Native Americans in the microarray data set) and “admixed” populations (i.e., those that have recently received many migrants from different populations, such as the African American and Hispano–Latino groups in the microarray data set). With just 175 loci, choosing to sample distinct populations vs. more closely related ones makes only a modest difference (insertions data set, compare Figure 2A to 2B; Table 1). The effect of population sampling becomes more pronounced when ≥1000 loci are available. In the microarray data set, drops to zero at 1000 loci if only distinct populations are sampled. With geographically intermediate and admixed populations added, however, reaches an asymptotic value of 3.1%, CC remains well above zero, and even CT does not reach zero (microarray data, Figure 2, C and D; Table 1).
This discussion is absurd. Witherspoon et. al. are talking about "populations," which are unequivocally not races or ethnic groups. Europeans do not constitute one population, Europe itself (and Africa and Asia) are divided into many populations. MoritzB, stop using the word group, which is imprecise, and use the word population, which is precise. Slrubenstein | Talk 11:12, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
"DISCUSSIONS of genetic differences between major human populations have long been dominated by two facts: (a) Such differences account for only a small fraction of variance in allele frequencies, but nonetheless (b) multilocus statistics assign most individuals to the correct population. This is widely understood to reflect the increased discriminatory power of multilocus statistics. Yet Bamshad et al. (2004) showed, using multilocus statistics and nearly 400 polymorphic loci, that (c) pairs of individuals from different populations are often more similar than pairs from the same population. If multilocus statistics are so powerful, then how are we to understand this finding?
All three of the claims listed above appear in disputes over the significance of human population variation and “race.” In particular, the American Anthropological Association (1997, p. 1) stated that “data also show that any two individuals within a particular population are as different genetically as any two people selected from any two populations in the world” (subsequently amended to “about as different”). Similarly, educational material distributed by the Human Genome Project (2001, p. 812) states that “two random individuals from any one group are almost as different [genetically] as any two random individuals from the entire world.” Previously, one might have judged these statements to be essentially correct for single-locus characters, but not for multilocus ones. However, the finding of Bamshad et al. (2004) suggests that an empirical investigation of these claims is warranted.
In what follows, we use several collections of loci genotyped in various human populations to examine the relationship between claims a, b, and c above. These data sets vary in the numbers of polymorphic loci genotyped, population sampling strategies, polymorphism ascertainment methods, and average allele frequencies. To assess claim c, we define ω as the frequency with which a pair of individuals from different populations is genetically more similar than a pair from the same population. We show that claim c, the observation of high ω, holds with small collections of loci. It holds even with hundreds of loci, especially if the populations sampled have not been isolated from each other for long. It breaks down, however, with data sets comprising thousands of loci genotyped in geographically distinct populations: In such cases, ω becomes zero. Classification methods similarly yield high error rates with few loci and almost no errors with thousands of loci. Unlike ω, however, classification statistics make use of aggregate properties of populations, so they can approach 100% accuracy with as few as 100 loci."
—Preceding unsigned comment added by MoritzB ( talk • contribs) 11:23, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
Correct: they confirm that the model developed by population geneticists, which makes populations their object of study and category of analysis, is scientifically valid and racial taxa are not scientifically valid. All this article does is demonstrates the robustness of the population concept and supports the calim made in the article that virtually all scientists have rejected as unscientific the concept of race in favor of population. So? Slrubenstein | Talk 11:43, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
You are mixing up geographically circumscribed/defined populations and race. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:33, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
However, we simply report what Witherspoon says and make no conclusions about subspecies. Proposal: "When enough loci are considered, Europeans, East Asians, and sub-Saharan Africans always are more genetically similar to members of their own group than to those of the other groups. according to Witherspoon et. al. (2007) When more recently founded, geographically intermediate or admixed populations like New Guineans, South Asians, Native Americans, African Americans and Hispano–Latinos are considered the size of the overlap in similarity is 3.7%." MoritzB 17:23, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
Your proposal is no better than before, it lacks any attempt at impartiality because it does not discuss Witherspoon's conclusions, it only gives a few results. It is inappropriate to present the results of a research paper without also presenting the conclusions the authors have drawn. It also presents these results in a misleading manner. What Witherspoon does is claim that clustering analyses mask a great deal of similarity between individuals from geographically distant regions and show that a great deal more loci are required to produce anything approaching differentiation at the level of the individual, even from geographically distant populations. When intermediate groups are sampled this amount of loci is insufficient, and even 10,000 loci are insufficient to produce a very good distinction. But intermediate groups do not represent continuous sampling. Witherspoon concludes that the only way to fully understand the extent of variaion and how human groups relate to each other is to sample continuously, something no one has ever done. He also speculates that attaining anything like discrete populations may well be impossible if sampling continuously were to be done. The discussion and the introduction of any research paper are the key sections, not the results section. The only reason to go to the results section is to present the data in a misleading or confusing way and to avoid the uncomfortable (for you) conclusion that human populations do not form discrete groups. Alun 18:30, 8 September 2007 (UTC)'Race' is a legitimate taxonomic concept that works for chimpanzees but does not apply to humans (at this time). The nonexistence of 'races' or subspecies in modern humans does not preclude substantial genetic variation that may be localized to regions or populations. More than 10 million single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) probably exist in the human genome. More than 5 million of these SNPs are expected to be common (minor allele frequency >10%). Most of these SNPs vary in frequency across human populations, and a large fraction of them are private or common in only a single population. Other genetic variants are also asymmetrically distributed. This makes forensic distinctions possible even within restricted regions such as Scandinavia. Anonymous human DNA samples will structure into groups that correspond to the divisions of the sampled populations or regions when large numbers of genetic markers are used. This has been demonstrated with autosomal microsatellites, which are the most rapidly evolving genetic variants. The DNA of an unknown individual from one of the sampled populations would probably be correctly linked to a population. Because this identification is possible does not mean that there is a level of differentiation equal to 'races'. The genetics of Homo sapiens shows gradients of differentiation. [12]
Thus the answer to the question "How often is a pair of individuals from one population genetically more dissimilar than two individuals chosen from two different populations?" depends on the number of polymorphisms used to define that dissimilarity and the populations being compared. The answer, ω, can be read from Figure 2. Given 10 loci, three distinct populations, and the full spectrum of polymorphisms (Figure 2E), the answer is ω~0.3, or nearly one-third of the time. With 100 loci, the answer is ~20% of the time and even using 1000 loci, ω ~10%. However, if genetic similarity is measured over many thousands of loci, the answer becomes ‘‘never’’ when individuals are sampled from geographically separated populations.
In what follows, we use several collections of loci genotyped in various human populations to examine the relationship between claims a, b, and c above. These data sets vary in the numbers of polymorphic loci genotyped, population sampling strategies, polymorphism ascertainment methods, and average allele frequencies. To assess claim c, we define ω as the frequency with which a pair of individuals from different populations is genetically more similar than a pair from the same population. We show that claim c, the observation of high ω, holds with small collections of loci. It holds even with hundreds of loci, especially if the populations sampled have not been isolated from each other for long. It breaks down, however, with data sets comprising thousands of loci genotyped in geographically distinct populations: In such cases, ω becomes zero.
...
The power of large numbers of common polymorphisms is most apparent in the microarray data set, comparing the European, East Asian, and sub-Saharan African population groups (Figure 2C). approaches zero (median 0.12%) with 1000 polymorphisms. This implies that, when enough loci are considered, individuals from these population groups will always be genetically most similar to members of their own group. In general, CC and CT decrease more rapidly and to lower values than ω
DISCUSSIONS of genetic differences between major human populations have long been dominated by two facts: (a) Such differences account for only a small fraction of variance in allele frequencies, but nonetheless (b) multilocus statistics assign most individuals to the correct population. This is widely understood to reflect the increased discriminatory power of multilocus statistics. Yet Bamshad et al. (2004) showed, using multilocus statistics and nearly 400 polymorphic loci, that (c) pairs of individuals from different populations are often more similar than pairs from the same population. If multilocus statistics are so powerful, then how are we to understand this finding?
All three of the claims listed above appear in disputes over the significance of human population variation and “race.” In particular, the American Anthropological Association (1997, p. 1) stated that “data also show that any two individuals within a particular population are as different genetically as any two people selected from any two populations in the world” (subsequently amended to “about as different”). Similarly, educational material distributed by the Human Genome Project (2001, p. 812) states that “two random individuals from any one group are almost as different [genetically] as any two random individuals from the entire world.” Previously, one might have judged these statements to be essentially correct for single-locus characters, but not for multilocus ones. However, the finding of Bamshad et al. (2004) suggests that an empirical investigation of these claims is warranted.
In what follows, we use several collections of loci genotyped in various human populations to examine the relationship between claims a, b, and c above. These data sets vary in the numbers of polymorphic loci genotyped, population sampling strategies, polymorphism ascertainment methods, and average allele frequencies. To assess claim c, we define ω as the frequency with which a pair of individuals from different populations is genetically more similar than a pair from the same population. We show that claim c, the observation of high ω, holds with small collections of loci. It holds even with hundreds of loci, especially if the populations sampled have not been isolated from each other for long. It breaks down, however, with data sets comprising thousands of loci genotyped in geographically distinct populations: In such cases, ω becomes zero. Classification methods similarly yield high error rates with few loci and almost no errors with thousands of loci. Unlike ω, however, classification statistics make use of aggregate properties of populations, so they can approach 100% accuracy with as few as 100 loci.
Witherspoon establishes that three major human populations are genetically completely distinct and there is no overlap between them except in studies which examine too few loci to reliably determine the population membership of an individual belonging to aforementioned three major human populations. MoritzB 12:11, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
A new compromise:
"When enough loci are considered, Europeans, East Asians, and sub-Saharan Africans always are more genetically similar to members of their own group than to those of the other groups. When more recently founded, geographically intermediate or admixed populations like New Guineans, South Asians, Native Americans, African Americans and Hispano–Latinos are considered the size of the overlap in similarity is 3.7%. Still, even when the most distinct populations are considered and hundreds of loci are used, individuals are frequently more similar to members of other populations than to members of their own population. Thus, enough genetic data is needed to assign individuals of European, East Asian or sub-Saharan African ancestry correctly to their populations of origin." Witherspoon et. al. (2007)
MoritzB
21:27, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
Thank you Rubenstein for introducing Mayr's opinion although it was different from your personal point of view. MoritzB 18:19, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
Let's examine this version and compare it to what Witherspoon actually says:
Conversely Witherspoon (2007) has shown that while it is possible to classify people into genetic clusters this does not resolve the observation that any two individuals from different populations are often genetically more similar to each ther than to two individuals from the same population:
Discussions of genetic differences between major human populations have long been dominated by two facts: (a) Such differences account for only a small fraction of variance in allele frequencies, but nonetheless (b) multilocus statistics assign most individuals to the correct population. This is widely understood to reflect the increased discriminatory power of multilocus statistics. Yet Bamshad et al. (2004) showed, using multilocus statistics and nearly 400 polymorphic loci, that (c) pairs of individuals from different populations are often more similar than pairs from the same population. If multilocus statistics are so powerful, then how are we to understand this finding? All three of the claims listed above appear in disputes over the significance of human population variation and "race"...The Human Genome Project (2001, p. 812) states that "two random individuals from any one group are almost as different [genetically] as any two random individuals from the entire world."[14]
Risch et al. (2002) state that "two Caucasians are more similar to each other genetically than a Caucasian and an Asian", but Bamshad et al (2004) used the same data set as Risch to show that Europeans are more similar to Asians 38% of the time than they are to other Europeans. Witherspoon et al. conclude that the answer to the question "How often is a pair of individuals from one population genetically more dissimilar than two individuals chosen from two different populations?" depends on the number of genes studied. With ten loci and three distinct populations the answer is about 30%, with 100 loci it is about 20% and with a thousand loci it is about 10%. For individuals from within a group to never be more different to each other than to members of a different groups, thousands of loci need to be studied form geographically separated populations. Witherspoon also concludes that if the world population were studied with it's many closely related groups varying clinally, the use of even 10,000 loci does not produce the answer "never". Witherspoon also makes the observation: "In a similar vein, Romualdi et al. (2002) and Serre and Paabo (2004) have suggested that highly accurate classification of individuals from continuously sampled (and there fore closely related) populations may be impossible."[14]
"Conversely Witherspoon (2007) has shown that while it is possible to classify people into genetic clusters this does not resolve the observation that any two individuals from different populations are often genetically more similar to each ther than to two individuals from the same population: Discussions of genetic differences between major human populations have long been dominated by two facts..."
Witherspoon really says that these major populations are completely distinct and two individuals from different major populations are never genetically more similar to each other than to two individuals from the same populations except in studies which fail to use enough loci to be reliable.
Witherspoon's actual results: "The power of large numbers of common polymorphisms is most apparent in the microarray data set, comparing the European, East Asian, and sub-Saharan African population groups (Figure 2C). approaches zero (median 0.12%) with 1000 polymorphisms. This implies that, when enough loci are considered, individuals from these population groups will always be genetically most similar to members of their own group. In general, CC and CT decrease more rapidly and to lower values than ω."
Discussion: Thus the answer to the question “How often is a pair of individuals from one population genetically more dissimilar than two individuals chosen from two different populations?” depends on the number of polymorphisms used to define that dissimilarity and the populations being compared. The answer, can be read from Figure 2. Given 10 loci, three distinct populations, and the full spectrum of polymorphisms (Figure 2E), the answer is 0.3, or nearly one-third of the time. With 100 loci, the answer is ~20% of the time and even using 1000 loci, 10%. However, if genetic similarity is measured over many thousands of loci, the answer becomes “never” when individuals are sampled from geographically separated populations. If genetic similarity is measured over many thousands of loci, the answer becomes “never” when individuals are sampled from geographically separated populations."
And conclusions:"In what follows, we use several collections of loci genotyped in various human populations to examine the relationship between claims a, b, and c above. These data sets vary in the numbers of polymorphic loci genotyped, population sampling strategies, polymorphism ascertainment methods, and average allele frequencies. To assess claim c, we define ω as the frequency with which a pair of individuals from different populations is genetically more similar than a pair from the same population. We show that claim c, the observation of high ω, holds with small collections of loci. It holds even with hundreds of loci, especially if the populations sampled have not been isolated from each other for long. It breaks down, however, with data sets comprising thousands of loci genotyped in geographically distinct populations: In such cases, ω becomes zero. Classification methods similarly yield high error rates with few loci and almost no errors with thousands of loci. Unlike ω, however, classification statistics make use of aggregate properties of populations, so they can approach 100% accuracy with as few as 100 loci."
"The fact that, given enough genetic data, individuals can be correctly assigned to their populations of origin is compatible with the observation that most human genetic variation is found within populations, not between them."
Discussions of genetic differences between major human populations have long been dominated by two facts: (a) Such differences account for only a small fraction of variance in allele frequencies, but nonetheless (b) multilocus statistics assign most individuals to the correct population. This is widely understood to reflect the increased discriminatory power of multilocus statistics. Yet Bamshad et al. (2004) showed, using multilocus statistics and nearly 400 polymorphic loci, that (c) pairs of individuals from different populations are often more similar than pairs from the same population. If multilocus statistics are so powerful, then how are we to understand this finding? All three of the claims listed above appear in disputes over the significance of human population variation and "race"...The Human Genome Project (2001, p. 812) states that "two random individuals from any one group are almost as different [genetically] as any two random individuals from the entire world."[14]
Here Witherspoon describes certain established views he intends to prove false. They are not Witherspoon's views although the article attributes them to Witherspoon.
He continues:
All three of the claims listed above appear in disputes over the significance of human population variation and “race.” In particular, the American Anthropological Association (1997, p. 1) stated that “data also show that any two individuals within a particular population are as different genetically as any two people selected from any two populations in the world” (subsequently amended to “about as different”). Similarly, educational material distributed by the Human Genome Project (2001, p. 812) states that “two random individuals from any one group are almost as different [genetically] as any two random individuals from the entire world.” Previously, one might have judged these statements to be essentially correct for single-locus characters, but not for multilocus ones. However, the finding of Bamshad et al. (2004) suggests that an empirical investigation of these claims is warranted. ...
In what follows, we use several collections of loci genotyped in various human populations to examine the relationship between claims a, b, and c above.
These data sets vary in the numbers of polymorphic loci genotyped, population sampling strategies, polymorphism ascertainment methods, and average allele frequencies. To assess claim c, we define ω as the frequency with which a pair of individuals from different populations is genetically more similar than a pair from the same population.
We show that claim c, the observation of high ω, holds with small collections of loci. It holds even with hundreds of loci, especially if the populations sampled have not been isolated from each other for long.
It breaks down, however, with data sets comprising thousands of loci genotyped in geographically distinct populations:
In such cases, ω becomes zero. Classification methods similarly yield high error rates with few loci and almost no errors with thousands of loci. Unlike ω, however, classification statistics make use of aggregate properties of populations, so they can approach 100% accuracy with as few as 100 loci.
"Risch et al. (2002) state that "two Caucasians are more similar to each other genetically than a Caucasian and an Asian", but Bamshad et al (2004) used the same data set as Risch to show that Europeans are more similar to Asians 38% of the time than they are to other Europeans. Witherspoon et al. conclude that the answer to the question "How often is a pair of individuals from one population genetically more dissimilar than two individuals chosen from two different populations?" depends on the number of genes studied.
Witherspoon also concludes that if the world population were studied with it's many closely related groups varying clinally, the use of even 10,000 loci does not produce the answer "never".
Witherspoon also makes the observation: "In a similar vein, Romualdi et al. (2002) and Serre and Paabo (2004) have suggested that highly accurate classification of individuals from continuously sampled (and there fore closely related) populations may be impossible."
This refers to the excellent observation Witherspoon makes: "On the other hand, if the entire world population were analyzed, the inclusion of many closely related and admixed populations would increase This is illustrated by the fact that and the classification error rates, CC and CT, all remain greater than zero when such populations are analyzed, despite the use of >10,000 polymorphisms."
Of course, when comparing any closely related and admixed populations like Germans and Englishmen ω >> 0. This is a trivial issue in the context of this article.
No anthropologist has ever claimed that such closely related and admixed populations don't have common racial elements. The question is whether the racial definitions of traditional physical anthropology (Negroid, Mongoloid, Caucasoid) are consistent with the findings of modern population genetics. Witherspoon conclusions regarding them are clear: the major populations of Europe, sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia form discrete genetic clusters. MoritzB 14:15, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1893020 MoritzB 17:08, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
In all honesty witherspoon presents nothing new. Using enough loci any two endogamous groups can be distinguished from each other, even if they are within the same race. Two groups living on separate islands after a several generations can be easily distinguished. Just as one can distinguish any two individuals with enough loci. That is the basis of DNA fingerprinting. You can use this technology to distinguish two families, or for paternity testing. It does not change anything. The fact is that people who live nearer to each other will in general be more related than those who live further away. With enough loci there would be no overlap. One could probably distinguish the chinese from the Japanese, or North Chinese from Southern chinese. Does that mean that these groups are all separate races, well if you believe Moritz. Nobody disputes that there is human variation, it exists or that europeans and africans and east asians will have different gene frequencies. But if we apply any standard for race, then we will find that there would be several races within the so called races. Muntuwandi 17:40, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
What piece of research would clarify and simplify this article? What is the question that needs answering? —Preceding unsigned comment added by David Witherspoon ( talk • contribs) 22:08, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
These long-winded passages on this talk page could be avoided and more beneficial work could be accomplished in other ways in Wikipedia if editors would recognize the fact that the strongest people on earth are able to make whatever claims about race that they please because the weak people cannot control what the strongest people say or do. SgtVelocicaptor 11:21, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
Let's not turn this into an edit war. Moritz seems to have the most reasonably worded position.
71.197.5.27 15:53, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
"The proposal to scrap the concept of race altogether is currently only one extreme in a range of views. It is certainly not shared by all anthropologists and is by no means the majority opinion of the public at large. It appears to be a conclusion reached more on the basis of political and philosophical creeds than on scientific arguments. Correspondingly, anthropologists who do hold this opinion often attempt to shout down their opponents rather than convince them by presentation of facts. Their favored method of argumentation is to label anybody who disagrees with them as racist. The public, however, seems unimpressed by their rhetoric."
"Where Do We Come From? The Molecular Evidence for Human Descent, 2002, p. 384"
I will add their comment. MoritzB 18:23, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
Isn't that kind of specious? Artificial selection and natural selection are apples and oranges. The dog and the wolf are classified in the same species; it's not surprising that there is little variability in dogs compared to humans, which do make up a species of their own. FilipeS ( talk) 19:57, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
I undid an edit with the commentDon't remove authentic anthropological plates from the relevant section section. That is vandalism. They are not. It is not. Cygnis insignis 23:01, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
Hi, I wanted to tell those who are knowledgeable in Anthropology to help out in the whole Race discussion. Please, if you know about Anthropology, do a little section on the four major races (Mongoloid, Caucasoid, Negroid and Australoid) and edit anything that suggest "Latino" being a RACE. So many folks are confused about what is a Race versus a Cultural/Linguistic group and they end up pouring all their confusion on Wiki. So let's try to do a nice discussion on the four races. Thanks. Prophetess mar ( talk) 07:02, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Latino is certainly not a 'race' as traditionally defined. But i think that proponents of the 'latin race' idea are not trying to argue inside the same definitions of race that you or knowledgeable anthropologists have. I think they are attempting to reinvent the definition of 'race', to move it towards meaning the 'human' race, rather than a section of it. Thus, a person who derives from every sub-racial group (Mongoloid, Caucasoid etc) is more 'human' than one who is 'purely' one sub-race. this new 'human' race is as far as can tell the ideal of the 'new latino'.
I don't know how scientific this idea is, but it sounds nice. Unassuming09 ( talk) 12:06, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
Jeeny deleted it and said that it was "POV-pushing" which is strange because most mainstream biologists use that concept in taxonomy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Race&diff=157493085&oldid=157486104 MoritzB 23:44, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
Phylogeography is the most accepted way to identify subspecies in modern taxonomy. It uses systematics and a range of evidence to support the existence of subspecies. It has greater validity over previous systems because it requires so much more evidence for subspecies to be recognised. Both genetic and morphological data are required, together with evidence for the subsepcies being geographically circumbscribed. The best definition I have come across goes:
On the other hand there is the Phylogenetic Species Concept, which is gaining popularity in taxonomy. In this concept the idea of subspeces does not exist at all, only species exist, but there would be many more species. All species would have to be geographically restricted though. In this concept all humans would be the same species, and no subspecific classifications would exist at all. I think we should change the section on "subspecies as clade" to a discussion about the phylogeographic subspecies concept. The main thing about the phylogeographic subspecies concept is that it is not a "one size fits all" concept, evidence that is relevant for some populations may not be for other populations, there are no hard and fast criteria, it recognises that species of organisms are all ecologically unique, and so we cannot use the same set of criteria for all classifications. hence discussion about what is the appropriate level of FST to identify differentiation are pointless, the level of differentiation both morphologically and genetically that is considered significant will depend on the environment and ecology of the populations being studied. Alun 06:54, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
Let us avoid using pov images in this article, there will just be an unnecessary distraction from the article. If users have expressed concern, they are better off not used. The insistence on using these photos is counterproductive. Muntuwandi 18:27, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
Strothra, I have several issues with them. There is no associated text to know what they are talking about and what is defunct about their classifcation system. They are just a collection of old photos, many taken stereotypically. I am not attacking editors, they made those edits themselves, with their own fingers. I am just letting you know of the editors that you are agreeing with Muntuwandi 19:06, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
Af for this argument: "They are not authenic anthropological plates on races, but compilations of ethnicities and a couple of races. "
I can tell you, "Menschenrassen" means "human races" in German. And please trust me on this, and don't accuse me of making up false translations, which you have done before. Funkynusayri 19:50, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
I am somewhat ambivalent about the disputed photographs. On the one hand they serve to give an historical view of how physical types were perceived, on the other hand they may be seen as little more than presenting a group of individual people as "examples" of a given population or ethnic group, but it is known that there is great variability within group for all human groups. As an example of old fashioned anthropology that concentrated on "physical types" I think these photos could be considered appropriate, though it should be noted in the text that the concept of "physical types" is not currently accepted anthropological orthodoxy, I also suggest that this should be clearly stated in the caption to the photographs, i.e. that this is an out of date perspective. I wonder how it is necessarily so different to the set of photographs that exists in the
Race in law enforcement section? On the other hand people complaining about Wikipedia being "censored" like Strothra does is inappropriate, Wikipedia works by consensus, if these is a consensus not to include these photographs then there is no point in complaining about "censorship". If an individual editor wants to include some point of view that is not supported by a consensus position, then they have to accept it, like it or not. Wikipedia is not censored in the sense that there are any rules banning any given point of view or image, on the other hand Wikipedia editors are entitled to omit any image or information if there is a consensus to do so.
Alun
04:45, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
That's wrong. There were several sub-races of the main races too which scientists believed in then, even in America, where you have countless divisions of Caucasoids, for example. Back then, when this German book was published, only "Caucasoids" had been studied enough, and had been given "scientific names" (Nordid, Mediterranid, so on), other peoples (or "races" then) were just named after their ethnicity. So please, people, ask about the context instead of coming up with wrong interpretations.
If you read the accompanying text in that German lexicon, the peoples on the images are referred to as sub-races of the three main-races, Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid.
To Wobble, the reason why we use a German image is because it's the only one we can use for free. There simply doesn't seem to have been released such books in English early enough for their copyright to have been expired, but the German plates are pretty much identical to what would had been in an English one, apart from the names (later, names like "Capoid" were invented, but not in the 30s). I've seen some in English, but they're all from much later. Funkynusayri 06:52, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
So far the only defense I see for including these images is that they illustrate a point of view. I have asked people to specify the point of view and have gotten only vague answers (like "mainstream") which I can only interpret to mean "I do not know." We need facts about the point of view. Who compiled the photos? Who wrote the article in which it appeared? Who edited the book in which it appeared? What do we know of its audience? How was the book marketed? Until we can properly identify the point of view it represents, i do not see how we can include it. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:37, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
And Rubenstein, the images represent what the scientific opinion was at the time, which the text is also about. And yet again, you simply have to click on the images, and you'll be lead to the lexicon itself through them. But just to be sure, here is a direct link: [16] Funkynusayri 12:16, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Anyhow, here's an introduction to the lexicon, in German: [17] "Meyers Blitz-Lexikon ist ein sehr kompaktes Nachschlagewerk in einem Band, das mehrmals zwischen etwa 1928 und 1940 erschien. Hier wird die Ausgabe von 1932 präsentiert. Dieses Buch ist als gemeinfrei zu betrachten, weil es keine angegebenen Autoren oder Illustratoren hat und vor mehr als 70 Jahren erschien.
Das digitalisierte Exemplar wurde in einem Antiquariat in Frankfurt während der Wikimania-Konferenz im August 2005 gekauft. Es kostete nur 12 Euro, ist aber sehr gut erhalten. Es hat an einigen Stellen Bleistiftanzeichungen, die nicht entfernt wurden, z.B. bei Österreich: "seit 1938 deutsch" — und danach wieder durchgestrichen!
Die 443 Seiten wurden von LA2 in September 2005 als 300 dpi JPEG Farbbilder mit hohem Kontrast eingescannt und auf Wikimedia Commons hochgeladen. Die Papierseiten sind 155 mm breit, die Bilder etwa 1830 Pixel. Der {{Vorlage:LA2-Blitz}}
präsentiert sie 700 Pixel breit, einer Bildschirmauflösung von etwa 120 dpi entsprechend. Um die Bilder hoch aufgelöst zu sehen muss man zweimal auf sie klicken. Der OCR-Text ist noch korrekturzulesen. Als Hilfe dafür gibt es zwei Kategorien: völlig und noch nicht völlig korrigierte Seiten. Die Textmasse ist etwa 2,8 Megabyte (ohne Markup; 6,4 Kilobyte pro Seite), die Bilder sind zusammen 700 Megabyte (1,6 Megabyte pro Seite).
Dieses Werk ist das erste, bei dem Wikisource mit Faksimile-Bildern kombiniert wurde. Das zweite ist The New Student's Reference Work, Chicago, 1914. Eine weitere Diskussion gibt es auf Meta, Digitizing books with MediaWiki."
As for public domain templates: [18] [19]
Funkynusayri 12:27, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
And how is it only an explanation of why it is fair use? In short, it is described as having several authors, and just being a lexicon. I can't answer who wrote it, because of this. Funkynusayri 12:50, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Apparently, Funkynusayri has not done any research. All he knows is, "The captions of the images simply state that they are examples of human races in a German lexicon from 1932." If this is all we know, here is the solution I suggest: we work on a new section called "Social Construction of Race in Germany" and really find out what the different views were and how this discourse emerged out of the nationalist project with its origins in Herder and perhaps Goethe and Von Humboldt, and how it developed through the 19th century and debats among Germans in the early 1900s. This would provide a menaingful context for the image. I realize it would require actual research, but this is an encyclopedia after all so how could anyone object to that? Slrubenstein | Talk 13:10, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Man, you really seem to resist any suggestion that requires research - an odd view for someone who wants to write an encyclopedia. Anyway, you are missing the point. What point of view will the image illutrate? I see no reason to illustrate Coon's image of races in this article, given that his views are marginal (maybe in the article on Coon). if you want to illustrate scientific debates about race in the 20th century, we would need a variety of contrasting images to illustrate the multiple points of view effectively. Slrubenstein | Talk 13:36, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
http://www.snpa.nordish.net/bilder/FischerLex1.jpg ~ http://www.snpa.nordish.net/bilder/FischerLex2.jpg
http://www.snpa.nordish.net/bilder/FischerLex3.jpg
http://www.snpa.nordish.net/bilder/FischerLex4.jpg
I reverted to what the page was like when it was protected, no more, no less. Of course when the page is unprotected I want to see the image removed for the obvious reasons. Slrubenstein | Talk 00:34, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
So we seem to have arrived at a situation where we are discussing whether we need consensus for removal or consensus for keeping the image. I'll give my opinion. Funkynusayri claims that these images have been on the page for some time and that it is strange that they should suddenly become a bone of contention. I'm not sure that this point is valid, these images have been on the page since the 20th of August, [20] and considering that this is sill a time of year when many people in the northern hemisphere are busy doing Summertime things I don't think one can claim that a couple or three weeks represents anything like a stable inclusion. On the other hand there seems to be no consensus one way or the other. Opinion seems about equally divided. Strothra's comments about censorship are totally irrelevant as I stated earlier, wikipedia works by consensus, it is illogical to claim that consensus doesn't overide censor because censorship is not the issue, consensus is the issue. It nowhere claims in the censor policy that a consensus not to include any image or text must violate CENSOR and therefore be included anyway, this is akin to claiming that anything, however irrelevant should be included because any objection to any inclusion is automatically censorship. Personally I suspect that it is best to keep the images out of the article until a better images can be included. I am relatively ambivalent about this, I don't think these images are particularly illuminating, except perhaps to illustrate the absurdity of the concept of "racial type", how can any single individual be considered "representative" of the whole gammut of local diversity seen in any human population? After all it is well known that diversity is greatest at the population level, however it is measured. But in this case the image should probably be used to illustrate the point about diversity in it's historical context, including a discussion about how environment affects morphology. This is a bad image because it comes from a "lexicon", which as far as I can tell just means encyclopaedic dictionary, these sorts of sources are not necessarily written by an expert, and may well be factually incorrect. In this case we do not even know what it is supposed to be illustrating not who actually wrote it. So some sort of primary source would be much better. On the other hand the utility of any such images is also important, what do they illustrate? How is it relevant? What is the political/historical/cultural background to the image? At the least I think we need to find a better example. Alun 06:31, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
Take a look at this image on the left. If only the text on the image was readable. And here's a mirror of an older revision of this very page, seems to have had a lot of maps: [21] Funkynusayri 18:02, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
And hey, why don't we just revert this piece of crap back to the version which was featured? Funkynusayri 18:36, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
The intro is a mess and Wobble just reverted the latest improved version I made. The current version is factually inaccurate (see discussion about Witherspoon's article) and far too technical for the general audience. MoritzB 10:23, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
which implies that the Serre and Pääbo (2004) supports this statement, he has used it as references for the statement after all, he states this above as well. But Serre and Pääbo (2004) state explicitly in their paperPopulations which exist at the boundaries of these continental divisions can be difficult to categorize simply.<ref name="serre">''Evidence for Gradients of Human Genetic Diversity Within and Among Continents.'' by David Serre and Svante Pääbo (2004) ''Genome Res.'' '''14''': 1679-1685 {{doi|10.1101/gr.2529604}}</ref><ref name="romauldi">''Patterns of Human Diversity, within and among Continents, Inferred from Biallelic DNA Polymorphisms'' by Chiara Romualdi, David Balding, Ivane S. Nasidze, Gregory Risch, Myles Robichaux, Stephen T. Sherry, Mark Stoneking, Mark A. Batzer, and Guido Barbujani1. ''Genome Res.'' (2002) '''12''': 602-612 {{doi|10.1101/gr.214902}}</ref><ref>http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=139378 Categorization of humans in biomedical research: genes, race and disease by Neil Risch, Esteban Burchard, Elad Ziv, and Hua Tang. Genome Biol. Volume 3(7); 2002</ref>
This is at best dishonest. The concept of "clustering" is stated and cited in the introduction, this is a controversial concept that has it's critics as well as it's supporters, in order to maintain neutrality we need to put both points of view. MoritzB was attempting to remove the alternative point of view, while citing Serre and Pääbo (2004) as a supporting reference for Risch's statement, but Serre and Pääbo's paper clearly does not support Risch's statement. The argument is really about whether human genetic diversity is better represented as a small island model or by isolation by distance. A small island model would support clustering, isolation by distance would support clinality. The current understanding of human genetic variation is incomplete and different analyses support different conclusions. We need to present both points of view, and not ignore those points of view that we disagree with. It certainly cannot be considered impartial to claim that a scientific paper supports a position that it categorically contradicts. Alun 16:46, 28 September 2007 (UTC)It is noteworthy that the discrete clusters described by Rosenberg et al. (2002) from analyzing more than one thousand individuals of the CEPH diversity panel might be caused by discontinuities in the sampling, because when samples that have equal numbers of individuals of each population are analyzed (Fig. 2), the inferred populations yielded by Structure do not match continents or geographical regions but represent theoretical “populations” in which all individuals show admixture to at least two such “populations.” Therefore, when the aim is to investigate genetic diversity on a worldwide scale, we recommend an approach in which individuals from as many localities as possible are sampled. Sampling schemes based on populations should only be used if the aim of the study is to unravel the history of these specific populations or their relationship with surrounding populations... It has recently been claimed that "the greatest genetic structure that exists in the human population occurs at the racial level" (Risch et al. 2002). Our results show that this is not the case, and we see no reason to assume that "races" represent any units of relevance for understanding human genetic history.
"...clustering analysis of 326 microsatellite markers can accurately place individuals in the USA into different groups.[12][13] Other geneticists, however, have shown that many more than 326 loci are required in order to show that individuals are always more similar to individuals in their own population group than to individuals in different population groups, even for three distinct populations" MoritzB 16:07, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
This page is huge, and this section is bloated; so, I'm proposing a split to Personalized genetic history and leave the section with a summary of the concept, but move the bulk of the detailed content onto its own page. Lemme know if you have any objections. Cheers =) -- slakr\ talk / 11:35, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
I am strongly opposed. This section is not about genealogical DNA tests. It is about discussions among anthropologists who see gnealogical tests as evidence of a new concept of "race" in the West, and is thus an essential part of this article. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:05, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
In an effort to trim the page back some, I removed what seemed like a philosophical blurb. Feel free to restore if it's crucial to the section, as I'm not an expert in this area. -- slakr\ talk / 11:49, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
I added a {{ mergeto}} for Race#Race_in_the_United_States to Race in the United States, as the former is absurdly long and needs to be summarized, with the detailed information being moved to Race in the United States. -- slakr\ talk / 11:59, 3 October 2007 (UTC)