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Africa | Asia | Europe | India | |
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Europe | 1.59 | 0.10 | 0.15 | |
India | 0.62 | 0.19 | 0.56 | 0.0 |
This article
Fine-scaled human genetic structure revealed by SNP microarrays,
[1], has some interesting results regarding the structure of global human genetic variation. It is based on the analysis of 250,000 SNPs. A few excerpts include,
The vast majority of SNPs are polymorphic ( MAF > 0) in multiple groups, with 81.2% of all loci being polymorphic in the four major continental groups, 89.2% polymorphic in at least three groups, and 93.0% polymorphic in at least two groups. Almost all of the SNPs that are polymorphic in only one group are unique to Africa (6.6%), while collectively only 0.39% of the SNPs are unique to any of the other three continental groups (Supplemental Table 2). There were no fixed differences between continental populations at any locus. Thus, these results support the emerging conclusion that most common genetic variation is shared among major human population groups.
In 1871, Charles Darwin noted in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex: ‘‘It may be doubted whether any character can be named which is distinctive of a race and is constant.’’ Modern studies of genetic variation, including this one, have supported Darwin’s observation, showing that most common variants are shared widely among human populations (Altshuler et al. 2005; Jakobsson et al. 2008). Our data confirm what Darwin believed: We found not a single SNP locus, out of nearly 250,000, at which a fixed difference would distinguish any pair of continental populations
What is interesting is that Europeans share a much higher level of unique SNPs with Africans than any other population in this study, the reasons for this were not stated in this study. Wapondaponda ( talk) 20:17, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
There has been a lot of discussion about the correlation between self-identified race/ancestry and genetics. Apparently a figure of 98% is being suggested. Once again some may be insinuating that this is the "silver bullet" that proves the existence of biological races. I believe this is a bit of a misunderstanding. Some of the forensic genetic databases are able to not just discern what "race" a person is, but they can determine what country a person is from, what city or even what village hamlet etc. At the indigenous level, it would become possible to distinguish a Swede from an Italian 100% of the time. In other words, the correlation between self-identified country of origin and genetics will approach 100% with more detailed genetic databases. Indeed the Japanese are already distinguishable from Chinese at the genomic level, does this mean they are two different races. DNA fingerprinting is able to uniquely identify an individual 100% of the time, does this mean that every individual is a distinct race. I believe this is why most of the mainstream studies prefer to view human genetic variation through the prism of geography rather than race, because "isolation by distance" is the main factor influencing genetic variation. Though genetics correlate with continental ancestry, it is just one of many ways at analyzing the data. If one wanted two clusters, then most likely the split would be between Africans and Non-African, and with just a few markers the correlation between self-identified Africanity and Non-Africanity would be close to 100%, but this doesn't make all non-Africans a single race. Wapondaponda ( talk) 20:17, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
This article includes many interesting factual statements from a variety of primary sources. Many of those statements could be put into a more illuminating context, and perhaps reworded for greater accuracy, by checking for reliable secondary sources on this topic. A good place to look for advice on what kind of sources would be reliable for an article like this is Wikipedia's guidelines on reliable sources for medically related articles. Genetics is a fast-moving field, and there are a lot of primary research findings that end up not being replicated. Relying on recent practitioners' handbooks and postgraduate textbooks is crucial for sorting through the cacophony of primary sources to know what the established results are in this discipline. A lot of editors have put a lot of good work into this article already, and meshing together the statements in the various sections into an overall encyclopedic whole will be a good improvement for Wikipedia. Let's look for up-to-date, authoritative sources and make sure that they are reflected in the article. -- WeijiBaikeBianji ( talk) 14:48, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
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help)The article has recently moved from race and genetics to Genetics and the decline of race. While this was done in good faith, I would suggest that the original name be restored, while we proceed with discussions concerning the article's future. There are some who would suggest that the "decline of race" is only one POV and that including the term in the title makes the title non-neutral. I take the perspective that race as a social construct does exist and that the article should discuss the relationship, or lack thereof, between the social construct and human genetics. What has declined are theories of race essentialism. The view that races are very distinct groups, with all members of a race conforming to an idealized racial type. Wapondaponda ( talk) 09:36, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
I must agree that this move was a rather crude example of pov-pushing by article title. While it is true that early (1970s, 1980s) genetics came up with the politically convenient result that "race is biologically meaningless". more recent, more advanced genetics (2000s) establish that it is perfectly possible to cast race in genetic terms. The question is, of course, "is it meaningful" or "is it relevant", which are semantic questions that cannot be answered objectively, but if you so wish to construct a genetic system of race, it is perfectly possible to do that. In fact, it is striking how the crude "races of man" maps of the late 19th century, based on measuring skulls and what have you, are reproduced with striking similarity by maps of genetic clustering. If you can really leave aside all the ideology involved, it seems to turn out that the notion of race (which is after all intuitive enough to be used in everyday conversation to describe an individual, never mind genetics) is not quite so meaningless as the 1970s made you believe. So my impression is that the whole story is much rather "genetics and the revival of race". -- dab (𒁳) 08:44, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
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help)When I explained my take of the situation, I did not suggest to introduce it into the article in these terms. I have see evidence for a "revival of race" in a number of recent (2000s) publications, but this is an emerging process and are hardly going to be any authoritative evaluations as long as it is ongoing. As for your claim that there is "diminishing importance" of race in biology, I find this dubious as by 1970 this importance must have been virtually zero so that it cannot conceivably diminish any further. -- dab (𒁳) 16:00, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
"Is race biologically meaningless? First, it is essential to point out that 'race' and 'ethnicity' are terms without generally agreed-upon definitions. Both terms carry complex connotations that reflect culture, history, socioeconomics and political status, as well as a variably important connection to ancestral geographic origins. Well-intentioned statements over the past few years, some coming from geneticists, might lead one to believe there is no connection whatsoever between self-identified race or ethnicity and the frequency of particular genetic variants1, 2. Increasing scientific evidence, however, indicates that genetic variation can be used to make a reasonably accurate prediction of geographic origins of an individual, at least if that individual's grandparents all came from the same part of the world3. As those ancestral origins in many cases have a correlation, albeit often imprecise, with self-identified race or ethnicity, it is not strictly true that race or ethnicity has no biological connection. It must be emphasized, however, that the connection is generally quite blurry because of multiple other nongenetic connotations of race, the lack of defined boundaries between populations and the fact that many individuals have ancestors from multiple regions of the world.
Race and health disparities What about health disparities? Are genetic differences between populations likely to have a role in health status, both in the US and around the world? In many instances, the causes of health disparities will have little to do with genetics, but rather derive from differences in culture, diet, socioeconomic status, access to health care, education, environmental exposures, social marginalization, discrimination, stress and other factors4. Yet it would be incorrect to say that genetics never has a role in health disparities. This is most obvious in the unequal distribution of disease-associated alleles for certain recessive disorders, such as sickle cell disease or Tay-Sachs disease, but has also been noted recently for certain nonmendelian disorders, such as Crohn disease5."
"Finding common ground
A vigorous debate has raged in the scientific and medical literature over the last few years about whether there is any value in using self-identified race or ethnicity to identify factors that contribute to health or disease7, 8. Proponents of maintaining such identifiers argue that even if the genetic component of health disparities is small, self-identified race or ethnicity is also a useful proxy for other correlated nongenetic variables, and to lose the opportunity to explore these would be doing a disservice to the public. Detractors argue that race and ethnicity are such flawed concepts that the persistent use of such descriptors prolongs the delay in seeking real causes and lends more scientific validity to the race-health connection than it deserves.
After reviewing these arguments and listening to the debate during the meeting at Howard University, one could conclude that both points are correct. The relationship between self-identified race or ethnicity and disease risk can be depicted as a series of surrogate relationships (Fig. 1). On the nongenetic side of this diagram, race carries with it certain social, cultural, educational and economic variables, all of which can influence disease risk. On the genetic side of the diagram, race is an imperfect surrogate for ancestral geographic origin, which in turn is a surrogate for genetic variation across an individual's genome. Likewise, genome-wide variation correlates, albeit with far-from-perfect accuracy, with variation at specific loci associated with disease. Those variants interact with multiple environmental variables, with the ultimate outcome being health or disease."
"What additional research is needed? The recent National Human Genome Research Institute's "Vision for the Future of Genomics Research"9 outlined a bold agenda for the future, including a number of compelling research opportunities. The meeting at Howard University underscored the importance of additional research in certain crucial areas:
(i) Without discounting self-identified race or ethnicity as a variable correlated with health, we must strive to move beyond these weak surrogate relationships and get to the root causes of health and disease, be they genetic, environmental or both.
(ii) To determine accurate risk factors for disease, we need to carry out well-designed, large-scale studies in multiple populations. Such studies must be equally rigorous in their collection of genetic and environmental data. If only genetic factors are considered, only genetic factors will be discovered.
(iii) To validate quantitative conclusions about genes, environment and their interactions in health and disease for multiple groups, long-term, longitudinal prospective cohort studies, as well as carefully designed case-control studies, will be needed10.
(iv) We must continue to support efforts to define the nature of human variation across the world, focused primarily on medical goals. The International Human Haplotype Map Project11 will open a new window into human variation and generate a powerful tool for discovering disease associations, but the project will provide a resource, not all of the answers.
(v) We need more anthropological, sociological and psychological research into how individuals and cultures conceive and internalize concepts of race and ethnicity.
(vi) We must assess how the scientific community uses the concepts of race and ethnicity and attempt to remedy situations in which the use of such concepts is misleading or counterproductive.
(vii) We need to formulate clear, scientifically accurate messages to educate researchers, health-care professionals and the general public on the connections among race, ethnicity, genetics and health.
Conclusion The individuals attending the meeting at Howard University represented a group of highly informed and sophisticated thinkers. Many participants had spent more than a decade trying to untangle these complicated concepts. A substantial degree of consensus was achieved regarding what we currently know, but it was impossible to escape the fact that substantial gaps in our current knowledge remain. Therefore, the research and the conversation must continue.
In that vein, the National Human Genome Research Institute convened a Roundtable on Race, Ethnicity, and Genetics on 8−10 March 2004, which was attended by a wide range of thought leaders in genetics, anthropology, sociology, history, law and medicine. A report of that meeting is being prepared for publication. The National Human Genome Research Institute is also sponsoring a consortium of funded investigators, known as the Genetic Variation Consortium ( http://www.genome.gov/10001551), which is striving to address many of these unanswered questions.
Much remains to be done, but the meeting at Howard University set the stage for a new era of interdisciplinary inquiry into the challenging topic of race and genetics, an era characterized by openness, freedom of scientific inquiry, an appreciation of history and a respect for differing points of views. It would be naive to portray these early steps as a breakthrough, but the committed efforts of the band of scholars and thinkers involved in these discussions are a good start in that direction." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Maunus ( talk • contribs)
can you just link to the text, Maunus? Ideally saying what it is you want to point out? Copy-paste dumps of text are both cluttering talkpages and violating the authors' copyright. I don't see how any of the above is relevant beyond pointing out that "it's complicated, and people have disagreed with one another". -- dab (𒁳) 16:11, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
"The concepts of race and ethnicity often are highly controversial topics, and the use of supposed racial characteristics in differentiating between human populations has been strongly censured. At the same time, genomic microarray studies have convincingly demonstrated signifi cant differences between major human populations living in different parts of the world, with common genetic variants playing an important role in inter-ethnic gene expression [86] . However, microarray studies also have shown that 93–95% of the total genetic variation was intrapopulation rather than interpopulation in origin [75] . While the proportionally minor genetic differences between populations and the attendant race/ethnicity/ ancestry controversy are widely discussed and argued, an obvious and potentially more signifi cant question arises with respect to the origins and causes of the very high level of intra-population genetic variation. How and why did this variation arise, how and why is it maintained, and what, if any, are the consequences in terms of biological fi tness, and more especially genetic disease? Throughout recorded human history, marriage between a male and female has been the predominant institution within which procreation occurred and genes were transmitted. Therefore a key initial step in investigating intra- and inter-population genetic differences is to examine how and why marriage partners are chosen in different societies. Virtually all traditional societies are divided into long-established communities, with limited inter-community marriage. Indeed, genome-based association studies conducted in industrialized Western societies have revealed similar, if less pronounced sub-divisions, and even in countries with large immigrant communities, such as the USA, Canada and Australia, recent arrivals typically marry within their own ethnic and/or religious community during the fi rst and second post-migration generations. Although offering strong social advantages, this tradi tion has important genetic implications, since it is probable that couples from the same national, ethnic or religious sub-community will have a signifi cant proportion of their genes in common, and therefore that their progeny are more likely to be homozygous for a detrimental recessive disorder [14] ."
"Skin color in mammals is infl uenced by a number of genes [65] and differences in skin color can therefore be due to various genetic changes. It has been known for some time that the gene MC1R infl uences both hair and skin color and is under negative selection for full activity in Africa, whereas a number of loss-of-function mutations were found in Europeans at a high frequency, due to either loss of constraint or to positive selection for loss-of-function [116] . A stronger case for positive selection for light skin color in Europeans was made for a gene called SLC24A5. Initially found to be locally selected in humans in a whole genome screen 36] , its function was at that time unclear. However, the same gene was later identifi ed as a key pigmentation gene in zebra fi sh, and analyses of human populations have shown that it accounts for about a third of skin color variation between Europeans and West Africans [88] . Moreover, this gene shows signals of recent positive selection in Europeans, supporting the hypothesis that light skin color was indeed selected for in Europe."
"Most studies of human population genetics begin by citing a seminal 1972 paper by Richard Lewontin bearing the title of this subsection [29] . Given the central role this work has played in our fi eld, we will begin by discussing it briefl y and return to its conclusions throughout the chapter. In this paper, Lewontin summarized patterns of variation across 17 polymorphic human loci (including classical blood groups such as ABO and M/N as well as enzymes which exhibit electrophoretic variation) genotyped in individuals across classically defi ned “races” (Caucasian, African, Mongoloid, South Asian Aborigines, Amerinds, Oceanians, Australian Aborigines [29] ). A key conclusion of the paper is that 85.4% of the total genetic variation observed occurred within each group. That is, he reported that the vast majority of genetic differences are found within populations rather than between them. In this paper and his book The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change [30] , Lewontin concluded that genetic variation, therefore, provided no basis for human racial classifi cations. Lewontin’s argument is an important one, and separates studying the geographic distribution of genetic variation in humans from searching for a biological basis to racial classifi cation. His fi nding has been reproduced in study after study up through the present: two random individuals from any one group (which could be a continent or even a local population) are almost as different as any two random individuals from the entire world (see proportion of variation within populations in Table 20.1 and [20] ). An important point to realize is that Lewontin’s calculation (and later work that confi rms his fi nding) are based on the F -statistics introduced in Sect. 20.2.1 (seefor a discussion) averaged across single genetic loci. While it is an undeniable mathematical fact that the amount of genetic variation observed within groups is much larger than the differences among groups, this does not mean that genetic data do not contain discernable information regarding genetic ancestry. In fact, we will see that minute differences in allele frequencies across loci when compounded across the whole of the genome actually contain a great deal of information regarding ancestry. Given current technology, for example, it is feasible to accurately identify individuals from populations that differ by as little as 1% in F ST if enough markers are genotyped. (See discussion below for a detailed treatment of the subject.) It is also important to note that when one looks at correlations in allelic variation across loci, self-identifi ed populations and populations inferred for human subjects using genetic data correspond closely"
"Finally, some studies have led to the provocative claim that local adaptive selection also affected genes infl uencing brain development [42, 98] . The authors studied two genes known to infl uence brain size and to have been under positive selection during human evolution, the microcephalin gene (MCPH1; [42] ) and the ASPM gene (abnormal spindle-like microcephaly associated; [98] ). For both genes, they found alleles that showed strong evidence of having been under recent positive selection, such as extended haplotype homozygosity. Intriguingly, these haplotypes are not fi xed in the human population and their frequency differs between regions from 0 to 60% for ASPM and from 3.3 to 100% for MCPH1. Additional analyses suggest that the selected variant of MCPH1 arose only about 37,000 years ago in the human population [42] and that of ASPM even more recently, i.e., about 5,800 years ago [98] . Whether these alleles confer any functional differences and which evolutionary forces have been driving their increase in frequency are so far unanswered questions. However, a recent study found no association between either of the supposedly selected variants and neither brain size nor measures of cognitive performance, calling into question the initial interpretation that the two genes have been selected for brain-related effects [139] . Yet the MCPH1 story contains another interesting twist. Although the presumably selected haplotypes have a coalescent age of only 37,000 years, their divergence to the nonselected haplotypes dates back as early as 1.1 million years [43] . Applying simulations to obtain data similar to the ones observed, Evans and colleagues concluded that the best explanation for the observed pattern is admixture from an archaic hominid population such as th Neanderthals. However, whether this is true and modern humans thus may have benefi ted from genetic contributions of archaic hominids needs to be tested in further studies."
"Human evolution was clearly a dynamic process and the current human population is the result of numerous migrations and population size changes, as shown above. So, the question of how we are to view modern human genetic diversity remains open. As noted before, humans carry relatively little genetic diversity compared with their closest relatives, the great apes, and all modern humans outside Africa share a recent African origin, so that we all seem to be Africans, either living on that continent or in recent exile” [107] . What is a matter of debate is how much structure the modern human gene pool contains. In 2002 Rosenberg and colleagues [119] argued that given a suffi cient number of markers, humans can be placed into clusters that correspond to a geographical origin, implying – albeit most probably inadvertently – that major genetic differences exist between continental groups such as Africans, Asians, and Europeans. This conclusion has been contested (e.g., [131] ) with the argument that the result of Rosenber et al. [119] was an artifact of the study design, and human genetic diversity is best explained by a clinal model of isolation by distance, without any major jumps in genetic distance over short geographical distances. Thus, rather than being made up of several distinct human groups that are genetically well separated, human genetic diversity changes continuously, with humans living in geographical proximity also being more closely related genetically and humans living at greater geographical distance also being genetically more different. This later view has been confi rmed by additional studies that detected a strong signal for isolation by distance in both the data set of Rosenberg et al. [113] and in other data sets [30] . However, expanding their data set, Rosenberg and colleagues reaffi rmed that human populations indeed cluster by geographical origin [120] . At the same time, they do fi nd a pattern of isolation by distance, with genetic distance generally increasing with geographical distance. The reason why they nevertheless detect clusters lies in the fact that small jumps in genetic distances occur across short distance of geographical barriers. Thus, the clusters are real but they explain only a small proportion of the genetic differences between humans, a result also seen in other data sets. For example, in a compilation of about 1 million SNPs most are shared between Africans, Europeans, and Asians and only a very few represent fi xed differences between the continental groups. So despite some phenotypically obvious differences between human populations, such as skin color, across the whole genome there is very little genetic differentiation between human populations. Given that modern humans originated in Africa only about 200,000 years ago and humans are a notoriously migratory species, it is not surprising that we are all very close relatives."
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help)"the clusters are real but they explain only a small proportion of the genetic differences" -- I think the basic misunderstanding is the idea that race is somehow expected to explain a significant or "major" portion of human genetic variability. It clearly is not, everyone agrees on that. It explains a small portion, Lewontin's famous 8% I suppose, but this portion is therefore significant for the purposes of the notion of "race" if for nothing else. I really feel that this is an artificial "controversy". If you are interested in race, you focus on these 8%. If you are not interested in race, you do not.
To my mind, saying that you may not focus on these clusters because they "only" account for a small portion of variability is about as pointless as saying that you may not focus on human genetic variability in the first place because it "only" concerns 0.1% of the genome. If you want to believe that all humans are the same, you point to the 99.9% genetic identity. If you are interested in how humans are different from one another after all, you focus on the 0.1%. -- dab (𒁳) 16:05, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
Ah, I see rediscovered the wheel (Vogel & Motulsky, 4th ed). I agree with User:Dbachmann's comment on 16:34, 17 September 2010 (UTC) that a lot of the discourse in this area is setting up strawmen by using vague terminology and concepts. The arguments are less on the science findings, and more philosophical these days. It's part of a wider discussion "Are species real?" in the philosophy of biology. I'll add some references to the last/new section at the bottom of this talk page. Tijfo098 ( talk) 13:13, 16 October 2010 (UTC)
Here is an interesting discussion from 2007: http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/01/race-current-consensus.php#. -- Maklinovich ( talk) 18:49, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
Maunus, please explain your deletions. I have already reported you to AE case for these deletions so some justification is likely appreciated. Miradre ( talk) 16:03, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
You have written a really strange intro.
I see some new editors are surfing by calling for better sourcing and more specificity in the article. I'll do my part here to recommend the source list most relevant to this article that I keep in user space to share with all Wikipedians. All of you are very welcome to suggest new sources, and I hope to put a big push on this weekend to log into that source list sources that I have already had in my office for weeks or even months. The current secondary sources have done an interesting job of forging consensus from the various primary research studies of the last decade, and the article here should reflect the latest consensus in the professional literature. -- WeijiBaikeBianji ( talk) 03:08, 16 October 2010 (UTC)
Well, consensus is still not universal. A good and up to date source for the (consensus in) genetics is:
Some sociologists are not convinced by the latest developments in genetics. For example,
It's best we resolve this on sub-articles first, particularly Lewontin's Fallacy, before updating stuff here. Tijfo098 ( talk) 12:51, 16 October 2010 (UTC)
Per discussion in above sections, some references about the philosophical interpretations of the science here, and in general whether phylogenetic etc. differences can classify any biological entities (and this widening isn't WP:OR or too far fetched, it's the very first question asked in the first of the following references):
(I have the full text of all the above except for the SAGE handbook, which is sufficiently readable on Google books's limited preview.) Tijfo098 ( talk) 13:36, 16 October 2010 (UTC)
The lede is so poor, it is both incomprehensible and incorrect. For example: "Today it is possible to determine, by genetic analysis, from which ancestral geographic regions a person originates and to what degree from each region." A person originates where the individual was born; genetic analysis is used to show the ancient origin of ancestors in a general way. There is too much assumption here of precision that does not exist in the analyses. Parkwells ( talk) 15:21, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
I think that the complete opposite being is probably more accurate. Oceania, and secondly Eurasia, are the most divergent continents. If the original population was African (and the current consensus is that it was), albeit we could still say that Africans diverged more from then on, that's not true, as far as I know. The simple fact that the largest population remained there made so that the continent was the most genetically preserved due to the larger population size (nearer to Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium), whereas populations that left Africa were just a small sample from this population and thus inherently genetically divergent (founder effect). Subsequent splits were again a subsample and thus yet more divergent. That's why genetic variation is progressively more "scarce" as you walk away from Africa (American aboriginals having almost a single blood type, for example). If due to large population size, more mutations happened and became widely spread in Africa, that perhaps could achieve the effect of Africa being the most divergent, I guess. I think it's not really far off actually, as Africans can be roughly divided in two major groups that diverged from one another quite a lot if I'm not mistaken, people from other continents being more close to one or the other (to both?) than they're from each other. But if that's really the case, it would be better to be more clearly stated that divergence within Africa is the largest, rather than Africa diverging as a whole from isolated sub populations that somehow (not known to occur at all, AFAIK) remain in relative stasis. -- 189.18.184.201 ( talk) 20:39, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
Can someone formally request that Maunus be banned from editing topics related to race? I'm new to wikipedia so I'm not sure how that works. His lack of civility here warrants a ban in and of itself IMO 66.68.87.193 ( talk) 01:27, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
You missed a number of critiques of Lewontin's argument. For example, Long (2010):
Earlier in this decade, Rick Kittles and I took an unusually critical look at FST (Long and Kittles 2003). We analyzed a unique data set composed of short tandem repeat (STR) allele frequencies for eight loci genotyped in both humans and chimpanzees (Deka et al. 1995). These data made it possible to see how FST played out when no one could dispute taxonomic and genetic significance. The answer surprised us. FST was pretty close to the canonical 0.15 shown so many times for human populations. In our analysis, FST was 0.12 for humans, but for humans and chimpanzees together, FST rose only to 0.18. Indeed, we found one locus, D13S122, where the size range of human and chimpanzee alleles hardly overlapped, yet FST equaled 0.15 ...Richard Lewontin’s dismissal of race may not have led to the wide popularity of FST in population biology, but it did galvanize anthropology. Lewontin confronted race by trying to show that classical racial groupings accounted for too little of the total diversity to be of any value. In retrospect, it is odd that Lewontin felt that 15% of variation among groups is small and even odder that others have concurred. Sewall Wright, the inventor of FST , believed the opposite. To Wright, FST 0.05 or even less indicates considerable differences, and FST = 0.15 reflects moderately great differences (Wright 1951, 1978). Low values of FST reflect large gene frequency differences in replicate populations (Figure 2). In other words, these seemingly small values of FST permit allele frequencies to drift widely among populations. Unfortunately, Lewontin did not contest the larger issue, which is whether or not races are a good way to portray the pattern of gene frequency differences between populations. (Long, 2010. Update to Long and Kittles’s “Human Genetic Diversity and the Nonexistence of Biological Races”(2003): Fixation on an Index)
(Long is cited by a number of researches who research "race medicine." So he is not an irrelevant player in this debate.)
There really are two issues when it comes to Lewontin's argument -- and I think it might be worthwhile to point this out -- or subdivide the section accordingly: 1) Are taxonomic groups identifiable 2) Is there a significant amount of genetic diversity between populations which could code for socially significant differences
(Lewontin puts these together, saying: racial classifications are "“virtually of no genetic or taxonomic significance.”)
These issues are logically independent. And both points have been critiqued and elaborated on idependently. For examples, Edwards mostly deals with (a) as does Alan Templeton. Long, above, deals with (b) -- and seems to make a case against (a). The section would be more coherent if this point was clarified. (i.e. "Can taxonomic groups be delineated?" versus "Is there socially significant genetic diversity between geographic populations")-- Hippofrank ( talk) 18:22, 8 October 2011 (UTC)Hippofrank
I find the meaning to be unclear. FeatherPluma ( talk) 15:57, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
reading this for the first time, as a lay person, it seems the lead is not the best, it should summarise the entire body of text, it doesn't, and the first sentence ("The relationship between race and genetics has relevance for the ongoing controversies regarding race") does not tell us about the subject title, instead it tells us that the subject is relevant to a different topic, one entitled "controversies regarding race." Surely there's a better way to approach this, so that the lead functions in an informative and encyclopaedic fashion? -- Semitransgenic ( talk) 17:40, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
I protected the article for three days due to this content dispute. Would a visit to WP:DRN help? causa sui ( talk) 18:46, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
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I've removed several sections that do not discuss the topic of race and genetics in a meaningful or reliable manner. I did leave the race and medicine section despite the fact that this is not a discussion about race and genetics, but a discussion about genetics and medicine, where racial correlates are used as a proxy for genetics. I'm not sure that it really belongs here though, as the topic of racial/genetic correlation is discussed extensively in the text and the main article is already linked to in the sidebar. aprock ( talk) 09:56, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
If that section discusses how "racial correlates are used as a proxy for genetics" then it is clearly about.... race and genetics. I don't see the problem.
The result of the move request was: Not Moved Mike Cline ( talk) 15:04, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
Race and genetics →
Human population genetics – Article content is primarily about human population genetics, and not about race. The sections which discuss race are reviewed below. For the most part, the sources tend to focus on population genetics, referring to race as a correlate with clustering techniques applied to genetic data.
aprock (
talk)
17:00, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
Visible traits, proteins, and genes studied: This section discusses race outside the rubric of genetics, and is presumably included to provide some background.
Race and population genetic structure: This section is an extended discussion of whether or not race can be predicted using genetic markers. I think this is an important topic, and one which deserves discussion in the article. However, this discussion clearly falls out of recent advances in population genetics, which in turn has necessitated a rethinking of whether classical definition of race have any valid meaning. In particular, the discussion makes it clear that insomuch as races "exist" it is to the extent that they mirror the genetics of geographically isolated humans. That is, it's the population genetics which are redefining race.
Race and medicine: only mentions genetics as a correlate of race.
Based on the actual content in the article, and the strong emphasis on population genetics, I think a page move which matches the title with the article content only makes sense. aprock ( talk) 17:58, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
ArtifexMayhem removed Templeton's position from the article stating that it's misinterpreted although hasn't stated in what way. Here is the disputed text:
Alan Templeton (2003) stated that although small genetic differences do exist among human populations that can have evolutionary and genetic significance, they do not define races under any of the definitions currently applied to nonhuman organisms.
Now here is Templeton's exact quote:
"Although human populations do not define races under any of the definitions currently applied to nonhuman organisms, genetic differences do exist among human populations as noted above and quantified by the Fst value of about .15 - a small value but one greater than zero. These modest genetic differences can still have evolutionary and genetic significance. Therefore, the evolutionary significance of genetic differentiation among human populations (not races, since none exist) is a legitimate issue."
Please show where the misinterpretation is. And again, the solution should be to adjust the text rather than completely remove relevant cited material. BlackHades ( talk) 03:24, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
The word race is rarely used in the modern, nonhuman evolutionary literature because its meaning is so ambiguous. When it is used, it is generally as a synonym for subspecies(Futuyma 1986: 107–9), but this concept also has no precise definition. All concepts of a subspecies are based on genetic differences between populations living in different geographic areas; but these differences alone are insufficient to define a subspecies because genetic surveys usually reveal so much variation that some combination of characters distinguishes virtually every population from all others (Futuyma 1986). As a consequence, if genetic differentiation alone were required to recognize a subspecies or race, then every local population would become a race, making the category of race superfluous. — ( Templeton 2003, pg.237)
[T]o prevent the term subspecies from being a synonym for local population, it is necessary to add further conditions beyond mere genetic differentiation among populations in order to recognize a race or subspecies. Three main additional criteria are applied: (1) a quantitative threshold of genetic differentiation among populations, (2) a genetic differentiation marking the qualitative state of being an isolate or distinct evolutionary lineage, and (3) genetic differentiation for special "racial" traits. — ( Templeton 2003, pg.237)
The genetic data are consistently and strongly informative about human races. Humans show only modest levels of differentiation among populations when compared to other large-bodied mammals (Templeton 1998a), and this level of differentiation is well below the usual threshold used to identify subspecies (races) in nonhuman species. Hence, human races do not exist under the concept of a subspecies defined by a threshold level of genetic differentiation. A more modern definition of race designates it as a distinct evolutionary lineage within a species. The genetic evidence strongly rejects the existence of distinct evolutionary lineages within humans. The widespread representation of human "races" as branches on an intraspecific population tree is genetically indefensible and biologically misleading, even when the ancestral node is presented as dating to one hundred thousand years ago. Attempts to salvage the idea of human races as evolutionary lineages by presuming that greater racial purity existed in the past and was followed by recent admixture events fail the test. Instead, all the genetic evidence shows that there never was a split, or separation of races, between Africans and Eurasians as postulated by the out-of-Africa replacement hypothesis. Recent human evolution has been characterized by both population range expansions and recurrent genetic interchange among populations. There has been no split between any of the major geographic populations of humanity, with the temporary exception of the split between Native American and Old World populations. — ( Templeton 2003, pg.252)
This is a friendly reminder to involved parties that there is a current Dispute Resolution Noticeboard case still awaiting comments and replies. If this dispute has been resolved to the satisfaction of the filing editor and all involved parties, please take a moment to add a note about this at the discussion so that a volunteer may close the case as "Resolved". If the dispute is still ongoing, please add your input. aprock ( talk) 23:22, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
The Dawkin's quote is an example of quote mining, and has been taken out of context. The quote comes from the chapter "The Grasshopper's Tale" from the book "The Ancestor's Tale". From the book:
The Grasshopper's Tale is about races and species, about the difficulty in defining both, and what all this has to say about human races.
The chapter then goes on to make the case that races are not a genetically useful term.
Whatever we may think as observers of superficial appearances, the human species today is, to a geneticist, especially uniform. Taking such genetic variation as the human population does possess, we can measure the fraction that is associated with the regional groupings we call races. And it turns out to be a small percentage of the total: between 6 and 15 percent depending on how you measure it - much smaller than in many other species where races have been distinguished. Geneticists conclude, therefore, that race is not a very important aspect of a person.
And concludes with the genetic significance of superficial traits:
Inter-observer agreement suggest that racial classification is not totally uninformative, but what does it inform about? About no more than the characterisics use by the observers when they agree: things like eye shape and hair curliness - nothing more unless we are given further reasons to believe it.
The paragraph from which the out of context quote is mined starts with the observation that most human variation occurs within a race, not between races. The quote itself is used to refute the very fine point that while races are not genetically important, their taxonomic significance is non-zero. The specific statement being refuted here is that race is of 'virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance.' Dawkins is saying that while race is not genetically meaningful, it still has some taxonomic utility. aprock ( talk) 10:39, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
If the experiment were to be done, I do not think Lewontin would expect any other result than the one I have predicted. Yet an opposite prediction would seem to follow from his statement that racial classification has virtually no taxonomic or genetic significance. If there is no taxonomic or genetic significance, the only other way to get a high inter-observer correlation would be a worldwide similarity in cultural bias, and I do not think Lewontin would want to predict that either. In short, I think Edwards is right and Lewontin, not for the first time, wrong. Lewontin did his sums right, of course: he is a brilliant mathematical geneticist. The proportion of the total variation in the human species that falls into the racial partition of variation is, indeed, low. But because the between-race variation, however low a percentage of the total variation, is correlated, it is informative in ways that could surely be demonstrated by measuring the inter-observer concordance of judgement.
We can all happily agree that human racial classification is of no social value and is positively destructive of social and human relations. That is one reason why I object to ticking boxes in forms and why I object to positive discrimination in job selection. But that doesn't mean that race is of ‘virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance’. This is Edwards's point, and he reasons as follows. However small the racial partition of the total variation may be, if such racial characteristics as there are are highly correlated with other racial characteristics, they are by definition informative, and therefore of taxonomic significance.
Dawkins clearly agrees with Edwards. No argument to the contrary has been presented, so I think the original content should be restored. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.61.165.78 ( talk) 23:53, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
"In short, I think Edwards is right and Lewontin, not for the first time, wrong."--Richard Dawkins.
"I was concerned to disprove Lewontin's assertion that there are no racial distinctions in the human species."--Richard Dawkins
"But Lewontin is wrong to suggest that therefore 'race' has no taxonomic meaning because, as Edwards points out, such variation as there is between races is correlated. I gave a simple demonstration of the validity of the concept of race in The Ancestor's Tale."--Richard Dawkins
"OK, but all I need in order to disprove Lewontin, is to show that there are SOME races that are unequivocally distinguishable."--Richard Dawkins
@84.61.181.253: You have been added as a party to the dispute resolution case pending at Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard#Talk:Race and genetics. This notice is being posted here in addition to your talk page due to the dynamic nature of your IP address. You are not required to participate; however, you are invited to help find a resolution. Please join us to help form a consensus. Thank you! (If other editors in this dispute have been missed and wish to participate, please feel free to do so as well.) — TransporterMan ( TALK) (as DRN volunteer) 14:30, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
I've removed the cluster tree chart. The source used for that chart is nearly 20 years old, and the presentation of the data appears to be based on editor synthesis, not on a presentation from the book. There is no page number citation, or indication that the authors find this particular presentation of the data to be representative of their conclusions. Current presentations of similar data tend to be multidimensional, and inclusive of more population groups than the ones selected here. However, even those present genetic distance of a subset of the genome, not the entire genome as a whole. It's important that graphical presentations of data be supported, not just by data, but also by high quality secondary sources which give weight to whether such a representation is appropriate for the topic at hand. aprock ( talk) 17:55, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
I've gone ahead and again removed the chart. As noted above there are several problems with the chart:
The introduction of the specific content culled from the book, and the chart in particular are precisely the sorts of edits used to push specific POV. As it currently stands, the section should be rewritten based on the books treatment of race and genetics instead of misusing primary source data and images to present a false impression of the books themes. aprock ( talk) 16:04, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
I've been thinking over how we should precede with this article and here is my proposal. We could move/merge text relating to human population genetics in this article, such as Cavalli-Sforza above, to Human genetic variation. Then have this article focus primarily on whether human genetic variation constitutes race. This should shorten the article to about half the size or so. Thoughts on this proposal? BlackHades ( talk) 00:42, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
Interesting debate and you do make some good points. If you don't mind though, I'd rather continue the discussion here since the talk page of Talk:Race and genetics is getting cluttered and the focus is getting pulled away from the primary RfC focus regarding Dawkins' inclusion. That is if you want to continue. Regarding your last comment, I'm unsure whether Dawkins' and Edwards' view can be considered the minority view. But stating that race is "biologically meaningful" or "genetically significant" is a minority view, is different from stating that there is a consensus that race is not genetically significant. It is, for example, entirely possible for there to be no consensus that race is not genetically significant and for Dawkins' and Edwards' position to still also be the minority position. I'm not stating this is the case but just giving an example.
Dawkins' and Edwards' view is heavily shared among other scientists. Whether they are the minority or the majority depends on specifically what is being asked and what scientific field is being polled and where. Even if for the sake of the argument, they are the minority position, I don't see any evidence that there is a scientific consensus, across scientific fields, that race is biologically meaningless or genetically insignificant. Scientific consensus implies near universal acceptance and I just don't see that.
The views on race among scientists tend to fluctuate widely, not only from field to field, but also from country to country. Physical anthropologists in the US today do overwhelmingly deny the existence of biological races for example, but this is in stark contrast to certain fields of biology in the US where the existence of biological races is not only overwhelmingly accepted, but often considered quite significant to their field. This is the case particularly in the research of certain diseases and disorders in the field of genetics. This is also the case in the field of forensic anthropology. The view also fluctuates widely from region to region such as in Eastern Europe. Where anthropologists overwhelmingly accept that human races exist in stark contrast to US anthropologists. [6]
In regards to your comment about the mention of race in textbooks. I'm not sure what the frequency is of the argument that race is "biologically meaningful" or "genetically significant" in textbooks today but it is continuously mentioned in major mainstream peer review journals today as detailed here. [7] But really all the controversy regarding this is due to the fact that there is no concrete scientific definitions for any of these terms. Such as "race" or "biologically meaningful" or "genetically significant". It's important to note that all the objective facts that lead to the positions mentioned by Lewontin, Edwards, and Dawkins are all universally accepted. All of them are looking at and accept the exact same data. It's only when you bring in subjective terms like "race", "biologically meaningful", "genetically significant" that the interpretations of the objective data now differ. BlackHades ( talk) 03:30, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 |
Africa | Asia | Europe | India | |
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Africans | 6.63 | |||
Asia | 0.74 | 0.24 | ||
Europe | 1.59 | 0.10 | 0.15 | |
India | 0.62 | 0.19 | 0.56 | 0.0 |
This article
Fine-scaled human genetic structure revealed by SNP microarrays,
[1], has some interesting results regarding the structure of global human genetic variation. It is based on the analysis of 250,000 SNPs. A few excerpts include,
The vast majority of SNPs are polymorphic ( MAF > 0) in multiple groups, with 81.2% of all loci being polymorphic in the four major continental groups, 89.2% polymorphic in at least three groups, and 93.0% polymorphic in at least two groups. Almost all of the SNPs that are polymorphic in only one group are unique to Africa (6.6%), while collectively only 0.39% of the SNPs are unique to any of the other three continental groups (Supplemental Table 2). There were no fixed differences between continental populations at any locus. Thus, these results support the emerging conclusion that most common genetic variation is shared among major human population groups.
In 1871, Charles Darwin noted in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex: ‘‘It may be doubted whether any character can be named which is distinctive of a race and is constant.’’ Modern studies of genetic variation, including this one, have supported Darwin’s observation, showing that most common variants are shared widely among human populations (Altshuler et al. 2005; Jakobsson et al. 2008). Our data confirm what Darwin believed: We found not a single SNP locus, out of nearly 250,000, at which a fixed difference would distinguish any pair of continental populations
What is interesting is that Europeans share a much higher level of unique SNPs with Africans than any other population in this study, the reasons for this were not stated in this study. Wapondaponda ( talk) 20:17, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
There has been a lot of discussion about the correlation between self-identified race/ancestry and genetics. Apparently a figure of 98% is being suggested. Once again some may be insinuating that this is the "silver bullet" that proves the existence of biological races. I believe this is a bit of a misunderstanding. Some of the forensic genetic databases are able to not just discern what "race" a person is, but they can determine what country a person is from, what city or even what village hamlet etc. At the indigenous level, it would become possible to distinguish a Swede from an Italian 100% of the time. In other words, the correlation between self-identified country of origin and genetics will approach 100% with more detailed genetic databases. Indeed the Japanese are already distinguishable from Chinese at the genomic level, does this mean they are two different races. DNA fingerprinting is able to uniquely identify an individual 100% of the time, does this mean that every individual is a distinct race. I believe this is why most of the mainstream studies prefer to view human genetic variation through the prism of geography rather than race, because "isolation by distance" is the main factor influencing genetic variation. Though genetics correlate with continental ancestry, it is just one of many ways at analyzing the data. If one wanted two clusters, then most likely the split would be between Africans and Non-African, and with just a few markers the correlation between self-identified Africanity and Non-Africanity would be close to 100%, but this doesn't make all non-Africans a single race. Wapondaponda ( talk) 20:17, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
This article includes many interesting factual statements from a variety of primary sources. Many of those statements could be put into a more illuminating context, and perhaps reworded for greater accuracy, by checking for reliable secondary sources on this topic. A good place to look for advice on what kind of sources would be reliable for an article like this is Wikipedia's guidelines on reliable sources for medically related articles. Genetics is a fast-moving field, and there are a lot of primary research findings that end up not being replicated. Relying on recent practitioners' handbooks and postgraduate textbooks is crucial for sorting through the cacophony of primary sources to know what the established results are in this discipline. A lot of editors have put a lot of good work into this article already, and meshing together the statements in the various sections into an overall encyclopedic whole will be a good improvement for Wikipedia. Let's look for up-to-date, authoritative sources and make sure that they are reflected in the article. -- WeijiBaikeBianji ( talk) 14:48, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
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help)The article has recently moved from race and genetics to Genetics and the decline of race. While this was done in good faith, I would suggest that the original name be restored, while we proceed with discussions concerning the article's future. There are some who would suggest that the "decline of race" is only one POV and that including the term in the title makes the title non-neutral. I take the perspective that race as a social construct does exist and that the article should discuss the relationship, or lack thereof, between the social construct and human genetics. What has declined are theories of race essentialism. The view that races are very distinct groups, with all members of a race conforming to an idealized racial type. Wapondaponda ( talk) 09:36, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
I must agree that this move was a rather crude example of pov-pushing by article title. While it is true that early (1970s, 1980s) genetics came up with the politically convenient result that "race is biologically meaningless". more recent, more advanced genetics (2000s) establish that it is perfectly possible to cast race in genetic terms. The question is, of course, "is it meaningful" or "is it relevant", which are semantic questions that cannot be answered objectively, but if you so wish to construct a genetic system of race, it is perfectly possible to do that. In fact, it is striking how the crude "races of man" maps of the late 19th century, based on measuring skulls and what have you, are reproduced with striking similarity by maps of genetic clustering. If you can really leave aside all the ideology involved, it seems to turn out that the notion of race (which is after all intuitive enough to be used in everyday conversation to describe an individual, never mind genetics) is not quite so meaningless as the 1970s made you believe. So my impression is that the whole story is much rather "genetics and the revival of race". -- dab (𒁳) 08:44, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
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help)When I explained my take of the situation, I did not suggest to introduce it into the article in these terms. I have see evidence for a "revival of race" in a number of recent (2000s) publications, but this is an emerging process and are hardly going to be any authoritative evaluations as long as it is ongoing. As for your claim that there is "diminishing importance" of race in biology, I find this dubious as by 1970 this importance must have been virtually zero so that it cannot conceivably diminish any further. -- dab (𒁳) 16:00, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
"Is race biologically meaningless? First, it is essential to point out that 'race' and 'ethnicity' are terms without generally agreed-upon definitions. Both terms carry complex connotations that reflect culture, history, socioeconomics and political status, as well as a variably important connection to ancestral geographic origins. Well-intentioned statements over the past few years, some coming from geneticists, might lead one to believe there is no connection whatsoever between self-identified race or ethnicity and the frequency of particular genetic variants1, 2. Increasing scientific evidence, however, indicates that genetic variation can be used to make a reasonably accurate prediction of geographic origins of an individual, at least if that individual's grandparents all came from the same part of the world3. As those ancestral origins in many cases have a correlation, albeit often imprecise, with self-identified race or ethnicity, it is not strictly true that race or ethnicity has no biological connection. It must be emphasized, however, that the connection is generally quite blurry because of multiple other nongenetic connotations of race, the lack of defined boundaries between populations and the fact that many individuals have ancestors from multiple regions of the world.
Race and health disparities What about health disparities? Are genetic differences between populations likely to have a role in health status, both in the US and around the world? In many instances, the causes of health disparities will have little to do with genetics, but rather derive from differences in culture, diet, socioeconomic status, access to health care, education, environmental exposures, social marginalization, discrimination, stress and other factors4. Yet it would be incorrect to say that genetics never has a role in health disparities. This is most obvious in the unequal distribution of disease-associated alleles for certain recessive disorders, such as sickle cell disease or Tay-Sachs disease, but has also been noted recently for certain nonmendelian disorders, such as Crohn disease5."
"Finding common ground
A vigorous debate has raged in the scientific and medical literature over the last few years about whether there is any value in using self-identified race or ethnicity to identify factors that contribute to health or disease7, 8. Proponents of maintaining such identifiers argue that even if the genetic component of health disparities is small, self-identified race or ethnicity is also a useful proxy for other correlated nongenetic variables, and to lose the opportunity to explore these would be doing a disservice to the public. Detractors argue that race and ethnicity are such flawed concepts that the persistent use of such descriptors prolongs the delay in seeking real causes and lends more scientific validity to the race-health connection than it deserves.
After reviewing these arguments and listening to the debate during the meeting at Howard University, one could conclude that both points are correct. The relationship between self-identified race or ethnicity and disease risk can be depicted as a series of surrogate relationships (Fig. 1). On the nongenetic side of this diagram, race carries with it certain social, cultural, educational and economic variables, all of which can influence disease risk. On the genetic side of the diagram, race is an imperfect surrogate for ancestral geographic origin, which in turn is a surrogate for genetic variation across an individual's genome. Likewise, genome-wide variation correlates, albeit with far-from-perfect accuracy, with variation at specific loci associated with disease. Those variants interact with multiple environmental variables, with the ultimate outcome being health or disease."
"What additional research is needed? The recent National Human Genome Research Institute's "Vision for the Future of Genomics Research"9 outlined a bold agenda for the future, including a number of compelling research opportunities. The meeting at Howard University underscored the importance of additional research in certain crucial areas:
(i) Without discounting self-identified race or ethnicity as a variable correlated with health, we must strive to move beyond these weak surrogate relationships and get to the root causes of health and disease, be they genetic, environmental or both.
(ii) To determine accurate risk factors for disease, we need to carry out well-designed, large-scale studies in multiple populations. Such studies must be equally rigorous in their collection of genetic and environmental data. If only genetic factors are considered, only genetic factors will be discovered.
(iii) To validate quantitative conclusions about genes, environment and their interactions in health and disease for multiple groups, long-term, longitudinal prospective cohort studies, as well as carefully designed case-control studies, will be needed10.
(iv) We must continue to support efforts to define the nature of human variation across the world, focused primarily on medical goals. The International Human Haplotype Map Project11 will open a new window into human variation and generate a powerful tool for discovering disease associations, but the project will provide a resource, not all of the answers.
(v) We need more anthropological, sociological and psychological research into how individuals and cultures conceive and internalize concepts of race and ethnicity.
(vi) We must assess how the scientific community uses the concepts of race and ethnicity and attempt to remedy situations in which the use of such concepts is misleading or counterproductive.
(vii) We need to formulate clear, scientifically accurate messages to educate researchers, health-care professionals and the general public on the connections among race, ethnicity, genetics and health.
Conclusion The individuals attending the meeting at Howard University represented a group of highly informed and sophisticated thinkers. Many participants had spent more than a decade trying to untangle these complicated concepts. A substantial degree of consensus was achieved regarding what we currently know, but it was impossible to escape the fact that substantial gaps in our current knowledge remain. Therefore, the research and the conversation must continue.
In that vein, the National Human Genome Research Institute convened a Roundtable on Race, Ethnicity, and Genetics on 8−10 March 2004, which was attended by a wide range of thought leaders in genetics, anthropology, sociology, history, law and medicine. A report of that meeting is being prepared for publication. The National Human Genome Research Institute is also sponsoring a consortium of funded investigators, known as the Genetic Variation Consortium ( http://www.genome.gov/10001551), which is striving to address many of these unanswered questions.
Much remains to be done, but the meeting at Howard University set the stage for a new era of interdisciplinary inquiry into the challenging topic of race and genetics, an era characterized by openness, freedom of scientific inquiry, an appreciation of history and a respect for differing points of views. It would be naive to portray these early steps as a breakthrough, but the committed efforts of the band of scholars and thinkers involved in these discussions are a good start in that direction." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Maunus ( talk • contribs)
can you just link to the text, Maunus? Ideally saying what it is you want to point out? Copy-paste dumps of text are both cluttering talkpages and violating the authors' copyright. I don't see how any of the above is relevant beyond pointing out that "it's complicated, and people have disagreed with one another". -- dab (𒁳) 16:11, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
"The concepts of race and ethnicity often are highly controversial topics, and the use of supposed racial characteristics in differentiating between human populations has been strongly censured. At the same time, genomic microarray studies have convincingly demonstrated signifi cant differences between major human populations living in different parts of the world, with common genetic variants playing an important role in inter-ethnic gene expression [86] . However, microarray studies also have shown that 93–95% of the total genetic variation was intrapopulation rather than interpopulation in origin [75] . While the proportionally minor genetic differences between populations and the attendant race/ethnicity/ ancestry controversy are widely discussed and argued, an obvious and potentially more signifi cant question arises with respect to the origins and causes of the very high level of intra-population genetic variation. How and why did this variation arise, how and why is it maintained, and what, if any, are the consequences in terms of biological fi tness, and more especially genetic disease? Throughout recorded human history, marriage between a male and female has been the predominant institution within which procreation occurred and genes were transmitted. Therefore a key initial step in investigating intra- and inter-population genetic differences is to examine how and why marriage partners are chosen in different societies. Virtually all traditional societies are divided into long-established communities, with limited inter-community marriage. Indeed, genome-based association studies conducted in industrialized Western societies have revealed similar, if less pronounced sub-divisions, and even in countries with large immigrant communities, such as the USA, Canada and Australia, recent arrivals typically marry within their own ethnic and/or religious community during the fi rst and second post-migration generations. Although offering strong social advantages, this tradi tion has important genetic implications, since it is probable that couples from the same national, ethnic or religious sub-community will have a signifi cant proportion of their genes in common, and therefore that their progeny are more likely to be homozygous for a detrimental recessive disorder [14] ."
"Skin color in mammals is infl uenced by a number of genes [65] and differences in skin color can therefore be due to various genetic changes. It has been known for some time that the gene MC1R infl uences both hair and skin color and is under negative selection for full activity in Africa, whereas a number of loss-of-function mutations were found in Europeans at a high frequency, due to either loss of constraint or to positive selection for loss-of-function [116] . A stronger case for positive selection for light skin color in Europeans was made for a gene called SLC24A5. Initially found to be locally selected in humans in a whole genome screen 36] , its function was at that time unclear. However, the same gene was later identifi ed as a key pigmentation gene in zebra fi sh, and analyses of human populations have shown that it accounts for about a third of skin color variation between Europeans and West Africans [88] . Moreover, this gene shows signals of recent positive selection in Europeans, supporting the hypothesis that light skin color was indeed selected for in Europe."
"Most studies of human population genetics begin by citing a seminal 1972 paper by Richard Lewontin bearing the title of this subsection [29] . Given the central role this work has played in our fi eld, we will begin by discussing it briefl y and return to its conclusions throughout the chapter. In this paper, Lewontin summarized patterns of variation across 17 polymorphic human loci (including classical blood groups such as ABO and M/N as well as enzymes which exhibit electrophoretic variation) genotyped in individuals across classically defi ned “races” (Caucasian, African, Mongoloid, South Asian Aborigines, Amerinds, Oceanians, Australian Aborigines [29] ). A key conclusion of the paper is that 85.4% of the total genetic variation observed occurred within each group. That is, he reported that the vast majority of genetic differences are found within populations rather than between them. In this paper and his book The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change [30] , Lewontin concluded that genetic variation, therefore, provided no basis for human racial classifi cations. Lewontin’s argument is an important one, and separates studying the geographic distribution of genetic variation in humans from searching for a biological basis to racial classifi cation. His fi nding has been reproduced in study after study up through the present: two random individuals from any one group (which could be a continent or even a local population) are almost as different as any two random individuals from the entire world (see proportion of variation within populations in Table 20.1 and [20] ). An important point to realize is that Lewontin’s calculation (and later work that confi rms his fi nding) are based on the F -statistics introduced in Sect. 20.2.1 (seefor a discussion) averaged across single genetic loci. While it is an undeniable mathematical fact that the amount of genetic variation observed within groups is much larger than the differences among groups, this does not mean that genetic data do not contain discernable information regarding genetic ancestry. In fact, we will see that minute differences in allele frequencies across loci when compounded across the whole of the genome actually contain a great deal of information regarding ancestry. Given current technology, for example, it is feasible to accurately identify individuals from populations that differ by as little as 1% in F ST if enough markers are genotyped. (See discussion below for a detailed treatment of the subject.) It is also important to note that when one looks at correlations in allelic variation across loci, self-identifi ed populations and populations inferred for human subjects using genetic data correspond closely"
"Finally, some studies have led to the provocative claim that local adaptive selection also affected genes infl uencing brain development [42, 98] . The authors studied two genes known to infl uence brain size and to have been under positive selection during human evolution, the microcephalin gene (MCPH1; [42] ) and the ASPM gene (abnormal spindle-like microcephaly associated; [98] ). For both genes, they found alleles that showed strong evidence of having been under recent positive selection, such as extended haplotype homozygosity. Intriguingly, these haplotypes are not fi xed in the human population and their frequency differs between regions from 0 to 60% for ASPM and from 3.3 to 100% for MCPH1. Additional analyses suggest that the selected variant of MCPH1 arose only about 37,000 years ago in the human population [42] and that of ASPM even more recently, i.e., about 5,800 years ago [98] . Whether these alleles confer any functional differences and which evolutionary forces have been driving their increase in frequency are so far unanswered questions. However, a recent study found no association between either of the supposedly selected variants and neither brain size nor measures of cognitive performance, calling into question the initial interpretation that the two genes have been selected for brain-related effects [139] . Yet the MCPH1 story contains another interesting twist. Although the presumably selected haplotypes have a coalescent age of only 37,000 years, their divergence to the nonselected haplotypes dates back as early as 1.1 million years [43] . Applying simulations to obtain data similar to the ones observed, Evans and colleagues concluded that the best explanation for the observed pattern is admixture from an archaic hominid population such as th Neanderthals. However, whether this is true and modern humans thus may have benefi ted from genetic contributions of archaic hominids needs to be tested in further studies."
"Human evolution was clearly a dynamic process and the current human population is the result of numerous migrations and population size changes, as shown above. So, the question of how we are to view modern human genetic diversity remains open. As noted before, humans carry relatively little genetic diversity compared with their closest relatives, the great apes, and all modern humans outside Africa share a recent African origin, so that we all seem to be Africans, either living on that continent or in recent exile” [107] . What is a matter of debate is how much structure the modern human gene pool contains. In 2002 Rosenberg and colleagues [119] argued that given a suffi cient number of markers, humans can be placed into clusters that correspond to a geographical origin, implying – albeit most probably inadvertently – that major genetic differences exist between continental groups such as Africans, Asians, and Europeans. This conclusion has been contested (e.g., [131] ) with the argument that the result of Rosenber et al. [119] was an artifact of the study design, and human genetic diversity is best explained by a clinal model of isolation by distance, without any major jumps in genetic distance over short geographical distances. Thus, rather than being made up of several distinct human groups that are genetically well separated, human genetic diversity changes continuously, with humans living in geographical proximity also being more closely related genetically and humans living at greater geographical distance also being genetically more different. This later view has been confi rmed by additional studies that detected a strong signal for isolation by distance in both the data set of Rosenberg et al. [113] and in other data sets [30] . However, expanding their data set, Rosenberg and colleagues reaffi rmed that human populations indeed cluster by geographical origin [120] . At the same time, they do fi nd a pattern of isolation by distance, with genetic distance generally increasing with geographical distance. The reason why they nevertheless detect clusters lies in the fact that small jumps in genetic distances occur across short distance of geographical barriers. Thus, the clusters are real but they explain only a small proportion of the genetic differences between humans, a result also seen in other data sets. For example, in a compilation of about 1 million SNPs most are shared between Africans, Europeans, and Asians and only a very few represent fi xed differences between the continental groups. So despite some phenotypically obvious differences between human populations, such as skin color, across the whole genome there is very little genetic differentiation between human populations. Given that modern humans originated in Africa only about 200,000 years ago and humans are a notoriously migratory species, it is not surprising that we are all very close relatives."
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help)"the clusters are real but they explain only a small proportion of the genetic differences" -- I think the basic misunderstanding is the idea that race is somehow expected to explain a significant or "major" portion of human genetic variability. It clearly is not, everyone agrees on that. It explains a small portion, Lewontin's famous 8% I suppose, but this portion is therefore significant for the purposes of the notion of "race" if for nothing else. I really feel that this is an artificial "controversy". If you are interested in race, you focus on these 8%. If you are not interested in race, you do not.
To my mind, saying that you may not focus on these clusters because they "only" account for a small portion of variability is about as pointless as saying that you may not focus on human genetic variability in the first place because it "only" concerns 0.1% of the genome. If you want to believe that all humans are the same, you point to the 99.9% genetic identity. If you are interested in how humans are different from one another after all, you focus on the 0.1%. -- dab (𒁳) 16:05, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
Ah, I see rediscovered the wheel (Vogel & Motulsky, 4th ed). I agree with User:Dbachmann's comment on 16:34, 17 September 2010 (UTC) that a lot of the discourse in this area is setting up strawmen by using vague terminology and concepts. The arguments are less on the science findings, and more philosophical these days. It's part of a wider discussion "Are species real?" in the philosophy of biology. I'll add some references to the last/new section at the bottom of this talk page. Tijfo098 ( talk) 13:13, 16 October 2010 (UTC)
Here is an interesting discussion from 2007: http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/01/race-current-consensus.php#. -- Maklinovich ( talk) 18:49, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
Maunus, please explain your deletions. I have already reported you to AE case for these deletions so some justification is likely appreciated. Miradre ( talk) 16:03, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
You have written a really strange intro.
I see some new editors are surfing by calling for better sourcing and more specificity in the article. I'll do my part here to recommend the source list most relevant to this article that I keep in user space to share with all Wikipedians. All of you are very welcome to suggest new sources, and I hope to put a big push on this weekend to log into that source list sources that I have already had in my office for weeks or even months. The current secondary sources have done an interesting job of forging consensus from the various primary research studies of the last decade, and the article here should reflect the latest consensus in the professional literature. -- WeijiBaikeBianji ( talk) 03:08, 16 October 2010 (UTC)
Well, consensus is still not universal. A good and up to date source for the (consensus in) genetics is:
Some sociologists are not convinced by the latest developments in genetics. For example,
It's best we resolve this on sub-articles first, particularly Lewontin's Fallacy, before updating stuff here. Tijfo098 ( talk) 12:51, 16 October 2010 (UTC)
Per discussion in above sections, some references about the philosophical interpretations of the science here, and in general whether phylogenetic etc. differences can classify any biological entities (and this widening isn't WP:OR or too far fetched, it's the very first question asked in the first of the following references):
(I have the full text of all the above except for the SAGE handbook, which is sufficiently readable on Google books's limited preview.) Tijfo098 ( talk) 13:36, 16 October 2010 (UTC)
The lede is so poor, it is both incomprehensible and incorrect. For example: "Today it is possible to determine, by genetic analysis, from which ancestral geographic regions a person originates and to what degree from each region." A person originates where the individual was born; genetic analysis is used to show the ancient origin of ancestors in a general way. There is too much assumption here of precision that does not exist in the analyses. Parkwells ( talk) 15:21, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
I think that the complete opposite being is probably more accurate. Oceania, and secondly Eurasia, are the most divergent continents. If the original population was African (and the current consensus is that it was), albeit we could still say that Africans diverged more from then on, that's not true, as far as I know. The simple fact that the largest population remained there made so that the continent was the most genetically preserved due to the larger population size (nearer to Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium), whereas populations that left Africa were just a small sample from this population and thus inherently genetically divergent (founder effect). Subsequent splits were again a subsample and thus yet more divergent. That's why genetic variation is progressively more "scarce" as you walk away from Africa (American aboriginals having almost a single blood type, for example). If due to large population size, more mutations happened and became widely spread in Africa, that perhaps could achieve the effect of Africa being the most divergent, I guess. I think it's not really far off actually, as Africans can be roughly divided in two major groups that diverged from one another quite a lot if I'm not mistaken, people from other continents being more close to one or the other (to both?) than they're from each other. But if that's really the case, it would be better to be more clearly stated that divergence within Africa is the largest, rather than Africa diverging as a whole from isolated sub populations that somehow (not known to occur at all, AFAIK) remain in relative stasis. -- 189.18.184.201 ( talk) 20:39, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
Can someone formally request that Maunus be banned from editing topics related to race? I'm new to wikipedia so I'm not sure how that works. His lack of civility here warrants a ban in and of itself IMO 66.68.87.193 ( talk) 01:27, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
You missed a number of critiques of Lewontin's argument. For example, Long (2010):
Earlier in this decade, Rick Kittles and I took an unusually critical look at FST (Long and Kittles 2003). We analyzed a unique data set composed of short tandem repeat (STR) allele frequencies for eight loci genotyped in both humans and chimpanzees (Deka et al. 1995). These data made it possible to see how FST played out when no one could dispute taxonomic and genetic significance. The answer surprised us. FST was pretty close to the canonical 0.15 shown so many times for human populations. In our analysis, FST was 0.12 for humans, but for humans and chimpanzees together, FST rose only to 0.18. Indeed, we found one locus, D13S122, where the size range of human and chimpanzee alleles hardly overlapped, yet FST equaled 0.15 ...Richard Lewontin’s dismissal of race may not have led to the wide popularity of FST in population biology, but it did galvanize anthropology. Lewontin confronted race by trying to show that classical racial groupings accounted for too little of the total diversity to be of any value. In retrospect, it is odd that Lewontin felt that 15% of variation among groups is small and even odder that others have concurred. Sewall Wright, the inventor of FST , believed the opposite. To Wright, FST 0.05 or even less indicates considerable differences, and FST = 0.15 reflects moderately great differences (Wright 1951, 1978). Low values of FST reflect large gene frequency differences in replicate populations (Figure 2). In other words, these seemingly small values of FST permit allele frequencies to drift widely among populations. Unfortunately, Lewontin did not contest the larger issue, which is whether or not races are a good way to portray the pattern of gene frequency differences between populations. (Long, 2010. Update to Long and Kittles’s “Human Genetic Diversity and the Nonexistence of Biological Races”(2003): Fixation on an Index)
(Long is cited by a number of researches who research "race medicine." So he is not an irrelevant player in this debate.)
There really are two issues when it comes to Lewontin's argument -- and I think it might be worthwhile to point this out -- or subdivide the section accordingly: 1) Are taxonomic groups identifiable 2) Is there a significant amount of genetic diversity between populations which could code for socially significant differences
(Lewontin puts these together, saying: racial classifications are "“virtually of no genetic or taxonomic significance.”)
These issues are logically independent. And both points have been critiqued and elaborated on idependently. For examples, Edwards mostly deals with (a) as does Alan Templeton. Long, above, deals with (b) -- and seems to make a case against (a). The section would be more coherent if this point was clarified. (i.e. "Can taxonomic groups be delineated?" versus "Is there socially significant genetic diversity between geographic populations")-- Hippofrank ( talk) 18:22, 8 October 2011 (UTC)Hippofrank
I find the meaning to be unclear. FeatherPluma ( talk) 15:57, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
reading this for the first time, as a lay person, it seems the lead is not the best, it should summarise the entire body of text, it doesn't, and the first sentence ("The relationship between race and genetics has relevance for the ongoing controversies regarding race") does not tell us about the subject title, instead it tells us that the subject is relevant to a different topic, one entitled "controversies regarding race." Surely there's a better way to approach this, so that the lead functions in an informative and encyclopaedic fashion? -- Semitransgenic ( talk) 17:40, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
I protected the article for three days due to this content dispute. Would a visit to WP:DRN help? causa sui ( talk) 18:46, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
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I've removed several sections that do not discuss the topic of race and genetics in a meaningful or reliable manner. I did leave the race and medicine section despite the fact that this is not a discussion about race and genetics, but a discussion about genetics and medicine, where racial correlates are used as a proxy for genetics. I'm not sure that it really belongs here though, as the topic of racial/genetic correlation is discussed extensively in the text and the main article is already linked to in the sidebar. aprock ( talk) 09:56, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
If that section discusses how "racial correlates are used as a proxy for genetics" then it is clearly about.... race and genetics. I don't see the problem.
The result of the move request was: Not Moved Mike Cline ( talk) 15:04, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
Race and genetics →
Human population genetics – Article content is primarily about human population genetics, and not about race. The sections which discuss race are reviewed below. For the most part, the sources tend to focus on population genetics, referring to race as a correlate with clustering techniques applied to genetic data.
aprock (
talk)
17:00, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
Visible traits, proteins, and genes studied: This section discusses race outside the rubric of genetics, and is presumably included to provide some background.
Race and population genetic structure: This section is an extended discussion of whether or not race can be predicted using genetic markers. I think this is an important topic, and one which deserves discussion in the article. However, this discussion clearly falls out of recent advances in population genetics, which in turn has necessitated a rethinking of whether classical definition of race have any valid meaning. In particular, the discussion makes it clear that insomuch as races "exist" it is to the extent that they mirror the genetics of geographically isolated humans. That is, it's the population genetics which are redefining race.
Race and medicine: only mentions genetics as a correlate of race.
Based on the actual content in the article, and the strong emphasis on population genetics, I think a page move which matches the title with the article content only makes sense. aprock ( talk) 17:58, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
ArtifexMayhem removed Templeton's position from the article stating that it's misinterpreted although hasn't stated in what way. Here is the disputed text:
Alan Templeton (2003) stated that although small genetic differences do exist among human populations that can have evolutionary and genetic significance, they do not define races under any of the definitions currently applied to nonhuman organisms.
Now here is Templeton's exact quote:
"Although human populations do not define races under any of the definitions currently applied to nonhuman organisms, genetic differences do exist among human populations as noted above and quantified by the Fst value of about .15 - a small value but one greater than zero. These modest genetic differences can still have evolutionary and genetic significance. Therefore, the evolutionary significance of genetic differentiation among human populations (not races, since none exist) is a legitimate issue."
Please show where the misinterpretation is. And again, the solution should be to adjust the text rather than completely remove relevant cited material. BlackHades ( talk) 03:24, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
The word race is rarely used in the modern, nonhuman evolutionary literature because its meaning is so ambiguous. When it is used, it is generally as a synonym for subspecies(Futuyma 1986: 107–9), but this concept also has no precise definition. All concepts of a subspecies are based on genetic differences between populations living in different geographic areas; but these differences alone are insufficient to define a subspecies because genetic surveys usually reveal so much variation that some combination of characters distinguishes virtually every population from all others (Futuyma 1986). As a consequence, if genetic differentiation alone were required to recognize a subspecies or race, then every local population would become a race, making the category of race superfluous. — ( Templeton 2003, pg.237)
[T]o prevent the term subspecies from being a synonym for local population, it is necessary to add further conditions beyond mere genetic differentiation among populations in order to recognize a race or subspecies. Three main additional criteria are applied: (1) a quantitative threshold of genetic differentiation among populations, (2) a genetic differentiation marking the qualitative state of being an isolate or distinct evolutionary lineage, and (3) genetic differentiation for special "racial" traits. — ( Templeton 2003, pg.237)
The genetic data are consistently and strongly informative about human races. Humans show only modest levels of differentiation among populations when compared to other large-bodied mammals (Templeton 1998a), and this level of differentiation is well below the usual threshold used to identify subspecies (races) in nonhuman species. Hence, human races do not exist under the concept of a subspecies defined by a threshold level of genetic differentiation. A more modern definition of race designates it as a distinct evolutionary lineage within a species. The genetic evidence strongly rejects the existence of distinct evolutionary lineages within humans. The widespread representation of human "races" as branches on an intraspecific population tree is genetically indefensible and biologically misleading, even when the ancestral node is presented as dating to one hundred thousand years ago. Attempts to salvage the idea of human races as evolutionary lineages by presuming that greater racial purity existed in the past and was followed by recent admixture events fail the test. Instead, all the genetic evidence shows that there never was a split, or separation of races, between Africans and Eurasians as postulated by the out-of-Africa replacement hypothesis. Recent human evolution has been characterized by both population range expansions and recurrent genetic interchange among populations. There has been no split between any of the major geographic populations of humanity, with the temporary exception of the split between Native American and Old World populations. — ( Templeton 2003, pg.252)
This is a friendly reminder to involved parties that there is a current Dispute Resolution Noticeboard case still awaiting comments and replies. If this dispute has been resolved to the satisfaction of the filing editor and all involved parties, please take a moment to add a note about this at the discussion so that a volunteer may close the case as "Resolved". If the dispute is still ongoing, please add your input. aprock ( talk) 23:22, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
The Dawkin's quote is an example of quote mining, and has been taken out of context. The quote comes from the chapter "The Grasshopper's Tale" from the book "The Ancestor's Tale". From the book:
The Grasshopper's Tale is about races and species, about the difficulty in defining both, and what all this has to say about human races.
The chapter then goes on to make the case that races are not a genetically useful term.
Whatever we may think as observers of superficial appearances, the human species today is, to a geneticist, especially uniform. Taking such genetic variation as the human population does possess, we can measure the fraction that is associated with the regional groupings we call races. And it turns out to be a small percentage of the total: between 6 and 15 percent depending on how you measure it - much smaller than in many other species where races have been distinguished. Geneticists conclude, therefore, that race is not a very important aspect of a person.
And concludes with the genetic significance of superficial traits:
Inter-observer agreement suggest that racial classification is not totally uninformative, but what does it inform about? About no more than the characterisics use by the observers when they agree: things like eye shape and hair curliness - nothing more unless we are given further reasons to believe it.
The paragraph from which the out of context quote is mined starts with the observation that most human variation occurs within a race, not between races. The quote itself is used to refute the very fine point that while races are not genetically important, their taxonomic significance is non-zero. The specific statement being refuted here is that race is of 'virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance.' Dawkins is saying that while race is not genetically meaningful, it still has some taxonomic utility. aprock ( talk) 10:39, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
If the experiment were to be done, I do not think Lewontin would expect any other result than the one I have predicted. Yet an opposite prediction would seem to follow from his statement that racial classification has virtually no taxonomic or genetic significance. If there is no taxonomic or genetic significance, the only other way to get a high inter-observer correlation would be a worldwide similarity in cultural bias, and I do not think Lewontin would want to predict that either. In short, I think Edwards is right and Lewontin, not for the first time, wrong. Lewontin did his sums right, of course: he is a brilliant mathematical geneticist. The proportion of the total variation in the human species that falls into the racial partition of variation is, indeed, low. But because the between-race variation, however low a percentage of the total variation, is correlated, it is informative in ways that could surely be demonstrated by measuring the inter-observer concordance of judgement.
We can all happily agree that human racial classification is of no social value and is positively destructive of social and human relations. That is one reason why I object to ticking boxes in forms and why I object to positive discrimination in job selection. But that doesn't mean that race is of ‘virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance’. This is Edwards's point, and he reasons as follows. However small the racial partition of the total variation may be, if such racial characteristics as there are are highly correlated with other racial characteristics, they are by definition informative, and therefore of taxonomic significance.
Dawkins clearly agrees with Edwards. No argument to the contrary has been presented, so I think the original content should be restored. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.61.165.78 ( talk) 23:53, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
"In short, I think Edwards is right and Lewontin, not for the first time, wrong."--Richard Dawkins.
"I was concerned to disprove Lewontin's assertion that there are no racial distinctions in the human species."--Richard Dawkins
"But Lewontin is wrong to suggest that therefore 'race' has no taxonomic meaning because, as Edwards points out, such variation as there is between races is correlated. I gave a simple demonstration of the validity of the concept of race in The Ancestor's Tale."--Richard Dawkins
"OK, but all I need in order to disprove Lewontin, is to show that there are SOME races that are unequivocally distinguishable."--Richard Dawkins
@84.61.181.253: You have been added as a party to the dispute resolution case pending at Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard#Talk:Race and genetics. This notice is being posted here in addition to your talk page due to the dynamic nature of your IP address. You are not required to participate; however, you are invited to help find a resolution. Please join us to help form a consensus. Thank you! (If other editors in this dispute have been missed and wish to participate, please feel free to do so as well.) — TransporterMan ( TALK) (as DRN volunteer) 14:30, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
I've removed the cluster tree chart. The source used for that chart is nearly 20 years old, and the presentation of the data appears to be based on editor synthesis, not on a presentation from the book. There is no page number citation, or indication that the authors find this particular presentation of the data to be representative of their conclusions. Current presentations of similar data tend to be multidimensional, and inclusive of more population groups than the ones selected here. However, even those present genetic distance of a subset of the genome, not the entire genome as a whole. It's important that graphical presentations of data be supported, not just by data, but also by high quality secondary sources which give weight to whether such a representation is appropriate for the topic at hand. aprock ( talk) 17:55, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
I've gone ahead and again removed the chart. As noted above there are several problems with the chart:
The introduction of the specific content culled from the book, and the chart in particular are precisely the sorts of edits used to push specific POV. As it currently stands, the section should be rewritten based on the books treatment of race and genetics instead of misusing primary source data and images to present a false impression of the books themes. aprock ( talk) 16:04, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
I've been thinking over how we should precede with this article and here is my proposal. We could move/merge text relating to human population genetics in this article, such as Cavalli-Sforza above, to Human genetic variation. Then have this article focus primarily on whether human genetic variation constitutes race. This should shorten the article to about half the size or so. Thoughts on this proposal? BlackHades ( talk) 00:42, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
Interesting debate and you do make some good points. If you don't mind though, I'd rather continue the discussion here since the talk page of Talk:Race and genetics is getting cluttered and the focus is getting pulled away from the primary RfC focus regarding Dawkins' inclusion. That is if you want to continue. Regarding your last comment, I'm unsure whether Dawkins' and Edwards' view can be considered the minority view. But stating that race is "biologically meaningful" or "genetically significant" is a minority view, is different from stating that there is a consensus that race is not genetically significant. It is, for example, entirely possible for there to be no consensus that race is not genetically significant and for Dawkins' and Edwards' position to still also be the minority position. I'm not stating this is the case but just giving an example.
Dawkins' and Edwards' view is heavily shared among other scientists. Whether they are the minority or the majority depends on specifically what is being asked and what scientific field is being polled and where. Even if for the sake of the argument, they are the minority position, I don't see any evidence that there is a scientific consensus, across scientific fields, that race is biologically meaningless or genetically insignificant. Scientific consensus implies near universal acceptance and I just don't see that.
The views on race among scientists tend to fluctuate widely, not only from field to field, but also from country to country. Physical anthropologists in the US today do overwhelmingly deny the existence of biological races for example, but this is in stark contrast to certain fields of biology in the US where the existence of biological races is not only overwhelmingly accepted, but often considered quite significant to their field. This is the case particularly in the research of certain diseases and disorders in the field of genetics. This is also the case in the field of forensic anthropology. The view also fluctuates widely from region to region such as in Eastern Europe. Where anthropologists overwhelmingly accept that human races exist in stark contrast to US anthropologists. [6]
In regards to your comment about the mention of race in textbooks. I'm not sure what the frequency is of the argument that race is "biologically meaningful" or "genetically significant" in textbooks today but it is continuously mentioned in major mainstream peer review journals today as detailed here. [7] But really all the controversy regarding this is due to the fact that there is no concrete scientific definitions for any of these terms. Such as "race" or "biologically meaningful" or "genetically significant". It's important to note that all the objective facts that lead to the positions mentioned by Lewontin, Edwards, and Dawkins are all universally accepted. All of them are looking at and accept the exact same data. It's only when you bring in subjective terms like "race", "biologically meaningful", "genetically significant" that the interpretations of the objective data now differ. BlackHades ( talk) 03:30, 23 June 2013 (UTC)