Talk:Race (human categorization): Difference between revisions
→Reliable sources for updating this article: see fringe |
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::This is an excessively biased set of sources, we should include other scholars such as Neven Sesardic, Jerry Coyne, Henry Harpending, Gregory Cochran, Nicholas Wade etc. their view is mainstream and makes no sense to omit it.[[Special:Contributions/74.14.73.17|74.14.73.17]] ([[User talk:74.14.73.17|talk]]) 20:27, 4 April 2014 (UTC) |
::This is an excessively biased set of sources, we should include other scholars such as Neven Sesardic, Jerry Coyne, Henry Harpending, Gregory Cochran, Nicholas Wade etc. their view is mainstream and makes no sense to omit it.[[Special:Contributions/74.14.73.17|74.14.73.17]] ([[User talk:74.14.73.17|talk]]) 20:27, 4 April 2014 (UTC) |
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:::We don't push [[WP:FRINGE|fringe]] sources. {{mdash}} [[User:ArtifexMayhem|ArtifexMayhem]] ([[User talk:ArtifexMayhem|talk]]) 21:07, 4 April 2014 (UTC) |
:::We don't push [[WP:FRINGE|fringe]] sources. {{mdash}} [[User:ArtifexMayhem|ArtifexMayhem]] ([[User talk:ArtifexMayhem|talk]]) 21:07, 4 April 2014 (UTC) |
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::::They aren't, you know that, and you are lying because you have a Western Marxist POV. The view that race is a valid taxonomy is the majority view as shown by surveys of experts. [[User:PlasticSpatula5|PlasticSpatula5]] ([[User talk:PlasticSpatula5|talk]]) 03:22, 5 April 2014 (UTC) |
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The "Complications and various definitions of the concept" needs to be tossed out or extensively re-written.
Primarily this section does not do what its title suggests. It seems nothing more than an opinion piece from what would be termed in the United States a left wing political slant.
"There is a wide consensus that the racial categories that are common in everyday usage are socially constructed, and that racial groups cannot be biologically defined.[17][18][19][20][21][22]" [Emphasis added]"
This statement is either false or misleading, depending on how it is read, on account of the last portion of the sentence. There is no "consensus" that human racial groups could not be biologically defined; I provide references below. Whether common groups which are called races in e.g., the U.S. can not be is a distinct matter.
I am going to rewrite this as:
"There is no consensus as to whether there are human biological races [],[],[],[],[],[],[],[]; many argue that racial categories as used, for example, in the U.S. are socially constructed and cannot be biologically defined.[17][18][19][20][21][22]".
If there are any objections to this let me know.174.97.231.103 (talk) 18:27, 28 March 2014 (UTC)John
Kaszycka, K. A., Štrkalj, G., & Strzałko, J. (2009). Current views of European anthropologists on race: Influence of educational and ideological background. American Anthropologist, 111(1), 43-56.
Kaszycka, K. A., & Strzałko, J. (2003). Race: Tradition and convenience, or taxonomic reality? More on the race concept in Polish anthropology
Lieberman, L., Stevenson, B. W., & Reynolds, L. T. (1989). Race and anthropology: A core concept without consensus. Anthropology & education quarterly, 20(2), 67-73.
Morning, A. (2011). The nature of race: How scientists think and teach about human difference. University of California Pr.
Štrkalj, G. (2007). The status of the race concept in contemporary biological anthrop
Strkalj, G., Ramsey, S., & Wilkinson, A. T. (2008). Anatomists’ attitudes towards the concept of race. South African Medical Journal, 94(2), 90.
Wang, Q., trkalj, G., & Sun, L. (2003). On the concept of race in Chinese biological anthropology: alive and well. Current anthropology, 44(3), 403-403.
VBRS (variant/breed/race/subspecies) ?
Its interesting experiment to replace all the occurrences of "race" word with "melanilistic colour variant" or "breed"... and thus throw away majority of the emotions coined with the word race. What the article could look like then ? Do people have melanilistic color variants like wolves (black wolf) or big cats (black panther) ? Could we distinguish groups of people based on that trait like we do with other species ? Or maybe our species has breeds like dogs horses etc ? And final question what really should be a definition of race ? That is a phenotypical or genetical concept. There could be population very diverse genetically, even to the point of different species (Animals That Seem Identical May Be Completely Different Species) or there could be a very distinctive groups within one species that have only a few difference in genes , but all those different alleles are producing different characteristics like color or adult animal size and also maybe to the point that two of these populations do not mix. Next, I know historically the race concept has been drifting with meaning and with time encompassing bigger and bigger cohorts of people. But I think this is the effects of how people knew with time what is the extent of human variation. If in our times there would be other sub-species of humans living in Africa or Indonesia like Homo erectus etc. with clearly different mental capability and other phenotypic traits but they could mix with all other people living as that must be a reality some time ago then I think we consider all variation that we have now a one race and these now extinct subspecies as another races. Or if there would be in the past a successful experiment (or accident at the very distant past like 6 thousand years ago) to kill all black or non-European descent people (Tuskegee syphilis experiment). Then the variation would diminish and people (especially if that would be a long time in the past) would coin a new 'race' boundaries that would be similar to the original concept. Likewise in maybe some isolated island on pacific there would be concept of race (before white people came in) distinguishing phenotypes that for someone who didn't grow up with the people would be identical and not "worth" of categorizing. So in my opinion race is not a social construct in its all entirety - it is just measure of known human variation. It is the same like let's say in other species. Suppose that we discover a new specimen of lets say a tree/frog/monkey in some inaccessible part of rain forest in Congo or Brazil and first we see some population and we could draw a distinction between them (and we know that these are the same species) and give to them some Latin third name like in us Homo sapiens *sapiens*. And no one sees anything wrong with that. But then as we go deeper in the forest we see individuals with more diverging features and they diverge in the same extent that our initial known population - so we change the boundaries of race/breed/variant/subspecies and call our initial population as one and then (until of course we encounter again similar situation) we proceed to divide the rest based on updated knowledge about all intra-species variability we know. And there is also in-group variability. If we see a new plant or rodent species that their individuals are very different like in melanin content or size, but they live as one population and are breeding between them, we would not call the differences a VBRS (variant/breed/race/subspecies) but if there would be a feature of the habitat like a river or mountain that these individuals cannot easily cross (even if there would be some areas of mixing) then we do our distinctions. So in case of humans there were situations all over the world where one tribe or nation consider people living on the other side of river or forest or mountain to be not "like them" a different kind of people or even not people at all. But these people living amongst themselves cannot have knowledge that there are vastly different populations on earth and in comparison to them their distinction does not hold up. The case with VBRS is to have a relatively small number of them, otherwise we run in to paradox that every individual is VBRS on itself. But now we do know the whole earth, we do now what human variability is in terms of genotype and phenotype. So now coined distinctions are not prone to the same mistakes as those in the past. But if we want an answer to question are there human races or not we must first determine to what definition of race we are answering. Are we considering phenotypes as these are now, or are we considering the human migration process, genetics, etc... Or maybe a law is the criterion like in USA when you have populations that are phenotypically different like AA/blacks together with those based on culture like Hispanics... This are a very distinct concepts that are to itself like concept of fruit based on biological features and concept of fruit that is in EU law where carrot is considered a fruit. When I read such articles of discussions about race I feel like I'm reading quarrels where there are distinct categories fruits and vegetables or all things we eat are equal and everyone who thinks different is an ignorant foodist. So people in their heads are holding very different conceptions of race and what it shouldn't be. So if they read any scientific paper where the word is used and it is not debunked in the same paragraph (but surprisingly against our species only, we are blind of dog racism or horse racism... we aren't ashamed that we ignorantly categorize these equal beings into a races, yes ?) the person who writes it, if such person is in scientific position he risks his job very much because people already know what is a race and only thing what they need is a prayer from scientific community that is pedestal to their beliefs.
And there is another question of ethics. It's like with the question: "Can we make a ham sandwich from Dalai Lama?" The answer is yes of course. It could be done with the same tools that we use to work on pigs or cows in our slaughterhouses. There is nothing in reality, in laws of physics or logic itself to make this endeavor impossible like it is impossible with let's say a perpetuum mobile of the second kind (not to say the first). There would be none of cosmic string destroying the apparatus to make meat from human flesh (Did a Time-Traveling Bird Sabotage the Collider?). But question - is it ethical to do so, may have a very different answer. So is it ethical to distinguish races of our species is different question of that if it could be coherently done. But people really want that there would be some feature of the world that would prohibit making races of human beings. But that thing would also prohibit of making such disgust to dogs and horses. pwjb (talk) 12:35, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
Mainstream nature of Nicholas Wade's view on race
Nicholas Wade's view on race is a mainstream pro-race view that should be added in for our articles on race and proponent views.174.95.171.228 (talk) 20:23, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
- Nicholas Wade is a journalist and author, who is reporting on other peoples research. The research he reports on regarding race and the view points associated with it is already. Wade's personal views which is what he reports in his book are essentially irrelevant, whether they are mainstream or not. If we started including popularized accounts by laymen then the page will quickly become unwieldy. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 20:56, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
- Nope. Not an appropriate source for this article. (I've met Wade at a conference, and I also would not characterize his personal view as mainstream, but rather as old-fashioned.) -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 02:08, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
- Please explain how Nicholas Wade's view is non-mainstream because the majority of experts on race like Razib Khan, James Thompson etc. think otherwise...174.95.171.228 (talk) 21:53, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
- .Razib Khan is a graduate student who specializes in cats. Please quit going on an on about him, and read some actual academic literature on race published by academic presses. Yes his viewpoint is one of several mainstream viewpoints, because there is currently no clear consensus among scholars about how best to understand the relation between genetic clusters and the concept of race.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 21:57, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
- Razib Khan is known as an expert in population genetics and human biodiversity by the likes of John Hawks, Gregory Cochrane, Henry Harpending among others...174.95.171.228 (talk) 23:48, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
- Then I am sure he will soon publish something about that topic in a peerreiewed journal then. At that point it will make sense to continue this conversation.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 14:12, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
- Razib Khan is known as an expert in population genetics and human biodiversity by the likes of John Hawks, Gregory Cochrane, Henry Harpending among others...174.95.171.228 (talk) 23:48, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
Hippofrank's edits
I will post my proposed edits here. If no one objects within 24 hours I will finalize the edits. I expect to fight an editing war on some of these issues, but I hope we can more or less agree on others.
Section: "Complications and various definitions of the concept".
Edit #1. 3/28/2014
Original: "There is a wide consensus that the racial categories that are common in everyday usage are socially constructed, and that racial groups cannot be biologically defined.[17][18][19][20][21][22]"...
Note for edit 1: I changed this because the original was either misleading or false depending on how it was read. The original implied that there was a consensus against the existence of biological races. This is false. What is true is that many people agree that certain commonly used racial categories in the U.S. e.g., Asians do not characterize biologically scientifically defined races. Hippofrank (talk) 19:05, 28 March 2014 (UTC)Hippofrank
Edited Version: While there is no consensus as to whether there are human biological races [1][2] [3] [4] [5], it is agreed that gene frequencies vary among human populations, some of which correspond more or less to traditional racial groupings. For this reason there is no current consensus about whether traditional racial categories can be considered to have significance for understanding human genetic variation.[6]. There is a consensus that certain commonly used racial categories as used in certain countries, for example, Asians in the U.S., are socially constructed and cannot be biologically defined [7][8][9][10][11][12]. Regarding these non-biologically definable racial categories, some scholars argue that they correlate with biologically conditioned traits (e.g. phenotype) to some degree and therefore can be genetically informative.
Edit #2. 3/28/2014 3:26 Eastern
Original: " When people define and talk about a particular conception of race, they create a social reality through which social categorization is achieved.[29] In this sense, races are said to be social constructs.[30] These constructs develop within various legal, economic, and sociopolitical contexts, and may be the effect, rather than the cause, of major social situations.[31] While race is understood to be a social construct by many, most scholars agree that race has real material effects in the lives of people through institutionalized practices of preference and discrimination."
Note for edit 2: This statement is fairly confused, so it needs to be changed. First, the term "social construct" is ambiguous; in common parlance it can mean "not a biological entity" while in philosophical parlance it can mean "not a natural kind". For example, in the philosophy of biology species are often said to be social constructs.
Edit #3. 3/28/2014 3:30 Eastern
Original: "[1] Socioeconomic factors, in combination with early but enduring views of race, have led to considerable suffering within disadvantaged racial groups. [2] [32] Racial discrimination often coincides with racist mindsets, whereby the individuals and ideologies of one group come to perceive the members of an outgroup as both racially defined and morally inferior.[33] [3] As a result, racial groups possessing relatively little power often find themselves excluded or oppressed, while hegemonic individuals and institutions are charged with holding racist attitudes.[34] [4] Racism has led to many instances of tragedy, including slavery and genocide.[35]
Note for edit 3: This whole paragraph needs to be rewritten. The first statement above is disputed. It has not been established that views of race, per se, have caused "considerable suffering within disadvantaged racial". This, rather, is a theoretical model. The second statement is somewhere between conjectural and inflammatory; members of defined outgroups (e.g., "their family), in general, are not preferenced; this is only tantamount to seeing them as "morally inferior"; this second statement also confuses moral inferiority with trait inferiority; the third statement is circular because " groups possessing relatively little power" and "excluded or oppressed" are typically operationalized the same way. The fourth statement is problematic because "racism" has no one definition; there is no consensus on what it is. One can only say "racism in some senses".
Proposed Edited Version (for edit 2,3): Regardless of the biological status of race, many scholars believe that the act of racial categorization can have socially significant effects on the lives of people through, for example, institutionalized practices of discrimination. [31] They believe that the act of employing racial classifications has led to considerable suffering within disadvantaged racial groups. From this perspective, racial classifications reinforce tendencies to discriminate on the basis of ingroup and outgroup, tendencies which can lead to the oppressed and exclusion if the groups being discriminated against possesses relatively little power. These scholars have also argued that beliefs about the biological reality of race condition racism, understood as the belief in inherent racial superiority and inferiority.
- Am I to take it that the proposed edits are supported by the footnotes as shown in the draft here on the talk page? Do you have the sources at hand? -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 21:10, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
- Yes, let's go one sentence at a time. The first sentence clarifies that there is no consensus concerning the existence of biological races.
While there is no consensus as to whether there are human biological races [13][14] [15] [16] [17], it is agreed that gene frequencies vary among human populations, some of which correspond more or less to traditional racial groupings [18]."Hippofrank (talk) 22:31, 29 March 2014 (UTC)Hippofrank
[13-17]
Kaszycka, K. A., Štrkalj, G., & Strzałko, J. (2009). Current views of European anthropologists on race: Influence of educational and ideological background. American Anthropologist, 111(1), 43-56.
Lieberman, L., Stevenson, B. W., & Reynolds, L. T. (1989). Race and anthropology: A core concept without consensus. Anthropology & education quarterly, 20(2), 67-73.
Morning, A. (2011). The nature of race: How scientists think and teach about human difference. University of California Pr.
Wang, Q., trkalj, G., & Sun, L. (2003). On the concept of race in Chinese biological anthropology: alive and well. Current anthropology, 44(3), 403-403.
Štrkalj, G. (2007). The status of the race concept in contemporary biological anthropology: A review. Anthropologist, 9(1), 73-78.
[18]
Hochman, A. (2013). Racial discrimination: How not to do it. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 44(3), 278-286.
- This is an example of synthesis. Instead of constructing one sentence about two different topics, from different sources, allow me to suggest you start with 2-4 high quality secondary sources, summarizing what those sources say. If you can't find some high quality secondary sources to uses as a basis, I'm sure those can be dug up. aprock (talk) 23:08, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
- Ok. I can just use four of the first five references, since they say the same. For example Kaszycka et al. (2009) state:
"Advances in human genome research brought about an increasing number of discoveries of mutated alleles responsible for various metabolic changes, whereas the frequency of these alleles has displayed interpopulational differences. If there were differences between the “white” and “black” U.S. residents—for example, alleles of genes called PCSK9 (Cohen et al. 2006) or ApoE4 associated with LDL metabolism and indirectly the risk of heart disease—they were easy to label as “racial” differences (Burchard et al. 2003).... In that the argument proposed that knowledge of the frequency of alleles in individual distinguishable populations was of practical importance in the treatment of some diseases, it was quite correct, although this still did not make a population a race (Hoffman 2005). Thus, interpopulational diversity of the contents of the human genome discovered during the research is not an argument for the existence of races but merely for polymorphism, the range and determinants of which are worth investigating also for medical purposes (Jones 2001; Rotman 2005; Schwartz 2001)."
The idea is that it's trivially true that the populations called races differ in gene frequency. But whether these populations constitute biological races is a more complex and contentious issue. So, I will just change that to:
"There is no consensus as to whether there are biological races in the human species [19][20] [21][22]. And there is widespread consensus that many commonly used racial categories are socially constructed in the sense of not being biologically delineated [23][24][25][26][27][28]. Nonetheless, it is generally agreed that those groups which are called races vary in gene frequencies. Because of this, there is no current consensus as to whether these groups can be considered to have significance for understanding human genetic variation.[29]"
These are excellent edits based on the best, mainstream sources. Go ahead.74.14.29.177 (talk) 06:10, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
If they all say the same thing, then I would suggest using the highest quality source, include page numbers, and an excerpt of the text you are paraphrasing. aprock (talk) 00:49, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
- The above seems to be the simplest and most balanced way of stating things. The main points are:
(a) There is little agreement as to whether there are human biological races. (b) There is much agreement that some/many common racial categories are not biologically defined. (c) There is general agreement that groups called races differ in genes frequencies. (d) There is no agreement as to whether groups called races have have significance for understanding human genetic variation.
A more elaborate discussion is really needed, one which distinguishes between the various debates about race. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hippofrank (talk • contribs) 01:37, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
Please pick a couple secondary sources (your excerpt above lists at least seven). Please include page numbers for each source. If you feel up to it, please consider adding an excerpt from the sources you think are the highest quality sources that you are basing your content on. aprock (talk) 04:10, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
- Yes, the current mainstream secondary sources generally do a good job of digging into the data and relating the data to various issues that have been controversial over the years. I have several of the best sources at hand, as do other editors who have this article on their watchlists. Exact citations of particular sources are very helpful, as is signing comments posted to article talk pages. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 14:06, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
- It is false that there is any consensus that "racial groups" traditionally defined vary in gene frequencies, or inversely that gene frequency clusters correspond more or less to traditional racial groupings. See e.g. this special issue of AJPA [1], and particularly this article Hunley, K. L., Healy, M. E., & Long, J. C. (2009). The global pattern of gene identity variation reveals a history of long‐range migrations, bottlenecks, and local mate exchange: implications for biological race. American journal of physical anthropology, 139(1), 35-46. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 18:09, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
- Image
- Please note that Maunus is inserting his personal opinion based on a single source and ignoring international surveys of experts on the question. PlasticSpatula5 (talk) 10:15, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
- Survey's are not reliable source for scientific topics. aprock (talk) 11:48, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
- Surveys are the ideal source for gauging opinion on scientific questions. What else do you propose? Editor:Maunus's personal opinion? PlasticSpatula5 (talk) 12:11, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
- It is logically invalid to suppose that because this or that pattern of opinion is discovered in a survey, therefore the facts of the world are like the plurality opinion discovered in the survey. Until we know a lot more about the survey sample, and how representative it is of the population being surveyed, we don't even know if the plurality opinion reported in the survey is actually the plurality opinion of the population of interest. And we don't know whether the population that the survey purported to sample was an informed population on the issues asked about in the survey, and so on. There are already plenty of very good high-quality, reliable secondary sources about the facts that underlie the statements in the article text here, and those are what we should rely on (by Wikipedia content policy) to continue improving the article. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 14:48, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
- You are wrong and surveys are a better gauge than one source. PlasticSpatula5 (talk) 16:19, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
Reliable sources for updating this article
I see there are some new (to this article under the screen names we are seeing here, but perhaps not new to Wikipedia) editors who are joining the talk page discussion here. Wikipedia has a lot of interesting articles based on the ongoing research in human molecular genetics that helps trace the lineage of people living in various places on the earth. On the hypothesis that better sources build better articles as all of us here collaborate to build an encyclopedia, I thought I would suggest some sources for improving articles on human genetic history and related articles. I've been reading university textbooks on human genetics "for fun" since the 1980s, and for even longer I've been visiting my state flagship university's vast BioMedical Library to look up topics on human medicine and health care policy. he Wikipedia guidelines on reliable sources in medicine provide a helpful framework for evaluating sources.
The guidelines on reliable sources for medicine remind editors that "it is vital that the biomedical information in all types of articles be based on reliable, third-party, published sources and accurately reflect current medical knowledge."
Ideal sources for such content includes literature reviews or systematic reviews published in reputable medical journals, academic and professional books written by experts in the relevant field and from a respected publisher, and medical guidelines or position statements from nationally or internationally recognised expert bodies.
The guidelines, consistent with the general Wikipedia guidelines on reliable sources, remind us that all "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources" (emphasis in original). They helpfully define a primary source in medicine as one in which the authors directly participated in the research or documented their personal experiences. By contrast, a secondary source summarizes one or more primary or secondary sources, usually to provide an overview of the current understanding of a medical topic. The general Wikipedia guidelines let us know that "Articles should rely on secondary sources whenever possible. For example, a review article, monograph, or textbook is better than a primary research paper. When relying on primary sources, extreme caution is advised: Wikipedians should never interpret the content of primary sources for themselves."
On the topic of what recent human population genetics research says about classification of human populations, a widely cited primary research article is a 1972 article by Richard Lewontin, which I have seen cited in many of the review articles, monographs, and textbooks I have read over the years.
- Lewontin, Richard (1972). "The Apportionment of Human Diversity" (PDF). Evolutionary Biology. 6. Springer: 381–398. Archived from the original on 25 November 2010. Retrieved 23 November 2013.
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As Wikipedians, we can evaluate where the findings in Lewontin's article fit in the current understanding of the topic of human genetic variation by reading current reliable secondary sources in medicine.
Some Wikipedia articles give weighty emphasis to a commentary essay published years after Lewontin published his primary research article on human diversity, when Lewontin's primary research results had been replicated in many other studies and his bottom line conclusion that "about 85% of the total genetical variation is due to individual differences within populations and only 15% to differences between populations or ethnic groups" had been taken up by many textbooks on genetics and medicine. In 2003, A. W. F. Edwards wrote a commentary essay in the journal BioEssays
- Edwards, A.W.F. (2003). "Human Genetic Diversity: Lewontin's Fallacy" (PDF). BioEssays. 25 (8): 798–801. doi:10.1002/bies.10315. PMID 12879450. Archived from the original on 25 November 2010. Retrieved 23 November 2013.
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in which Edwards proposes a statistical model for classifying individuals into groupings based on haplotype data. Edwards wrote, "There is nothing wrong with Lewontin’s statistical analysis of variation, only with the belief that it is relevant to classification," pointing to his own work with Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, the author of the book
- Cavalli-Sforza, Luigi Luca; Menozzi, Paolo; Piazza, Alberto (1994). The History and Geography of Human Genes. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-08750-4.
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which I read soon after it was published in 1994. In general, Edwards cites a lot of publications from his collaboration with Cavalli-Sforza, and mentions that collaboration prominently in his subsequent review article
- Edwards, A.W.F. (September 2009). "Statistical Methods for Evolutionary Trees". Genetics. 183 (1). Genetics Society of America: 5–12. doi:10.1534/genetics.109.107847. Retrieved 23 November 2013.
in which he describes their method for tracing ancestry with genes. Edwards even shows a photograph of Cavalli-Sforza with him in 1963 in his 2009 article, emphasizing their scholarly friendship.
So I wanted to look up Cavalli-Sforza's current views as well while I traced citations of the Lewontin 1972 article and the Edwards 2003 article in subsequent secondary sources. Through searches with Google, Google Scholar, and Google Books, both from my home office computer and from a university library computer, I found a number of books and articles that cite both the Lewontin paper and the Edwards paper. Through a specialized set of wide-reaching keyword searches (for example, "Lewontin Edwards") on the university library's vast database subscriptions, I was able to obtain the full text of many of those articles and of whole books that discuss what current science says about grouping individuals of species Homo sapiens into race groups. I also found more up to date discussions by Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza of the Human Genome Diversity Project.
Listed here are sources that have the following characteristics: (1) they cite both previous articles by Lewontin and the 2003 article by Edwards, discussing the underlying factual disagreement between those authors, (2) they are Wikipedia reliable sources for medicine (in particular, they are secondary sources such as review articles or textbooks rather than primary research articles), and (3) they are available to me in full text through book-buying, library lending, author sharing of full text on the Internet, or a university library database. They are arranged in approximate chronological order, so that you can see how the newer sources cite and evaluate the previous sources as genetics research continues. The sources listed here are not exhaustive, but they are varied and authoritative, and they cite most of the dozens of primary research articles on the topic, analyzing and summarizing the current scientific consensus.
- Koenig, Barbara A.; Lee, Sandra Soo-jin; Richardson, Sarah S., eds. (2008). Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age. New Brunswick (NJ): Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-4324-6.
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This first book (Koenig, Lee, and Richardson 2008) is useful because it includes a chapter co-authored by Richard Lewontin in which he updates his views.
- Whitmarsh, Ian; Jones, David S., eds. (2010). What's the Use of Race?: Modern Governance and the Biology of Difference. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-51424-8.
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The Whitmarsh and Jones (2010) source has several very useful chapters on medical genetics.
- Ramachandran, Sohini; Tang, Hua; Gutenkunst, Ryan N.; Bustamante, Carlos D. (2010). "Chapter 20: Genetics and Genomics of Human Population Structure". In Speicher, Michael R.; Antonarakis, Stylianos E.; Motulsky, Arno G. (eds.). Vogel and Motulsky's Human Genetics: Problems and Approaches (PDF). Heidelberg: Springer Scientific. pp. 589–615. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-37654-5. ISBN 978-3-540-37653-8. Retrieved 29 October 2013.
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 field, we will begin by discussing it briefly 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 defined '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 classifications. ... His finding 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]).
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- Krimsky, Sheldon; Sloan, Kathleen, eds. (2011). Race and the Genetic Revolution: Science, Myth, and Culture. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-52769-9. Retrieved 31 August 2013.
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Like Whitmarsh and Jones (2010), the Krimsky and Sloan (2011) source has several useful chapters on medical genetics.
- Tattersall, Ian; DeSalle, Rob (1 September 2011). Race?: Debunking a Scientific Myth. Texas A&M University Anthropology series number fifteen. Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 978-1-60344-425-5. Retrieved 17 November 2013.
Actually, the plant geneticist Jeffry Mitton had made the same observation in 1970, without finding that Lewontin's conclusion was fallacious. And Lewontin himself not long ago pointed out that the 85 percent within-group genetic variability figure has remained remarkably stable as studies and genetic markers have multiplied, whether you define populations on linguistic or physical grounds. What's more, with a hugely larger and more refined database to deal with, D. J. Witherspoon and colleagues concluded in 2007 that although, armed with enough genetic information, you could assign most individuals to 'their' population quite reliably, 'individuals are frequently more similar to members of other populations than to members of their own.'
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- Barbujani, Guido; Colonna, Vincenza (15 September 2011). "Chapter 6: Genetic Basis of Human Biodiversity: An Update". In Zachos, Frank E.; Habel, Jan Christian (eds.). Biodiversity Hotspots: Distribution and Protection of Conservation Priority Areas. Springer. pp. 97–119. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-20992-5_6. ISBN 978-3-642-20992-5. Retrieved 23 November 2013.
The massive efforts to study the human genome in detail have produced extraordinary amounts of genetic data. Although we still fail to understand the molecular bases of most complex traits, including many common diseases, we now have a clearer idea of the degree of genetic resemblance between humans and other primate species. We also know that humans are genetically very close to each other, indeed more than any other primates, that most of our genetic diversity is accounted for by individual differences within populations, and that only a small fraction of the species' genetic variance falls between populations and geographic groups thereof.
The book chapter by Barbujani and Colonna (2011) above is especially useful for various Wikipedia articles as a contrast between biodiversity in other animals and biodiversity in Homo sapiens.
- Barbujani, Guido; Ghirotto, S.; Tassi, F. (2013). "Nine things to remember about human genome diversity". Tissue Antigens. 82 (3): 155–164. doi:10.1111/tan.12165. ISSN 0001-2815.
The small genomic differences between populations and the extensive allele sharing across continents explain why historical attempts to identify, once and for good, major biological groups in humans have always failed. ... We argue that racial labels may not only obscure important differences between patients but also that they have become positively useless now that cheap and reliable methods for genotyping are making it possible to pursue the development of truly personalized medicine.
By the way, the Barbujani, Ghirotto, and Tassi (2013) article has a very interesting discussion of SNP typing overlaps across the entire individual genome among some of the first human beings to have their entire individual genomes sequenced, with an especially interesting Venn diagram that would be a good graphic to add to this article.
- Marks, Jonathan (October 2013). "The Nature/Culture of Genetic Facts". Annual Review of Anthropology. 42. Annual Reviews: 247–267. doi:10.1146/annurev-anthro-092412-155558. ISBN 978-0-8243-1942-7. ISSN 0084-6570. Retrieved 23 November 2013.
Lewontin's conclusions have stood up remarkably well, across diverse kinds of genetic markers, but this produces an odd paradox.
An author who is intimately familiar with Edwards's statistical approach, because he has been a collaborator in fieldwork and co-author on primary research articles with Edwards, is Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza. Cavalli-Sforza is a medical doctor who was a student of Ronald Fisher in statistics, who has devoted most of his career to genetic research. In an invited review article for the 2007 Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics, Cavalli-Sforza joins issue directly with the underlying factual disagreement among previous authors, but cites different previous publications.
- Cavalli-Sforza, Luigi Luca (September 2007). "Human Evolution and Its Relevance for Genetic Epidemiology". Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics. 8. Annual Reviews: 1–15, . doi:10.1146/annurev.genom.8.080706.092403. ISBN 978-0-8243-3708-7. ISSN 1527-8204. PMID 17408354. Retrieved 23 November 2013.
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GENETIC VARIATION BETWEEN AND WITHIN POPULATIONS, AND THE RACE PROBLEM
In the early 1980s, Lewontin (11) showed that when genetic variation for protein markers is estimated by comparing two or more random individuals from the same populations, or two or more individuals from the whole world, the former is 85% as large as the latter. This means that the variation between populations is the residual 15%, and hence relatively trivial. Later research carried out on a limited number of populations and mostly, though not only, on protein markers has confirmed this analysis. The Rosenberg et al. data actually bring down Lewontin’s estimate to 5%, or even less. Therefore, the variation between populations is even smaller than the original 15%, and we also know that the exact value depends on the choice of populations and markers. But the between-population variation, even if it is very small is certainly enough to reconstruct the genetic history of populations—that is their evolution—but is it enough for distinguishing races in some useful way? The comparison with other mammals shows that humans are almost at the lower extreme of the scale of between-population variation. Even so, subtle statistical methods let us assign individuals to the populations of origin, even distinguishing populations from the same continent, if we use enough genetic markers. But is this enough for distinguishing races? Darwin already had an answer. He gave two reasons for doubting the usefulness of races: (1) most characters show a clear geographic continuity, and (2) taxonomists generated a great variety of race classifications. Darwin lists the numbers of races estimated by his contemporaries, which varied from 2 to 63 races.
Rosenberg et al. (16 and later work) analyzed the relative statistical power of the most efficient subdivisions of the data with a number of clusters varying from 2 to 6, and showed that five clusters have a reasonable statistical power. Note that this result is certainly influenced by the populations chosen for the analysis. The five clusters are not very different from those of a few partitions that had already existed in the literature for some time, and the clusters are: (a) a sub-Saharan African cluster, (b) North Africa–Europe plus a part of western Asia that is approximately bounded eastward by the central Asian desert and mountains, (c) the eastern rest of Asia, (d ) Oceania, and (e) the Americas. But what good is this partition? The Ramachandran et al. (15) analysis of the same data provides a very close prediction of the genetic differences between the same populations by the simplest geographic tool: the geographic distance between the two populations, and two populations from the same continent are on average geographically closer than two from different ones. However, the Rosenberg et al. analysis (16) adds the important conclusion that the standard classification into classical continents must be modified to replace continental boundaries with the real geographic barriers: major oceans, or deserts like the Sahara, or other deserts and major mountains like those of central Asia. These barriers have certainly decreased, but they have not entirely suppressed genetic exchanges across them. Thus, the Rosenberg et al. analysis confirms a pattern of variation based on pseudocontinents that does not eliminate the basic geographic continuity of genetic variation. In fact, the extension by Ramachandran et al. of the original Rosenberg et al. analysis showed that populations that are geographically close have an overwhelming genetic similarity, well beyond that suggested by continental or pseudocontinental partitions.
A year later Cavalli-Sforza joined seventeen other genetics researchers as co-authors of a review article, published as an "open letter" to other scholars, on using racial categories in human genetics.
- Lee, Sandra; Mountain, Joanna; Koenig, Barbara; Altman, Russ; Brown, Melissa; Camarillo, Albert; Cavalli-Sforza, Luca; Cho, Mildred; Eberhardt, Jennifer; Feldman, Marcus; Ford, Richard; Greely, Henry; King, Roy; Markus, Hazel; Satz, Debra; Snipp, Matthew; Steele, Claude; Underhill, Peter (2008). "The ethics of characterizing difference: guiding principles on using racial categories in human genetics" (PDF). Genome Biology. 9 (7): 404. doi:10.1186/gb-2008-9-7-404. ISSN 1465-6906. Retrieved 3 December 2013.
We recognize that racial and ethnic categories are created and maintained within sociopolitical contexts and have shifted in meaning over time Human genetic variation within continents is, for the most part, geographically continuous and clinal, particularly in regions of the world that have not received many immigrants in recent centuries [18]. Genetic data cannot reveal an individual's full geographic ancestry precisely, although emerging research has been used to identify geographic ancestry at the continental and subcontinental levels [3,19]. Genetic clusters, however, are far from being equivalent to sociopolitical racial or ethnic categories.
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Other current review articles related to human population structure include
- Barbujani, Guido; Pigliucci, Massimo (2013). "Human races" (PDF). Current Biology. 23 (5): R185–R187. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2013.01.024. ISSN 0960-9822. Retrieved 2 December 2013.
What does this imply for the existence of human races? Basically, that people with similar genetic features can be found in distant places, and that each local population contains a vast array of genotypes. Among the first genomes completely typed were those of James Watson and Craig Venter, two U.S. geneticists of European origin; they share more alleles with Seong-Jin Kim, a Korean scientist (1,824,482 and 1,736,340, respectively) than with each other (1,715,851). This does not mean that two random Europeans are expected to be genetically closer to Koreans than to each other, but certainly highlights the coarseness of racial categorizations.
I invite my fellow Wikipedians to dig into the most current medically reliable sources to see how the new molecular genetic understanding of the human population is influencing biological approaches to human classification. This article will be the better as more editors look up more of the better sources. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 14:55, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
- There is also a much broader list of sources on many aspects of human race issues in a source list I keep in Wikipedia user space for all Wikipedians to use. Feel free to dig in and find some of the latest sources on this topic, about which there are continually new publications. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 17:47, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
- It appears that I should mention to administrators who happen to be surfing by that this article is under discretionary sanctions from an ArbCom case (as noted in a talk page notice here) and has often been subject to edit-warring by meat puppets and sockpuppets. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 16:33, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
- This is an excessively biased set of sources, we should include other scholars such as Neven Sesardic, Jerry Coyne, Henry Harpending, Gregory Cochran, Nicholas Wade etc. their view is mainstream and makes no sense to omit it.74.14.73.17 (talk) 20:27, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
- We don't push fringe sources. — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 21:07, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
- They aren't, you know that, and you are lying because you have a Western Marxist POV. The view that race is a valid taxonomy is the majority view as shown by surveys of experts. PlasticSpatula5 (talk) 03:22, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
- We don't push fringe sources. — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 21:07, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
- This is an excessively biased set of sources, we should include other scholars such as Neven Sesardic, Jerry Coyne, Henry Harpending, Gregory Cochran, Nicholas Wade etc. their view is mainstream and makes no sense to omit it.74.14.73.17 (talk) 20:27, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
- ^ Kaszycka, K. A., Štrkalj, G., & Strzałko, J. (2009). Current views of European anthropologists on race: Influence of educational and ideological background. American Anthropologist, 111(1), 43-56.
- ^ Lieberman, L., Stevenson, B. W., & Reynolds, L. T. (1989). Race and anthropology: A core concept without consensus. Anthropology & education quarterly, 20(2), 67-73.
- ^ Morning, A. (2011). The nature of race: How scientists think and teach about human difference. University of California Pr.
- ^ Wang, Q., trkalj, G., & Sun, L. (2003). On the concept of race in Chinese biological anthropology: alive and well. Current anthropology, 44(3), 403-403.
- ^ Štrkalj, G. (2007). The status of the race concept in contemporary biological anthropology: A review. Anthropologist, 9(1), 73-78.
- ^ Bamshad, M., Wooding, S., Salisbury, B. A., & Stephens, J. C. (2004). Deconstructing the relationship between genetics and race" Nature Reviews Genetics 5(8), 598-609.
- ^ Marks, Jonathan (2003). What it means to be 98% chimpanzee apes, people, and their genes. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 9780520930766.
- ^ Templeton, A. R. (1998). "Human Races: A Genetic and Evolutionary Perspective". American Anthropologist. 100 (3): 632–650. doi:10.1525/aa.1998.100.3.632.
- ^ Williams, S. M.; Templeton, A. R. (2003). "Race and Genomics". New England Journal of Medicine. 348: 2581–2582.
- ^ Templeton, A. R. The genetic and evolutionary significance of human races. In: Race and Intelligence: Separating Science From Myth. J. M. Fish, ed. Pp. 31-56. Mahwah, New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002.
- ^ American; Anthropological, Physical. "Statement on Biological Aspects of Race". American Journal Physical Anthropology. 569: 1996.
- ^ Steve Olson, Mapping Human History: Discovering the Past Through Our Genes, Boston, 2002
- ^ Kaszycka, K. A., Štrkalj, G., & Strzałko, J. (2009). Current views of European anthropologists on race: Influence of educational and ideological background. American Anthropologist, 111(1), 43-56.
- ^ Lieberman, L., Stevenson, B. W., & Reynolds, L. T. (1989). Race and anthropology: A core concept without consensus. Anthropology & education quarterly, 20(2), 67-73.
- ^ Morning, A. (2011). The nature of race: How scientists think and teach about human difference. University of California Pr.
- ^ Wang, Q., trkalj, G., & Sun, L. (2003). On the concept of race in Chinese biological anthropology: alive and well. Current anthropology, 44(3), 403-403.
- ^ Štrkalj, G. (2007). The status of the race concept in contemporary biological anthropology: A review. Anthropologist, 9(1), 73-78.
- ^ Hochman, A. (2013). Racial discrimination: How not to do it. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 44(3), 278-286. .
- ^ Kaszycka, K. A., Štrkalj, G., & Strzałko, J. (2009). Current views of European anthropologists on race: Influence of educational and ideological background. American Anthropologist, 111(1), 43-56.
- ^ Lieberman, L., Stevenson, B. W., & Reynolds, L. T. (1989). Race and anthropology: A core concept without consensus. Anthropology & education quarterly, 20(2), 67-73.
- ^ Morning, A. (2011). The nature of race: How scientists think and teach about human difference. University of California Pr.
- ^ Štrkalj, G. (2007). The status of the race concept in contemporary biological anthropology: A review. Anthropologist, 9(1), 73-78.
- ^ Marks, Jonathan (2003). What it means to be 98% chimpanzee apes, people, and their genes. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 9780520930766.
- ^ Templeton, A. R. (1998). "Human Races: A Genetic and Evolutionary Perspective". American Anthropologist. 100 (3): 632–650. doi:10.1525/aa.1998.100.3.632.
- ^ Williams, S. M.; Templeton, A. R. (2003). "Race and Genomics". New England Journal of Medicine. 348: 2581–2582.
- ^ Templeton, A. R. The genetic and evolutionary significance of human races. In: Race and Intelligence: Separating Science From Myth. J. M. Fish, ed. Pp. 31-56. Mahwah, New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002.
- ^ American; Anthropological, Physical. "Statement on Biological Aspects of Race". American Journal Physical Anthropology. 569: 1996.
- ^ Steve Olson, Mapping Human History: Discovering the Past Through Our Genes, Boston, 2002
- ^ Bamshad, M., Wooding, S., Salisbury, B. A., & Stephens, J. C. (2004). Deconstructing the relationship between genetics and race" Nature Reviews Genetics 5(8), 598-609.
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