5 ms·

Looks like the TL;DR conclusion is that "race" is not just a social construct, but actually has genetic markers which are expressed beyond ethnic heritage. As t

by tristor 10y ago

Looks like the TL;DR conclusion is that "race" is not just a social construct, but actually has genetic markers which are expressed beyond ethnic heritage. As the authors conclude, this could be extremely important in tailoring medical treatments for people for differences in their genetic makeup based on their race. In other words harder sciences are proving that social sciences obsession with identity politics has hindered medical advancements once again.

winter_blue 10y ago
Actually the genetic differences between races are far smaller and more blurry than most people would imagine (based on differences in appearance). The Atlantic had an article about exactly the kind of thing you're taking about, and how this kind of pseudoscience is being pushed by neo-nazis and the alt-right: http://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/510962/ http://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/510962/
- tristor 10y ago
  Thanks for once again proving that nobody can ever have a serious discussion about science related to ethnicity because someone will always jump up, point at them, and scream "racist". I wonder if it's occurred to you how many people suffer from medical conditions because they're either untreated or treated poorly because we don't bother studying and reporting on things like this, specifically and exactly because there's a hundred people just waiting in the wings to call you a racist for studying it? Nothing in the article is racist, nor is anything in my statements. Please take your ad hominem elsewhere.
  - openasocket 10y ago
    I think he's responding to the line "harder sciences are proving that social sciences obsession with identity politics has hindered medical advancements" which I would consider false. The existence of genetic diseases that are largely present in a single race has been known for a long time. Tay-Sachs is seen almost entirely in Ashkenazi Jews, Sickle Cell is mostly seen in Africans, etc. I don't think "identity politics" is rejecting this notion, or if it is it's doing a bad job of it.
  - tossaccttu78 10y ago
    > I wonder if it's occurred to you how many people suffer from medical conditions because they're either untreated or treated poorly because we don't bother studying and reporting on things like this, specifically and exactly because there's a hundred people just waiting in the wings to call you a racist for studying it? How will that solve for people of mixed heritage? Grandkids of mixed ancestry may look "white" (redheaded whitey here, with great-grandparents that are very obviously native american) and still have genetic predispositions passed down. The solution is not to clump by skin color. But to assess individuals specifically for certain markers. Please take your strawman elsewhere.
  - notahacker 10y ago
    To be honest, it's equally difficult to have a serious discussion about science related to ethnicity when people insist on using an interesting piece of research as a launchpad to make tangential and evidence-free claims that social science is harming serious research, regardless of whether they actually harbour any sympathy for the viewpoints of your garden variety racist or not. At the time of this article only two of the many subthreads related to this article had descended into politics and name-calling. One was initiated by your very own unsubstantiated attack on "identity politics". The other (considerably less favourably-received) post was claimed the notion of a social element to race that was the work of "lunatics and agitators seeking to attack and disrupt western society" and argued the researchers were doing themselves and society a disservice by engaging with it. Remind me who it was that's putting a negative slant on useful medical research again.
    - tristor 10y ago
      I'll admit my snipe at the end about identity politics was inflammatory, but it's specifically because of my frustrations trying to have any sort of serious discussion about these types of topics. People immediately throwing out the racist card and comparing you to neo-nazis for wanting to discuss the topic is /exactly/ what I mean by "identity politics" although its just one of the more pernicious subsets. My attack on "identity politics" is substantiated by my own experiences and a significant body of philosophical work, but probably this is not the appropriate forum for it. As a side note, when I started my thread there were more than 60 upvotes on the article and no comments. At least there's a discussion.
WikipediasBad 10y ago
How did you come up with that? Did you even understand the article? It is quite literally saying social/cultural changes leave an impact on genetic transcription of DNA through methylation and epigenetic markup. In fact, this proves just the opposite. That social factors are intricately tied to genetic output. What this proves false are the hardliners of each side of the debate that espouse race is a purely social construct, and the other end that naively call race a simple set of genetic traits.
- tristor 10y ago
  I am not a geneticist, so perhaps I misunderstand, but the conclusion I formed seems to be reinforced by the quotes from the authors in the article. That is, there are specific gene expressions which are relevant in a medical context affected by cultural factors that are genetically transmitted. Genetic transmission at least to me implies that a person receives these things from their parents at birth, regardless of their own specific upbringing, because of cultural factors of their parents upbringing, and so on. As in, cultural differences can be expressed over time as genetic differences. “These data suggest that the interplay between race and ethnicity as social constructs and genetic ancestry as a biological construct is more complex than we had realized,” said Noah Zaitlen, PhD, a UCSF assistant professor of medicine and co-senior author on the new study. “In a medical context both elements may provide valuable information.” Setting aside the fact that this is such a touchy issue that the authors are carefully couching their language, it looks like there may be ways in which this new information can help people by tailoring medical treatments. I'd love a ELI5 explanation of this if I'm somehow misunderstanding, but the conclusion I formed seems to be supported by the article to my reading of it. Note, I'm not taking a hardline stance. That's why I said "race is not just a social construct" in my conclusion.
  - openasocket 10y ago
    Gene expression is partially inherited and partially a product of environment. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_epigenetic_inheritance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_epigenetic_i... The classic example discussed is a study of children born during a famine. Children born during famine are going to be smaller than normal, but it was found that their children and grandchildren would be born smaller than normal, even though the famine has long since passed. This change has been attributed to a particular methylation pattern that was passed down. It's known that things like exposure to famine and abuse can change methylation patterns, but this study suggests that non-traumatic things like your cultural upbringing can affect methylation.
hx87 10y ago
Biological populations certainly do exist, it's just that they don't correlate well with prevailing concepts of "race". The average western African is more similar to the average European than to the average southern African.
- erispoe 10y ago
  Populations in Africa are also genetically more diverse than the rest of the world combined.
  - lacampbell 10y ago
    But people are ignorant of Africa in general. When they talk about an African race they're ignoring Ethiopians or khoisans or pygmies - they mean Bantu people. I don't think there's more genetic diversity among Bantus than the rest of the world combined.
    - hx87 10y ago
      > But people are ignorant of Africa in general. Not population geneticists. Africa in those cases == sub-Saharan African people, not just Bantu.
- cb18 10y ago
  Biological populations certainly do exist, it's just that they don't correlate well with prevailing concepts of "race". The average western African is more similar to the average European than to the average southern African. Absolute, utter hogwash.
  - hx87 10y ago
    Please elaborate or hold your peace.
- lacampbell 10y ago
  Source? By southern African do you mean Khoisan?
4rtemis 10y ago
I feel like biological populations can be reduced down to one individual and up to all of humanity. You can attempt to make logical decisions about where to draw these lines in between, but you'll get overlapping populations at different levels given different traits. These epigenetic flags are not dissimilar to genetic traits in that no one, nor group of them unequivocally define an individual into a biological group except if that group is "organisms that express this trait". It definitely won't square cleanly with our social macro-constructions around "race".
samudrin 10y ago
Actually my read was that environment can influence epigenetic markers, and that environment is measureable in aggregate based on ethnicity - in this study. The study does not compare other groupings of people who share a common environment and the influence on their epigenetic markers. It says nothing about identity politics.
samudrin 10y ago
Actually my read was that environment can influence epigenetic markers, and that environment is measureable in aggregate based on ethnicity - in this study. The study does not compare other groupings of people who share a common environment and the influence on their epigenetic markers. It says nothing about identity politics.
samudrin 10y ago
Actually my read was that environment can influence epigenetic markers, and that environment is measureable in aggregate based on ethnicity - in this study. The study does not compare other groupings of people who share a common environment and the influence on their epigenetic markers. It says nothing about identity politics.
ChemicalWarfare 10y ago
"Race" has 2 meanings. 1. Race as a social construct. It does exist in that capacity - as an extreme example Irish were not considered "white" in America (google for some "hilarious" images from "back in the day"). 2. Race as a biological reality. This is a touchy subject for a variety of reasons. But that doesn't mean that well documented taxonomic differences between human races are "fake". They do exist and are more than "skin deep" - things like bone density, cranial capacity, maturation etc etc. Ask your dentist if he can tell by looking at someone's jaw x-ray whether it belongs to an east asian or sub-saharan african.
- svachalek 10y ago
  What I understand of the issue is that genetic differences between populations are real, but they form a continuum whose boundaries are extremely blurry if visible at all from a genetic level. Thus the drawing of boundary lines and the assignment of individuals into those handful of categories is something subject to change from culture to culture. In other words, genetic differences do not make race a "biological reality".
  - wnoise 10y ago
    They're not visible at the level of looking at one SNP at a time. If you look at a whole lot of genes, you can get a very good idea of race.
  - fvdessen 10y ago
    If you do a clustering analysis on a large sample of DNA data you will get different clusters corresponding to the usual definitions of races or ethnicities, depending on the number of clusters you choose. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_clustering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_clustering
    - openasocket 10y ago
      That wiki page has a pretty substantial "Criticism" section. The Rosenberg et. al. paper even says their paper "should not be taken as evidence of our support of any particular concept of biological race." Their study shows that genetic distance is roughly linear with physical distance, barring obstacles like mountains and oceans. The consensus in the field, based on citations on that wiki page, seems to be that human diversity is a continuum, so any dividing lines you try to make to partition it will be largely arbitrary. It's like looking at a rainbow at trying to divide up the yellow from the orange from the red and so on: you can do that, but your color categories don't completely capture the spectrum visible.
stcredzero 10y ago
Looks like the TL;DR conclusion is that "race" is not just a social construct, but actually has genetic markers which are expressed beyond ethnic heritage. That's not how I read it. My takeaway was that "race" is a social construct that can leave epigenetic markers. In other words, culture can affect physiology. In other words harder sciences are proving that social sciences obsession with identity politics has hindered medical advancements once again. I would agree that many in the social sciences create epistemological problems for ideological reasons.
alistproducer2 10y ago
It's pretty clear you skimmed the article and read from it what you wanted, instead of what it actually said. I read through the responses and you've been pretty thoroughly proven wrong so I won't reiterate the points. Constructively, try not to see news as a chance to reinforce your existing views. Try and do the opposite. try to expand your world view.

by tristor 10y ago

winter_blue 10y ago

Actually the genetic differences between races are far smaller and more blurry than most people would imagine (based on differences in appearance). The Atlantic had an article about exactly the kind of thing you're taking about, and how this kind of pseudoscience is being pushed by neo-nazis and the alt-right: http://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/510962/ http://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/510962/

tristor 10y ago
Thanks for once again proving that nobody can ever have a serious discussion about science related to ethnicity because someone will always jump up, point at them, and scream "racist". I wonder if it's occurred to you how many people suffer from medical conditions because they're either untreated or treated poorly because we don't bother studying and reporting on things like this, specifically and exactly because there's a hundred people just waiting in the wings to call you a racist for studying it? Nothing in the article is racist, nor is anything in my statements. Please take your ad hominem elsewhere.
- openasocket 10y ago
  I think he's responding to the line "harder sciences are proving that social sciences obsession with identity politics has hindered medical advancements" which I would consider false. The existence of genetic diseases that are largely present in a single race has been known for a long time. Tay-Sachs is seen almost entirely in Ashkenazi Jews, Sickle Cell is mostly seen in Africans, etc. I don't think "identity politics" is rejecting this notion, or if it is it's doing a bad job of it.
- tossaccttu78 10y ago
  > I wonder if it's occurred to you how many people suffer from medical conditions because they're either untreated or treated poorly because we don't bother studying and reporting on things like this, specifically and exactly because there's a hundred people just waiting in the wings to call you a racist for studying it? How will that solve for people of mixed heritage? Grandkids of mixed ancestry may look "white" (redheaded whitey here, with great-grandparents that are very obviously native american) and still have genetic predispositions passed down. The solution is not to clump by skin color. But to assess individuals specifically for certain markers. Please take your strawman elsewhere.
- notahacker 10y ago
  To be honest, it's equally difficult to have a serious discussion about science related to ethnicity when people insist on using an interesting piece of research as a launchpad to make tangential and evidence-free claims that social science is harming serious research, regardless of whether they actually harbour any sympathy for the viewpoints of your garden variety racist or not. At the time of this article only two of the many subthreads related to this article had descended into politics and name-calling. One was initiated by your very own unsubstantiated attack on "identity politics". The other (considerably less favourably-received) post was claimed the notion of a social element to race that was the work of "lunatics and agitators seeking to attack and disrupt western society" and argued the researchers were doing themselves and society a disservice by engaging with it. Remind me who it was that's putting a negative slant on useful medical research again.
  - tristor 10y ago
    I'll admit my snipe at the end about identity politics was inflammatory, but it's specifically because of my frustrations trying to have any sort of serious discussion about these types of topics. People immediately throwing out the racist card and comparing you to neo-nazis for wanting to discuss the topic is /exactly/ what I mean by "identity politics" although its just one of the more pernicious subsets. My attack on "identity politics" is substantiated by my own experiences and a significant body of philosophical work, but probably this is not the appropriate forum for it. As a side note, when I started my thread there were more than 60 upvotes on the article and no comments. At least there's a discussion.

WikipediasBad 10y ago

How did you come up with that? Did you even understand the article? It is quite literally saying social/cultural changes leave an impact on genetic transcription of DNA through methylation and epigenetic markup. In fact, this proves just the opposite. That social factors are intricately tied to genetic output. What this proves false are the hardliners of each side of the debate that espouse race is a purely social construct, and the other end that naively call race a simple set of genetic traits.

tristor 10y ago
I am not a geneticist, so perhaps I misunderstand, but the conclusion I formed seems to be reinforced by the quotes from the authors in the article. That is, there are specific gene expressions which are relevant in a medical context affected by cultural factors that are genetically transmitted. Genetic transmission at least to me implies that a person receives these things from their parents at birth, regardless of their own specific upbringing, because of cultural factors of their parents upbringing, and so on. As in, cultural differences can be expressed over time as genetic differences. “These data suggest that the interplay between race and ethnicity as social constructs and genetic ancestry as a biological construct is more complex than we had realized,” said Noah Zaitlen, PhD, a UCSF assistant professor of medicine and co-senior author on the new study. “In a medical context both elements may provide valuable information.” Setting aside the fact that this is such a touchy issue that the authors are carefully couching their language, it looks like there may be ways in which this new information can help people by tailoring medical treatments. I'd love a ELI5 explanation of this if I'm somehow misunderstanding, but the conclusion I formed seems to be supported by the article to my reading of it. Note, I'm not taking a hardline stance. That's why I said "race is not just a social construct" in my conclusion.
- openasocket 10y ago
  Gene expression is partially inherited and partially a product of environment. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_epigenetic_inheritance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_epigenetic_i... The classic example discussed is a study of children born during a famine. Children born during famine are going to be smaller than normal, but it was found that their children and grandchildren would be born smaller than normal, even though the famine has long since passed. This change has been attributed to a particular methylation pattern that was passed down. It's known that things like exposure to famine and abuse can change methylation patterns, but this study suggests that non-traumatic things like your cultural upbringing can affect methylation.

hx87 10y ago

Biological populations certainly do exist, it's just that they don't correlate well with prevailing concepts of "race". The average western African is more similar to the average European than to the average southern African.

erispoe 10y ago
Populations in Africa are also genetically more diverse than the rest of the world combined.
- lacampbell 10y ago
  But people are ignorant of Africa in general. When they talk about an African race they're ignoring Ethiopians or khoisans or pygmies - they mean Bantu people. I don't think there's more genetic diversity among Bantus than the rest of the world combined.
  - hx87 10y ago
    > But people are ignorant of Africa in general. Not population geneticists. Africa in those cases == sub-Saharan African people, not just Bantu.
cb18 10y ago
Biological populations certainly do exist, it's just that they don't correlate well with prevailing concepts of "race". The average western African is more similar to the average European than to the average southern African. Absolute, utter hogwash.
- hx87 10y ago
  Please elaborate or hold your peace.
lacampbell 10y ago
Source? By southern African do you mean Khoisan?

4rtemis 10y ago

I feel like biological populations can be reduced down to one individual and up to all of humanity. You can attempt to make logical decisions about where to draw these lines in between, but you'll get overlapping populations at different levels given different traits. These epigenetic flags are not dissimilar to genetic traits in that no one, nor group of them unequivocally define an individual into a biological group except if that group is "organisms that express this trait". It definitely won't square cleanly with our social macro-constructions around "race".

samudrin 10y ago

Actually my read was that environment can influence epigenetic markers, and that environment is measureable in aggregate based on ethnicity - in this study. The study does not compare other groupings of people who share a common environment and the influence on their epigenetic markers. It says nothing about identity politics.

samudrin 10y ago

ChemicalWarfare 10y ago

"Race" has 2 meanings. 1. Race as a social construct. It does exist in that capacity - as an extreme example Irish were not considered "white" in America (google for some "hilarious" images from "back in the day"). 2. Race as a biological reality. This is a touchy subject for a variety of reasons. But that doesn't mean that well documented taxonomic differences between human races are "fake". They do exist and are more than "skin deep" - things like bone density, cranial capacity, maturation etc etc. Ask your dentist if he can tell by looking at someone's jaw x-ray whether it belongs to an east asian or sub-saharan african.

svachalek 10y ago
What I understand of the issue is that genetic differences between populations are real, but they form a continuum whose boundaries are extremely blurry if visible at all from a genetic level. Thus the drawing of boundary lines and the assignment of individuals into those handful of categories is something subject to change from culture to culture. In other words, genetic differences do not make race a "biological reality".
- wnoise 10y ago
  They're not visible at the level of looking at one SNP at a time. If you look at a whole lot of genes, you can get a very good idea of race.
- fvdessen 10y ago
  If you do a clustering analysis on a large sample of DNA data you will get different clusters corresponding to the usual definitions of races or ethnicities, depending on the number of clusters you choose. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_clustering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_clustering
  - openasocket 10y ago
    That wiki page has a pretty substantial "Criticism" section. The Rosenberg et. al. paper even says their paper "should not be taken as evidence of our support of any particular concept of biological race." Their study shows that genetic distance is roughly linear with physical distance, barring obstacles like mountains and oceans. The consensus in the field, based on citations on that wiki page, seems to be that human diversity is a continuum, so any dividing lines you try to make to partition it will be largely arbitrary. It's like looking at a rainbow at trying to divide up the yellow from the orange from the red and so on: you can do that, but your color categories don't completely capture the spectrum visible.

stcredzero 10y ago

Looks like the TL;DR conclusion is that "race" is not just a social construct, but actually has genetic markers which are expressed beyond ethnic heritage. That's not how I read it. My takeaway was that "race" is a social construct that can leave epigenetic markers. In other words, culture can affect physiology. In other words harder sciences are proving that social sciences obsession with identity politics has hindered medical advancements once again. I would agree that many in the social sciences create epistemological problems for ideological reasons.

alistproducer2 10y ago

It's pretty clear you skimmed the article and read from it what you wanted, instead of what it actually said. I read through the responses and you've been pretty thoroughly proven wrong so I won't reiterate the points. Constructively, try not to see news as a chance to reinforce your existing views. Try and do the opposite. try to expand your world view.