4 ms·

It seems to me that only a fraction of the signees have biological backgrounds. I don't see a single geneticist if you don't count two signees that are in the f

It seems to me that only a fraction of the signees have biological backgrounds. I don't see a single geneticist if you don't count two signees that are in the fields of "Genetics and Society." This letter talks about "trajectory of modern genetics" but the authors don't look qualified to talk about it. As a layman (I read Reich's book), their argument seems poor. "It must also be understood that all genetic contributions to physical traits, including disease, are always influenced by environmental factors" Isn't that falsified by Tay-Sachs disease etc? "Instead, we need to recognize that meaningful patterns of genetic and biological variation exist in our species that are not racial." Is anybody arguing that this is untrue? "In short, there is a difference between finding genetic differences between individuals and constructing genetic differences across groups by making conscious choices about which types of group matter for your purposes. These sorts of groups do not exist “in nature.” They are made by human choice. This is not to say that such groups have no biological attributes in common. Rather, it is to say that the meaning and significance of the groups is produced through social interventions." This seems untrue. As far as I know, these groups are simply found through unsupervised clustering. The only choice would be how many groups you want to get.

AnimalMuppet 8y ago
I think that the problem is, some sociologists are opposed to the idea of race on sociological grounds, and object when it is what pops up out of the unsupervised clustering. The lady doth protest too much, methinks...
- cm2187 8y ago
  And it is highly problematic when science is being curbed because it doesn’t agree with the ideology of the time. As we decode and understand more of the genome, biology will be on a collision course with political correctness which dictates that everything is environment. But it may be that genes have a significant influence on our character, sexuality, intelligence, etc.
novacole 8y ago
These groups pop out with k-means clustering. But only at k=5 do you get something that looks like traditional racial grouping. Beyond that the races are unrecognizable. And so too for below that. At K=2 there are only Africans (with Europeans clustered into that group) and Asians (with native Americans and Pacific Islanders cluster into that group)[0] [0] Genetic Structure of Human Populations https://rosenberglab.stanford.edu/papers/popstruct.pdf https://rosenberglab.stanford.edu/papers/popstruct.pdf

AnimalMuppet 8y ago

I think that the problem is, some sociologists are opposed to the idea of race on sociological grounds, and object when it is what pops up out of the unsupervised clustering. The lady doth protest too much, methinks...

cm2187 8y ago
And it is highly problematic when science is being curbed because it doesn’t agree with the ideology of the time. As we decode and understand more of the genome, biology will be on a collision course with political correctness which dictates that everything is environment. But it may be that genes have a significant influence on our character, sexuality, intelligence, etc.

novacole 8y ago

These groups pop out with k-means clustering. But only at k=5 do you get something that looks like traditional racial grouping. Beyond that the races are unrecognizable. And so too for below that. At K=2 there are only Africans (with Europeans clustered into that group) and Asians (with native Americans and Pacific Islanders cluster into that group)[0] [0] Genetic Structure of Human Populations https://rosenberglab.stanford.edu/papers/popstruct.pdf https://rosenberglab.stanford.edu/papers/popstruct.pdf