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Ironically, given that people of African descent have the least Neanderthal DNA, this study actually bolsters a supposedly discredited, baseless stereotype that

Ironically, given that people of African descent have the least Neanderthal DNA, this study actually bolsters a supposedly discredited, baseless stereotype that they are less sensitive to pain: > https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4843483/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4843483/

DangitBobby 6y ago
And here's an article that claims they feel more pain! https://www.diagnosticimaging.com/view/mri-reveals-greater-pain-response-african-americans https://www.diagnosticimaging.com/view/mri-reveals-greater-p...
vanderZwan 6y ago
"People of African descent" have the highest genetic diversity among all human subgroups. That fact alone makes making generalizations based on supposed genetic make-up preposterous. Also, you have to be absurdly blind to the history of scientific racism to not understand that the stereotype of being less sensitive to pain has a historical origin in justifying abusing slaves by dehumanizing them.
- ralfd 6y ago
  The slave trade didn’t sample randomly from the very big continent though. Most African-Americans descent from West/Central-Africa.
- krona 6y ago
  "People of African descent" have the highest genetic diversity among all human subgroups. Isn't that a truism? All humans are of African descent.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Jaruzel 6y ago
    I am NOT approaching this from any kind of racial stereotyping, but merely from a genetic point of view, but reading the article I had the same thought. I had previously understood, that native domestic sub-Saharan Africans (i.e. those living on the continent, with clear African based heritage) did not have any Neanderthal DNA, as Neanderthals were further down the evolutionary line of the first emigration out of Africa, and were primarily European based. Therefore those with purely African genetic history would never had interbred with them. Is this still true, or have I been walking around with a massive misunderstanding here? As a footnote, We need to still be able to ask these questions without being afraid of the racism response. We are all different, we should embrace that and not let it affect scientific discussion or discovery.
    - mkl 6y ago
      As is usually the case, reality is to messy for simple explanations like this to be completely correct. Europe and Africa are pretty close, so there has been a lot of migration to and fro, some of it bringing Neanderthal DNA into Africa: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/africans-carry-surprising-amount-neanderthal-dna https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/africans-carry-surpr...
      - NotableAlamode 6y ago
        From the quoted article: - "modern Europeans and East Asians apparently inherited about 2% of their DNA from Neanderthals" - "African individuals on average had [...] more Neanderthal DNA than previously thought—about [...] 0.3% of their genome." So the article seems to confirm a 10x difference in Neanderthals DNA, which might be significant. It's also unclear what they mean by "Africans, did the same include, e.g. Egyptians of Greek descent?
      - datameta 6y ago
        Fascinating revelation. What still puzzles me is how Asian populations have a slightly higher average proportion of Neanderthal DNA when their range was predominantly over the European part of Eurasia.
  - mkl 6y ago
    This isn't quite comparing the right groups. The comparison is of the people within Africa and the people outside Africa: "Africans are more genetically diverse than the inhabitants of the rest of the world combined" - https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/30/AR2009043002485.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/0..., which seems to be referring to this: https://faculty.washington.edu/wjs18/Pop_Structure/TishkoffAfrican.pdf https://faculty.washington.edu/wjs18/Pop_Structure/TishkoffA... Some more info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_variation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_variation
- mytailorisrich 6y ago
  > "People of African descent" have the highest genetic diversity among all human subgroups. Yes, but that has nothing to do with Neanderthal interbreeding. Sub-Saharan Africans have less Neanderthal DNA that other humans from outside of Africa because interbreeding occurred when we left Africa and met Neanderthals in Eurasia. Based on that it is not crazy to formulate the hypothesis that any traits we may have inherited from Neanderthals might be less pronounced in sub-Saharan Africans, though obviously hypotheses are not facts and one has to be very prudent, and even more so when calling on racial stereotypes...
- globular-toast 6y ago
  Look at it the other way around: white people have higher pain sensitivity. You don't have to make a generalisation about all peoples from Africa, you can just make a generalisation about white people. We know there was a genetic bottleneck. Comments like being "absurdly blind" are stupid. Are you going to discredit current science because of some loosely related historical events?
  - marci 6y ago
    If we resume the finding this in term of skin color: "some middle-aged people (mostly 'white') have higher pain sensitivity than other middle-aged people (mostly 'white') From the article: > About 0.4% of participants in the UK Biobank, a genome database of half a million British people, who reported on their pain symptoms had one copy of the mutated gene. No one had two, like Neanderthals. Participants with the mutated version of the gene were about 7% more likely to report pain in their lives than were people without it. About UK Biobank: > The study is following about 500,000 volunteers in the UK, enrolled at ages from 40 to 69. Initial enrollment took place over four years from 2006, and the volunteers will be followed for at least 30 years thereafter. I wonder if the same happens to younger people.
- NotableAlamode 6y ago
  blind to the history of scientific racism Slavery is much older than the period that the term "scientific racism" refers to. Older slave holders had no trouble justifying slavery. Interestingly, the many slave rebellions of antiquity (and after) by and large did not seek to abolish slavery, only to switch who's a slave, and who's a slave holder.
  - vanderZwan 6y ago
    > Slavery is much older than the period that the term "scientific racism" refers to. If you know this, then you also know that these are not comparable forms of slavery. Romans (or whatever) did not treat their slaves as sub-humans.
    - rsynnott 6y ago
      > Romans (or whatever) did not treat their slaves as sub-humans I mean, that's pushing it. Obviously, their concept of slavery wasn't really based on ethnicity, and manumission was generally more common and socially acceptable than it was in American slavery. But the treatment of slaves in Ancient Rome was certainly inhuman by modern standards. The Romans also had mechanisms to, in practice, suppress the political power of descendants of slaves; in practice almost all freedmen went into one of the urban tribes (the very wealthy could buy into a rural tribe), making their votes largely irrelevant, for instance. It's reasonable to view New World slavery as a special evil, but Roman slavery was Pretty Bad, too.
      - marci 6y ago
        > The Romans also had mechanisms to, in practice, suppress the political power of descendants of slaves; in practice almost all freedmen went into one of the urban tribes (the very wealthy could buy into a rural tribe), making their votes largely irrelevant, for instance. It's reasonable to view New World slavery as a special evil, but Roman slavery was Pretty Bad, too. Those mechanisms sound a lot like present day gerrymandering[1][2] coupled with redlining[3][2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering_in_the_United_States#Racial_gerrymandering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering_in_the_United_S... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpamjJtXqFI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpamjJtXqFI [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining#Racial_segregation_in_American_cities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining#Racial_segregation_i... [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2roWLzrqOjQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2roWLzrqOjQ
rsynnott 6y ago
0.4% of people who _were already reporting on their pain_ (likely a group who are plausibly more likely to have some sort of pain issues than the general population) had this gene. That is, this is extremely rare. And the effect was small. It shouldn't bolster any stereotypes.

DangitBobby 6y ago

And here's an article that claims they feel more pain! https://www.diagnosticimaging.com/view/mri-reveals-greater-pain-response-african-americans https://www.diagnosticimaging.com/view/mri-reveals-greater-p...

vanderZwan 6y ago

"People of African descent" have the highest genetic diversity among all human subgroups. That fact alone makes making generalizations based on supposed genetic make-up preposterous. Also, you have to be absurdly blind to the history of scientific racism to not understand that the stereotype of being less sensitive to pain has a historical origin in justifying abusing slaves by dehumanizing them.

ralfd 6y ago
The slave trade didn’t sample randomly from the very big continent though. Most African-Americans descent from West/Central-Africa.
krona 6y ago
"People of African descent" have the highest genetic diversity among all human subgroups. Isn't that a truism? All humans are of African descent.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Jaruzel 6y ago
  I am NOT approaching this from any kind of racial stereotyping, but merely from a genetic point of view, but reading the article I had the same thought. I had previously understood, that native domestic sub-Saharan Africans (i.e. those living on the continent, with clear African based heritage) did not have any Neanderthal DNA, as Neanderthals were further down the evolutionary line of the first emigration out of Africa, and were primarily European based. Therefore those with purely African genetic history would never had interbred with them. Is this still true, or have I been walking around with a massive misunderstanding here? As a footnote, We need to still be able to ask these questions without being afraid of the racism response. We are all different, we should embrace that and not let it affect scientific discussion or discovery.
  - mkl 6y ago
    As is usually the case, reality is to messy for simple explanations like this to be completely correct. Europe and Africa are pretty close, so there has been a lot of migration to and fro, some of it bringing Neanderthal DNA into Africa: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/africans-carry-surprising-amount-neanderthal-dna https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/africans-carry-surpr...
    - NotableAlamode 6y ago
      From the quoted article: - "modern Europeans and East Asians apparently inherited about 2% of their DNA from Neanderthals" - "African individuals on average had [...] more Neanderthal DNA than previously thought—about [...] 0.3% of their genome." So the article seems to confirm a 10x difference in Neanderthals DNA, which might be significant. It's also unclear what they mean by "Africans, did the same include, e.g. Egyptians of Greek descent?
    - datameta 6y ago
      Fascinating revelation. What still puzzles me is how Asian populations have a slightly higher average proportion of Neanderthal DNA when their range was predominantly over the European part of Eurasia.
- mkl 6y ago
  This isn't quite comparing the right groups. The comparison is of the people within Africa and the people outside Africa: "Africans are more genetically diverse than the inhabitants of the rest of the world combined" - https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/30/AR2009043002485.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/0..., which seems to be referring to this: https://faculty.washington.edu/wjs18/Pop_Structure/TishkoffAfrican.pdf https://faculty.washington.edu/wjs18/Pop_Structure/TishkoffA... Some more info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_variation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_variation
mytailorisrich 6y ago
> "People of African descent" have the highest genetic diversity among all human subgroups. Yes, but that has nothing to do with Neanderthal interbreeding. Sub-Saharan Africans have less Neanderthal DNA that other humans from outside of Africa because interbreeding occurred when we left Africa and met Neanderthals in Eurasia. Based on that it is not crazy to formulate the hypothesis that any traits we may have inherited from Neanderthals might be less pronounced in sub-Saharan Africans, though obviously hypotheses are not facts and one has to be very prudent, and even more so when calling on racial stereotypes...
globular-toast 6y ago
Look at it the other way around: white people have higher pain sensitivity. You don't have to make a generalisation about all peoples from Africa, you can just make a generalisation about white people. We know there was a genetic bottleneck. Comments like being "absurdly blind" are stupid. Are you going to discredit current science because of some loosely related historical events?
- marci 6y ago
  If we resume the finding this in term of skin color: "some middle-aged people (mostly 'white') have higher pain sensitivity than other middle-aged people (mostly 'white') From the article: > About 0.4% of participants in the UK Biobank, a genome database of half a million British people, who reported on their pain symptoms had one copy of the mutated gene. No one had two, like Neanderthals. Participants with the mutated version of the gene were about 7% more likely to report pain in their lives than were people without it. About UK Biobank: > The study is following about 500,000 volunteers in the UK, enrolled at ages from 40 to 69. Initial enrollment took place over four years from 2006, and the volunteers will be followed for at least 30 years thereafter. I wonder if the same happens to younger people.
NotableAlamode 6y ago
blind to the history of scientific racism Slavery is much older than the period that the term "scientific racism" refers to. Older slave holders had no trouble justifying slavery. Interestingly, the many slave rebellions of antiquity (and after) by and large did not seek to abolish slavery, only to switch who's a slave, and who's a slave holder.
- vanderZwan 6y ago
  > Slavery is much older than the period that the term "scientific racism" refers to. If you know this, then you also know that these are not comparable forms of slavery. Romans (or whatever) did not treat their slaves as sub-humans.
  - rsynnott 6y ago
    > Romans (or whatever) did not treat their slaves as sub-humans I mean, that's pushing it. Obviously, their concept of slavery wasn't really based on ethnicity, and manumission was generally more common and socially acceptable than it was in American slavery. But the treatment of slaves in Ancient Rome was certainly inhuman by modern standards. The Romans also had mechanisms to, in practice, suppress the political power of descendants of slaves; in practice almost all freedmen went into one of the urban tribes (the very wealthy could buy into a rural tribe), making their votes largely irrelevant, for instance. It's reasonable to view New World slavery as a special evil, but Roman slavery was Pretty Bad, too.
    - marci 6y ago
      > The Romans also had mechanisms to, in practice, suppress the political power of descendants of slaves; in practice almost all freedmen went into one of the urban tribes (the very wealthy could buy into a rural tribe), making their votes largely irrelevant, for instance. It's reasonable to view New World slavery as a special evil, but Roman slavery was Pretty Bad, too. Those mechanisms sound a lot like present day gerrymandering[1][2] coupled with redlining[3][2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering_in_the_United_States#Racial_gerrymandering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering_in_the_United_S... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpamjJtXqFI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpamjJtXqFI [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining#Racial_segregation_in_American_cities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining#Racial_segregation_i... [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2roWLzrqOjQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2roWLzrqOjQ

rsynnott 6y ago

0.4% of people who _were already reporting on their pain_ (likely a group who are plausibly more likely to have some sort of pain issues than the general population) had this gene. That is, this is extremely rare. And the effect was small. It shouldn't bolster any stereotypes.