10 ms·

National Academies: We can’t define “race,” so stop using it in science

48 points by derbOac 4y ago

tomp 4y ago
we can't define "night" either.
- cwmma 4y ago
  yeah but with night there is just some quibbling around the edges, is civil twilight night etc. This is more like reptiles, it's a concept that when you pick at it the concept as popularly used it falls apart (for reptiles you either need to include birds or break it up into at least two groups).
- guipsp 4y ago
  Yes, and you shouldn't use it either. Do you mean night as in dark conditions or night as in the night time? When does it start, when does it end? Is it a threshold or a discrete night-not night effect? These questions don't have a right or wrong answer. So don't use the word night, or if you do, define exactly what you mean by it.
- drewcon 4y ago
  I’m not sure that’s accurate.
- User23 4y ago
  Where does a color stop being yellow and start being green? This is the classic lumping and splitting debate. It's obvious that the mere existence of multuple options for lumping and splitting doesn't imply there are no meaningful distinctions to be made. I dislike this obvious and offensive dishonesty. We can define race quite easily: A race is a largely endogamous extended family group. But but but that means you could call Yoruba people a race! Well sure, you can. Just like we can call the English or even the Cornish a race. When the Angle race and the Saxon race became exogamous with respect to each other, their distinction faded and a new Anglo-Saxon race came to be. We can also talk about a British race, by descent from William the Conqueror. I believe the Chinese have a notion of five Chinese races. In fact, the notion of lumping races as continental scale groups is an American innovation that is of dubious anthropological value. Point being that you can lump up to all humans being a single race going back to the first humans or split down to the nuclear family[1]. It's clear to me that both of those extremes aren't very interesting, but they are valid! As for useful places to lump and split, genetic screening is an obvious one. As an example, choosing to split intelligently will allow a health service to save money by avoiding unnecessarily testing for sickle cell disease. It follows that for two typical individuals of the same race, you have to go less far up their family tree to find a common ancestor than you would for two typical individuals of different races. This effect is considerably more pronounced if you restrict it to common ancestors from before 1492. Of course 1492 isn't the only date where this effect is seen. For just one example, most Britons have a common ancestor from slightly after 1066. [1] Nuclear meaning no longer able to be split (physicists weakened that metaphor a bit though!). Edit: The redefinition goes the other way, as can be seen from public domain sources like Webster's where the first sense of race is "The descendants of a common ancestor; a family, tribe, people, or nation, believed or presumed to belong to the same stock; a lineage; a breed." I will happily agree that the contemporary lowbrow usage of race to mean black people or white people, and I dunno maybe let's lump everyone else together as asian except some white or black people are hispanic instead doesn't even rise to the level of being childishly stupid.
  - dekhn 4y ago
    everything you just talked about is not 'race' but 'genetic history', and attempting to redefine the commonly used term 'race' for the scientific concept of 'genetic history' isn't super helpful.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- pessimizer 4y ago
  Can't we?
- dekhn 4y ago
  of course night is a scientifically defined concept (which also takes human subjectivity into account). The term in science is "Astronomical night" and it has an exact physical description which can be unambiguously determined through scientific measurement. comments like yours don't add much value to discussions about race.
f6v 4y ago
Generalizations can be useful in science. I know some of the definitions I use in my field probably describe groups of heterogeneous things. But these definitions can be appropriate when more granular approach isn’t feasible. But yes, everything is a spectrum, boundaries are blurry etc. it’s just often times this line of thinking doesn’t lead you anywhere.
SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
Report: https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/26902/using-population-descriptors-in-genetics-and-genomics-research-a-new https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/26902/using-popula...
taneq 4y ago
Turn back, lest this comment section become a graveyard.
- BLKNSLVR 4y ago
  <said whilst grunting as if working against ludicrous speed> Reflexive ... reactions ... suppressing...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
dr_dshiv 4y ago
“In humans, race is a socially constructed designation, a misleading and harmful surrogate for population genetic differences, and has a long history of being incorrectly identified as the major genetic reason for phenotypic differences between groups. Rather, human genetic variation is the result of many forces—historical, social, biological—and no single variable fully represents this complexity. The structure of genetic variation results from repeated human population mixing and movements across time, yet the misconception that human beings can be naturally divided into biologically distinguishable races has been extremely resilient and has become embedded in scientific research, medical practice and technologies, and formal education.” Dumb question… why would using ethnicity (which is accepted) solve any issues? And, can people choose their ethnicity or is it determined at birth? Complicated, I bet.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  What would you be using ethnicity for? I don't think they're making a case for some sort of trans-racial ethnic self-identification being used in science as a replacement for race. I think you substitute race with precision. If a cluster of different genes or characteristics are commonly found together, say which ones you're talking about, how often they're found together (as opposed to apart), and why you think that's relevant. Talking about race is honestly often ultimately handwaving in the vague direction of 19th century biblical scholars.
- auggierose 4y ago
  Ethnicity is just one of many factors, and is related to your culture, which is related to how you live your life, which can definitely be a factor. But yes, if your "ethnic" groups look like [1], ethnicity is really just another word for race, because you are not asked the bullet points, which certainly are ethnic (English vs. African, for example), but the headers (White vs. Black). [1] https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/style-guide/ethnic-groups https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/style-gui...
- JoeDaDude 4y ago
  To be fair, there is a clear definition of ethnicity as "the quality or fact of belonging to a population group or subgroup made up of people who share a common cultural background or descent". So while an individual cannot decide who they descended from, they can choose whether or not to accept a set of cultural norms. People routinely change religions, learn other languages, or follow other traditions outside the ethnic cultural norms they were born into. The TFA states that ethnicity is only one of many potential "population descriptors" and recommends that researchers "use multiple descriptors rather than a single, overly broad category".
NotYourLawyer 4y ago
Lots of categories have fuzzy edges. It doesn’t mean they’re not useful or that they don’t exist.
- drewcon 4y ago
  I defy you to describe race in certain terms.
  - naasking 4y ago
    What you mean by "certain terms"? The OP said plenty of definitions are fuzzy. "Species" doesn't even have a rigourous definition when it comes down to it. Pretty much all taxonomies beyond the Standard Model of particle physics are fictions. In science, the only thing that matters is whether a category is useful for analytical purposes.
    - klodolph 4y ago
      “Race” is significantly more fuzzy than “species”. There are edge cases where people will argue where to draw lines between species. However, it’s profoundly challenging to draw lines between “races” in the first place.
      - naasking 4y ago
        Can you quantify how significant the fuzziness has to be before it should not be subject to analysis? Species is a lot fuzzier than you think.
        klodolph 4y ago
        > Species is a lot fuzzier than you think. As someone who, as a child, read books on the history of taxonomy and how taxonomy has changed over the centuries, I would love to hear you list what mistaken beliefs about species you claim that I have. Seriously, though. I am not interested in being the topic of conversation, so please do not make me the subject of your comments.
pelagicAustral 4y ago
I'm not sure if should post my comment or call the cops on myself.
tristor 4y ago
> Rather, human genetic variation is the result of many forces—historical, social, biological—and no single variable fully represents this complexity. Would it not be correct to state that "race" is a social construction intended as a stand-in to identify sets of interconnected factors which impact a particular population, such as historical, social, and biological? Is the issue that the word "race" has too much baggage, or that the very concept of "race" isn't useful? It sounds to me, based on the argument in the article, that the concept has some usefulness, even if it has been misused in such ways to have significant baggage. It is necessarily less precise than defining each variable independently in a matrix.
- dekhn 4y ago
  Race is a proxy measure that weakly correlates with genetic history. Seems easier to just use the direct measure which can be determined with high accuracy (identity by descent through DNA sequencing). I think the problem is that race is so deeply embedded in people's minds that even scientists who try to be objective struggle to disentangle theories from their preconcieved notions.
  - dpkirchner 4y ago
    It's probably not all that easy to sequence the DNA of study participants when they number in the thousands. Although I guess you only have to do it once per person.
    - dekhn 4y ago
      It's trivially easy and cheap to determine genetic history by dna sequenceing; it doesn't require sequencing the whole genome, just a tiny bit of it. 23&Me does it with their tiny little exome test.
      - dpkirchner 4y ago
        At $100 each, adding $1M to a small study of only 10000. And biasing the results by only including people willing to hand over their DNA. I'm not sure the net result will be improved science.
readthenotes1 4y ago
Does this mean that White supremacy doesn't exist as well?
GalenErso 4y ago
HN is dead. Just look at these comments. Dang, nuke the thread.
Overtonwindow 4y ago
Race is in the eye of the viewer. You can choose your race, but it has no value unless other people recognize it. Ultimately, though, race is defined by skin color, which is a quick way to identify people. This article seems to be creating an argument, where one was never needed. Sometimes society does things to help organize itself.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Ultimately, though, race is defined by skin color No, it's not; a couple of them have names that refer to that trait.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
For such a flimsy concept, race is surprisingly stubborn and resilient. Already a few people saying yeah it's not perfect but it's a rough approximation. No, that's the whole point, it's not. It's astrology level science. There's no there there.
- dsr_ 4y ago
  Humans are pattern-finders and pattern-inventors. Astrology is a good comparison. "Race" is about as real as :) is a face.
- edgyquant 4y ago
  >astrology level science No it isn’t, it allows us to make accurate predictions about health. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=35182504&goto=item%3Fid%3D35181575%2335182504 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=35182504&goto=item%3Fi... That’s real science, saying it doesn’t exist is astrology level pseudoscience.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- fwlr 4y ago
  I think this is a common misperception whenever a research body makes an announcement on race like this. It is not that there is no there, there. In fact there is so much there that race fails as a concept because it is (ridiculously) insufficiently granular, not because there’s no underlying differences. If you do any kind of clustering on genetic expression data, all kinds of categories much more detailed than racial categories jump out - a good example is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:European_genetic_structure_(based_on_SNPs)_PC_analysis.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:European_genetic_structur... which shows not only that there are extremely distinct genetic clusters between locations like Europe, China, and America, there are actually highly distinct genetic clusters for each individual European nation - in fact there are even moderately distinct genetic clusters for different geographical areas within a single European nation. To use the astrology metaphor, the scientific critique would be something like “we need to do away with astrology because months don’t capture the differences - there’s actually significant differences on the level of individual days of birth, even on the level of morning/afternoon/night time of birth”. We take the wrong message from these announcements when we conclude that there’s no differences at all.
sjducb 4y ago
This is a bit ridiculous. It's well known in medicine that members of different ethnic groups have different risks and complications. This article describes how members of different ethnic groups have different complications in pregnancy. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7290488/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7290488/ Here is a review about how race affects Adverse Drug Experiences (In response to commonly prescribed drugs), published in the journal of ethnic and racial health disparities. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40615-015-0101-3 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40615-015-0101-3 Sure it would be better to sequence each person's genome to accurately place them on the spectrum of human genetic diversity, but that's not practical in a hospital or emergency setting.
- fenomas 4y ago
  > This is a bit ridiculous. It's well known in medicine that members of different ethnic groups.. Emphasis added. Race != ethnicity; TFA argues against using the former and suggests using the latter (with other things). > Some of the key recommendations focus on getting rid of the use of race and instead focusing on what the report terms "population descriptors." These can be things like ethnicity, region of residence, and so on.
  - sjducb 4y ago
    Image you've got a black patient in front of you and you're choosing between two drugs. One of the drugs has a greater risk of nasty side affects for the black patient. Which drug do you give the patient? Should the research that tells you which drug to give be banned?
    - dekhn 4y ago
      Not a great argument. Drug response is based mostly in genetic history, partly in life experience (IE, if you live near a highly polluting plant and develop an allergy while growing up there). While many papers on drug response use race as a variable, that variable is highly confounded and is often not sufficient to make an accurate determination for medication prescription purposes. Such research is not being banned or proposed to be banned- in fact, there's a lot more interest now in understanding the relationship between genetic history and response to disease, but the work is still fairly primitive.
Euphorbium 4y ago
Can we define species? No.
blahblah1234567 4y ago
This is a classic, textbook example of entryism. It's happening to tons of institutions, including science & medical institutions, in the USA. "Entryism (also called entrism, enterism, or infiltration) is a political strategy in which an organisation or state encourages its members or supporters to join another, usually larger, organization in an attempt to expand influence and expand their ideas and program. " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entryism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entryism
graphe 4y ago
Academia does not define social norms.
AlgorithmicTime 4y ago
We can determine what race you are, with extremely high probability, from your DNA sequence.
- kybernetikos 4y ago
  That requires there to be a 'correct' answer to what race you are.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
shkkmo 4y ago
There is a ridiculous game of telephone and this is shitty science journalism. >The report offers a decision tree to help researchers choose whether race, ethnicity or indigeneity, geography, genetic ancestry, or genetic similarity are most appropriate for their work. So, "We can't define 'race' so stop using it in science" is a factually incorrect description of the report and is instead click bait journalism intended incite controversy where none exists.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
hackrnusr 4y ago
Here's 'Loury on Murray' for a Friday night laugh: https://glennloury.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-charles-murray https://glennloury.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-charles-murr...

48 points by derbOac 4y ago

tomp 4y ago

we can't define "night" either.

cwmma 4y ago
yeah but with night there is just some quibbling around the edges, is civil twilight night etc. This is more like reptiles, it's a concept that when you pick at it the concept as popularly used it falls apart (for reptiles you either need to include birds or break it up into at least two groups).
guipsp 4y ago
Yes, and you shouldn't use it either. Do you mean night as in dark conditions or night as in the night time? When does it start, when does it end? Is it a threshold or a discrete night-not night effect? These questions don't have a right or wrong answer. So don't use the word night, or if you do, define exactly what you mean by it.
drewcon 4y ago
I’m not sure that’s accurate.
User23 4y ago
Where does a color stop being yellow and start being green? This is the classic lumping and splitting debate. It's obvious that the mere existence of multuple options for lumping and splitting doesn't imply there are no meaningful distinctions to be made. I dislike this obvious and offensive dishonesty. We can define race quite easily: A race is a largely endogamous extended family group. But but but that means you could call Yoruba people a race! Well sure, you can. Just like we can call the English or even the Cornish a race. When the Angle race and the Saxon race became exogamous with respect to each other, their distinction faded and a new Anglo-Saxon race came to be. We can also talk about a British race, by descent from William the Conqueror. I believe the Chinese have a notion of five Chinese races. In fact, the notion of lumping races as continental scale groups is an American innovation that is of dubious anthropological value. Point being that you can lump up to all humans being a single race going back to the first humans or split down to the nuclear family[1]. It's clear to me that both of those extremes aren't very interesting, but they are valid! As for useful places to lump and split, genetic screening is an obvious one. As an example, choosing to split intelligently will allow a health service to save money by avoiding unnecessarily testing for sickle cell disease. It follows that for two typical individuals of the same race, you have to go less far up their family tree to find a common ancestor than you would for two typical individuals of different races. This effect is considerably more pronounced if you restrict it to common ancestors from before 1492. Of course 1492 isn't the only date where this effect is seen. For just one example, most Britons have a common ancestor from slightly after 1066. [1] Nuclear meaning no longer able to be split (physicists weakened that metaphor a bit though!). Edit: The redefinition goes the other way, as can be seen from public domain sources like Webster's where the first sense of race is "The descendants of a common ancestor; a family, tribe, people, or nation, believed or presumed to belong to the same stock; a lineage; a breed." I will happily agree that the contemporary lowbrow usage of race to mean black people or white people, and I dunno maybe let's lump everyone else together as asian except some white or black people are hispanic instead doesn't even rise to the level of being childishly stupid.
- dekhn 4y ago
  everything you just talked about is not 'race' but 'genetic history', and attempting to redefine the commonly used term 'race' for the scientific concept of 'genetic history' isn't super helpful.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pessimizer 4y ago
Can't we?
dekhn 4y ago
of course night is a scientifically defined concept (which also takes human subjectivity into account). The term in science is "Astronomical night" and it has an exact physical description which can be unambiguously determined through scientific measurement. comments like yours don't add much value to discussions about race.

f6v 4y ago

Generalizations can be useful in science. I know some of the definitions I use in my field probably describe groups of heterogeneous things. But these definitions can be appropriate when more granular approach isn’t feasible. But yes, everything is a spectrum, boundaries are blurry etc. it’s just often times this line of thinking doesn’t lead you anywhere.

SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago

Report: https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/26902/using-population-descriptors-in-genetics-and-genomics-research-a-new https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/26902/using-popula...

taneq 4y ago

Turn back, lest this comment section become a graveyard.

BLKNSLVR 4y ago
<said whilst grunting as if working against ludicrous speed> Reflexive ... reactions ... suppressing...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

dr_dshiv 4y ago

“In humans, race is a socially constructed designation, a misleading and harmful surrogate for population genetic differences, and has a long history of being incorrectly identified as the major genetic reason for phenotypic differences between groups. Rather, human genetic variation is the result of many forces—historical, social, biological—and no single variable fully represents this complexity. The structure of genetic variation results from repeated human population mixing and movements across time, yet the misconception that human beings can be naturally divided into biologically distinguishable races has been extremely resilient and has become embedded in scientific research, medical practice and technologies, and formal education.” Dumb question… why would using ethnicity (which is accepted) solve any issues? And, can people choose their ethnicity or is it determined at birth? Complicated, I bet.

pessimizer 4y ago
What would you be using ethnicity for? I don't think they're making a case for some sort of trans-racial ethnic self-identification being used in science as a replacement for race. I think you substitute race with precision. If a cluster of different genes or characteristics are commonly found together, say which ones you're talking about, how often they're found together (as opposed to apart), and why you think that's relevant. Talking about race is honestly often ultimately handwaving in the vague direction of 19th century biblical scholars.
auggierose 4y ago
Ethnicity is just one of many factors, and is related to your culture, which is related to how you live your life, which can definitely be a factor. But yes, if your "ethnic" groups look like [1], ethnicity is really just another word for race, because you are not asked the bullet points, which certainly are ethnic (English vs. African, for example), but the headers (White vs. Black). [1] https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/style-guide/ethnic-groups https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/style-gui...
JoeDaDude 4y ago
To be fair, there is a clear definition of ethnicity as "the quality or fact of belonging to a population group or subgroup made up of people who share a common cultural background or descent". So while an individual cannot decide who they descended from, they can choose whether or not to accept a set of cultural norms. People routinely change religions, learn other languages, or follow other traditions outside the ethnic cultural norms they were born into. The TFA states that ethnicity is only one of many potential "population descriptors" and recommends that researchers "use multiple descriptors rather than a single, overly broad category".

NotYourLawyer 4y ago

Lots of categories have fuzzy edges. It doesn’t mean they’re not useful or that they don’t exist.

drewcon 4y ago
I defy you to describe race in certain terms.
- naasking 4y ago
  What you mean by "certain terms"? The OP said plenty of definitions are fuzzy. "Species" doesn't even have a rigourous definition when it comes down to it. Pretty much all taxonomies beyond the Standard Model of particle physics are fictions. In science, the only thing that matters is whether a category is useful for analytical purposes.
  - klodolph 4y ago
    “Race” is significantly more fuzzy than “species”. There are edge cases where people will argue where to draw lines between species. However, it’s profoundly challenging to draw lines between “races” in the first place.
    - naasking 4y ago
      Can you quantify how significant the fuzziness has to be before it should not be subject to analysis? Species is a lot fuzzier than you think.
      - klodolph 4y ago
        > Species is a lot fuzzier than you think. As someone who, as a child, read books on the history of taxonomy and how taxonomy has changed over the centuries, I would love to hear you list what mistaken beliefs about species you claim that I have. Seriously, though. I am not interested in being the topic of conversation, so please do not make me the subject of your comments.

pelagicAustral 4y ago

I'm not sure if should post my comment or call the cops on myself.

tristor 4y ago

> Rather, human genetic variation is the result of many forces—historical, social, biological—and no single variable fully represents this complexity. Would it not be correct to state that "race" is a social construction intended as a stand-in to identify sets of interconnected factors which impact a particular population, such as historical, social, and biological? Is the issue that the word "race" has too much baggage, or that the very concept of "race" isn't useful? It sounds to me, based on the argument in the article, that the concept has some usefulness, even if it has been misused in such ways to have significant baggage. It is necessarily less precise than defining each variable independently in a matrix.

dekhn 4y ago
Race is a proxy measure that weakly correlates with genetic history. Seems easier to just use the direct measure which can be determined with high accuracy (identity by descent through DNA sequencing). I think the problem is that race is so deeply embedded in people's minds that even scientists who try to be objective struggle to disentangle theories from their preconcieved notions.
- dpkirchner 4y ago
  It's probably not all that easy to sequence the DNA of study participants when they number in the thousands. Although I guess you only have to do it once per person.
  - dekhn 4y ago
    It's trivially easy and cheap to determine genetic history by dna sequenceing; it doesn't require sequencing the whole genome, just a tiny bit of it. 23&Me does it with their tiny little exome test.
    - dpkirchner 4y ago
      At $100 each, adding $1M to a small study of only 10000. And biasing the results by only including people willing to hand over their DNA. I'm not sure the net result will be improved science.

readthenotes1 4y ago

Does this mean that White supremacy doesn't exist as well?

GalenErso 4y ago

HN is dead. Just look at these comments. Dang, nuke the thread.

Overtonwindow 4y ago

Race is in the eye of the viewer. You can choose your race, but it has no value unless other people recognize it. Ultimately, though, race is defined by skin color, which is a quick way to identify people. This article seems to be creating an argument, where one was never needed. Sometimes society does things to help organize itself.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dragonwriter 4y ago
> Ultimately, though, race is defined by skin color No, it's not; a couple of them have names that refer to that trait.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

For such a flimsy concept, race is surprisingly stubborn and resilient. Already a few people saying yeah it's not perfect but it's a rough approximation. No, that's the whole point, it's not. It's astrology level science. There's no there there.

dsr_ 4y ago
Humans are pattern-finders and pattern-inventors. Astrology is a good comparison. "Race" is about as real as :) is a face.
edgyquant 4y ago
>astrology level science No it isn’t, it allows us to make accurate predictions about health. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=35182504&goto=item%3Fid%3D35181575%2335182504 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=35182504&goto=item%3Fi... That’s real science, saying it doesn’t exist is astrology level pseudoscience.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
fwlr 4y ago
I think this is a common misperception whenever a research body makes an announcement on race like this. It is not that there is no there, there. In fact there is so much there that race fails as a concept because it is (ridiculously) insufficiently granular, not because there’s no underlying differences. If you do any kind of clustering on genetic expression data, all kinds of categories much more detailed than racial categories jump out - a good example is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:European_genetic_structure_(based_on_SNPs)_PC_analysis.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:European_genetic_structur... which shows not only that there are extremely distinct genetic clusters between locations like Europe, China, and America, there are actually highly distinct genetic clusters for each individual European nation - in fact there are even moderately distinct genetic clusters for different geographical areas within a single European nation. To use the astrology metaphor, the scientific critique would be something like “we need to do away with astrology because months don’t capture the differences - there’s actually significant differences on the level of individual days of birth, even on the level of morning/afternoon/night time of birth”. We take the wrong message from these announcements when we conclude that there’s no differences at all.

sjducb 4y ago

This is a bit ridiculous. It's well known in medicine that members of different ethnic groups have different risks and complications. This article describes how members of different ethnic groups have different complications in pregnancy. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7290488/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7290488/ Here is a review about how race affects Adverse Drug Experiences (In response to commonly prescribed drugs), published in the journal of ethnic and racial health disparities. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40615-015-0101-3 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40615-015-0101-3 Sure it would be better to sequence each person's genome to accurately place them on the spectrum of human genetic diversity, but that's not practical in a hospital or emergency setting.

fenomas 4y ago
> This is a bit ridiculous. It's well known in medicine that members of different ethnic groups.. Emphasis added. Race != ethnicity; TFA argues against using the former and suggests using the latter (with other things). > Some of the key recommendations focus on getting rid of the use of race and instead focusing on what the report terms "population descriptors." These can be things like ethnicity, region of residence, and so on.
- sjducb 4y ago
  Image you've got a black patient in front of you and you're choosing between two drugs. One of the drugs has a greater risk of nasty side affects for the black patient. Which drug do you give the patient? Should the research that tells you which drug to give be banned?
  - dekhn 4y ago
    Not a great argument. Drug response is based mostly in genetic history, partly in life experience (IE, if you live near a highly polluting plant and develop an allergy while growing up there). While many papers on drug response use race as a variable, that variable is highly confounded and is often not sufficient to make an accurate determination for medication prescription purposes. Such research is not being banned or proposed to be banned- in fact, there's a lot more interest now in understanding the relationship between genetic history and response to disease, but the work is still fairly primitive.

Euphorbium 4y ago

Can we define species? No.

blahblah1234567 4y ago

This is a classic, textbook example of entryism. It's happening to tons of institutions, including science & medical institutions, in the USA. "Entryism (also called entrism, enterism, or infiltration) is a political strategy in which an organisation or state encourages its members or supporters to join another, usually larger, organization in an attempt to expand influence and expand their ideas and program. " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entryism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entryism

graphe 4y ago

Academia does not define social norms.

AlgorithmicTime 4y ago

We can determine what race you are, with extremely high probability, from your DNA sequence.

kybernetikos 4y ago
That requires there to be a 'correct' answer to what race you are.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

shkkmo 4y ago

There is a ridiculous game of telephone and this is shitty science journalism. >The report offers a decision tree to help researchers choose whether race, ethnicity or indigeneity, geography, genetic ancestry, or genetic similarity are most appropriate for their work. So, "We can't define 'race' so stop using it in science" is a factually incorrect description of the report and is instead click bait journalism intended incite controversy where none exists.

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hackrnusr 4y ago

Here's 'Loury on Murray' for a Friday night laugh: https://glennloury.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-charles-murray https://glennloury.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-charles-murr...