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> Rather, human genetic variation is the result of many forces—historical, social, biological—and no single variable fully represents this complexity. Would it

> 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.
      - dekhn 4y ago
        You're not adding anything to this debate- studies already do this (and budget for it). Lightweight genetic testing like this is far cheaper in bulk and the scientists and doctors running the study are likely going ot want that data, so I don't see any problem there. As for bias and people not consenting to hand over their DNA: this is not a scientific problem, it's a social one.
giraffe_lady 4y ago
A really good example in how poorly race represents what it seems to represent is that the two ethnic groups with the most genetic distance from each other are both "black." In fact there are dozens if not hundreds of african ethnicities with as much difference between them as, for example, irish and japanese have. But since they all have the dark skin phenotype, they all register as one "race." It's just not a useful system for much.
- tristor 4y ago
  That's a very good point, and a good indicator that "race" is not a precise enough construct to be useful. Ethnicity is likely a better top-level designation for both science and communicating that science to lay-people.
concinds 4y ago
The problem is that the concept isn't precise enough. You'll find striking differences within a given "racial group" once you break it down into more useful descriptors. See, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_United_States_by_household_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U... Look at Native Americans, where the median household income is almost double for some subgroups compared to others. For Asians, the income difference is more than double between Indians and Bangladeshis. American Turks seem to do extremely well, while I expect the numbers for German Turks would be a fair bit lower. So if you're trying to analyze things, whether for medicine (blood pressure), or sociology (impacts of racism, benefits of economic intervention), racial groups are a pretty poor categorization, vulnerable to Simpson's paradox. One classic conservative argument against reparations is that it lumps in rich Nigerian immigrants with poor African-American descendants of slavery. Seems like their logic could actually be used to support this change.
- tristor 4y ago
  I agree that a more precise indicator (like ethnicity) is probably more useful. I think becoming even more precise than this likely is even more useful, however with precision comes added complexity/specificity as well. That said, your example about Native American income groups isn't the argument you likely think it is. That has been investigated pretty thoroughly and found to be nearly entirely based on shared tribal ownership of businesses like casinos or oil fields, which pay out to the entire tribe. Overall Native Americans in the US are at a socioeconomic disadvantage compared to non-NA populations, primarily because they are in largely undeveloped (from a business/economic perspective) areas of the country, which are not considered targets of development. They suffer from both ethnic disparities as well as the same disparities that generally affect rural vs urban populations.

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.
    - dekhn 4y ago
      You're not adding anything to this debate- studies already do this (and budget for it). Lightweight genetic testing like this is far cheaper in bulk and the scientists and doctors running the study are likely going ot want that data, so I don't see any problem there. As for bias and people not consenting to hand over their DNA: this is not a scientific problem, it's a social one.

giraffe_lady 4y ago

A really good example in how poorly race represents what it seems to represent is that the two ethnic groups with the most genetic distance from each other are both "black." In fact there are dozens if not hundreds of african ethnicities with as much difference between them as, for example, irish and japanese have. But since they all have the dark skin phenotype, they all register as one "race." It's just not a useful system for much.

tristor 4y ago
That's a very good point, and a good indicator that "race" is not a precise enough construct to be useful. Ethnicity is likely a better top-level designation for both science and communicating that science to lay-people.

concinds 4y ago

The problem is that the concept isn't precise enough. You'll find striking differences within a given "racial group" once you break it down into more useful descriptors. See, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_United_States_by_household_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U... Look at Native Americans, where the median household income is almost double for some subgroups compared to others. For Asians, the income difference is more than double between Indians and Bangladeshis. American Turks seem to do extremely well, while I expect the numbers for German Turks would be a fair bit lower. So if you're trying to analyze things, whether for medicine (blood pressure), or sociology (impacts of racism, benefits of economic intervention), racial groups are a pretty poor categorization, vulnerable to Simpson's paradox. One classic conservative argument against reparations is that it lumps in rich Nigerian immigrants with poor African-American descendants of slavery. Seems like their logic could actually be used to support this change.

tristor 4y ago
I agree that a more precise indicator (like ethnicity) is probably more useful. I think becoming even more precise than this likely is even more useful, however with precision comes added complexity/specificity as well. That said, your example about Native American income groups isn't the argument you likely think it is. That has been investigated pretty thoroughly and found to be nearly entirely based on shared tribal ownership of businesses like casinos or oil fields, which pay out to the entire tribe. Overall Native Americans in the US are at a socioeconomic disadvantage compared to non-NA populations, primarily because they are in largely undeveloped (from a business/economic perspective) areas of the country, which are not considered targets of development. They suffer from both ethnic disparities as well as the same disparities that generally affect rural vs urban populations.