>"The trouble with "race" is that it's pretty meaningless biologically;" One of the things that shocked me about taking my first Bioinformatics class was how c

>"The trouble with "race" is that it's pretty meaningless biologically;" One of the things that shocked me about taking my first Bioinformatics class was how casually the professor talked about race. It seems like the concept of race is well accepted in the field, at least as it denotes large haplogroups of the human species. If you gave me the mitochondrial DNA from an Indian, then I am pretty sure that I could tell you it came from an Indian. Also, I think well-designed statistical studies would easily meet all your objections. As to whether or not such studies would be useful - I think they would. A common public policy problem is the disparate performance of students from different racial groups in school. As long as public policy sees racial groups as meaningful, it is probably useful to study them.