Race 'Science'

[dakotajudo]

Breeds = races = subspecies. Look it up.

I have, several times, in fact. I've spent the last few years working on software to support statistical analysis of breeding projects. Spent some time, prior to that, teaching biology; should I list the graduate courses that go along with that work?

Breeds are not the same as subspecies. For example, rice is actually two subspecies of Oryza sativa - long grain indica and short grain japonica. These subspecies can interbreed but with partial sterility. And, of course, there are multiple breeds (although in plants, the term used is variety).

In cattle, the species is Bos taurus , breeds are Hereford, Angus, Simmental, Charolais, etc. Subspecies is more complex - it seems that zebu and taurine types are considers subspecies of cattle, but get different taxonomic designations - Bos indicus and Bos taurus; but I've also seen Bos taurus indicus and Bos taurus taurus; some prefer Bos primigenius indicus and Bos primigenius taurus (primigenius being the Auroch species).

No idea what you mean. Masai did and do not generally interbreed with Pygmies. Neither did or do Eskimoes and Aborigines.

Obviously not, otherwise you would see that I was talking about true-breeding lines (dog breeds), and not about non-interbreeding human populations.

Breeds are kept separate by artificial means - parental diversity is limited.

With the Masai vs Pygmy example, though, well, perhaps Masai and Pygmies do not interbreed directly among themselves (because they are geographically isolated from the Masai), but do Pygmies never interbreed with their neighbors? Do the neighbor groups never interbreed with other neighbors, further down the road? And those neighbors, to their neighbors, until you run up against a group that interacts with the Masai.

This is how genes flow between human groups, and why races are a poor grouping.

 

[dann]

Well, I wouldn't say that. They usually dress it up as "I'm just speaking the truth about those people", or "well, that's what the science says", even if they have no clue about science. Then, they go off about how the real problem is people talking about racism, or making accusations of racism. Usually somewhere in there they'll use the term "poverty pimps", "states' rights" or one of their other racist code words.

I know most of those, but I haven't heard "states' rights" used in this context. Where and when does that occur?

 

[dakotajudo]

As to your comment to me, where have I suggested morphology rather than genome as the useful tool to "scientifically" define "race"?

I think that's part of the problem with this debate. Species, subspecies etc., are taxonomic classification and taxonomies are generally based on morphology. On the other hand, the genome is used for phylogenetic classifications. Race is generally considered a folk taxonomy, as opposed to a scientific taxonomy.

Taxonomy and phylogeny are different methodologies. Frequently, taxonomic trees and phylogenies overlap, but at times there will be differences. For the most part, research in taxonomy as wained in favor of phylogenies.

 

[JoeEllison]

I know most of those, but I haven't heard "states' rights" used in this context. Where and when does that occur?

Sorry, that's a particularly American racist thing. In Europe there's probably a phrase like "national identity" that serves a similar purpose.

 

[Jeff Corey]

Stephen Jay Gould had his students check the same skulls in the same manner and discovered the bias of these studies. Sometimes the numbers weren't even taken down correctly. See Gould's The Mismeasure of Man. "Historical bias in biological sociology"

Actually, Gould checked Samuel Morton's century old data on skull size measured two different ways, by filling the skulls with mustard seed or lead shot. Greater differences were found with mustard seed, possibly because it was easily compressible and therefore could be influenced by experimenter bias. That was published in Science in the '70s.

 

[dann]

Sorry, that's a particularly American racist thing. In Europe there's probably a phrase like "national identity" that serves a similar purpose.

Yes, indeed!!! Den danske kulturarv (= the Danish cultural heritage) og danskhed (='Danishness) are very popular concepts here!

Landet bygger på den danske kulturarv, og dansk kultur skal derfor bevares og styrkes

Kulturen består af summen af det danske folks historie, erfaringer, tro, sprog og sædvaner. Beskyttelse og videreudvikling af denne kultur er en forudsætning for landets beståen som et frit og oplyst samfund.

Vi ønsker derfor en bred indsats for at styrke danskheden overalt. Udenfor Danmarks grænser bør der gives økonomisk, politisk og moralsk støtte til danske mindretal.
http://www.danskfolkeparti.dk/Principprogram.asp

The last paragraph in my translation:
"We therefore want a widespread effort to strengthen Danishness everywhere. Outside of Denmark's borders we should give financial, political and moral support to Danish minorities."
(I guess that also explains what Danish soldiers are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan ...)

 

[TheAnachronism]

I don't think the problem here is defining "race" in a scientific way. I'm sure most of us could do that with little problem, no? It's not impossible in the least.

The problem is that any definition would be highly arbitrary.

I could say we should define race by the amount of melanin that is contained in the skin of a population. We then have northern Japanese grouped with Norwegians and Icelanders, southern Indians grouped with people from Vietnam and from South Africa, etc.

Then I change the parameters. We then have a race called "Nordic," encompassing Scandinavia, Iceland, and Northern Germany, but we exclude northern Japanese for "apparent morphological features," despite having an identical melanin content. We make "Asian" a race encompassing Japanese and Chinese, despite differences in melanin content throughout both groups. Hell, we could change our parameters to end up with a race called "American."

What would any of this mean? What parameters should we have? Why those?

 

[jimtron]

The problem is that any definition would be highly arbitrary...
What would any of this mean? What parameters should we have? Why those?

That's why you can't define it scientifically. If you go with skin color, that doesn't work, because there are people considered "black" who have lighter skin than those of "other races."

It's impossible, as far as I can tell, to classify all humans into distinct races, each with its own unique characteristics. Because there are so many gray areas, and so much intermingling of "races."

 

[TheAnachronism]

That's why you can't define it scientifically.

I suppose I just assumed that defining race scientifically meant only (1) defining a concept known as race in (2) a scientific context.

If you argue that it must also be meaningful, I can fully agree. It isn't meaningful, it's arbitrary.

You could define race by susceptibility to a certain virus. That's scientific. It isn't meaningful, and it's unrelated to the social construct of "race."

ETA: DanishDynamite, it seems as if you are saying, "I know that Caucasian is a separate race from Asian, and both are a different race from African. Thus, let's find any physiological differences between them and use that to classify them as races." Is that correct? If so, do you not see the silliness of that?

 

[Lithrael]

So do you agree that race can't be defined scientifically? And if so, what is race if not a social construct?

No, I obviously don't agree. It can be as easily defined as all other sub-species are defined. Even today, with the ever greater intermingling.

One could even make it a simple international study. Ask a representative number of people in each country to describe the races they have ever met and ask them to provide a photograph or description of each.

I suspect you find at least 40-50 races which could be agreed upon by most.

You're saying race can be defined satisfactorily by a survey of people's opinions, and that's not a social construct?

Anachronism and jimtron seem to have summed it up pretty well in these last few posts.

 

[athon]

Evidence that those differences reflect in the parts of genome that could be useful in "race" determination?

Not necessarily.

Not when using the appropriate, partial, genome comparisons, as my earlier citation explained.

Exactly. You define race by morphological characteristics and then find genes which correlate. It does not prove that race is a genetic construct.

As to your comment to me, where have I suggested morphology rather than genome as the useful tool to "scientifically" define "race"?

The study you sited started with the conclusion, using the morphological distinctions, and then found genetic markers which correlated with them. There is no doubt that there are genes which correlate with morphological distinctions. That there are a number of genes which don't, and the variation within each morphological group is far greater than between them, makes it rather irrelevant for the purposes of establishing that they herald actual categories.

And your continuing comments on bacterial (or sheep) taxonomic mis-classification based on phenotype are red-herrings. We are discussing homo sapiens, and genome.

Umm...is this a serious statement, or are you now trying to be funny? If the latter, I don't think we share the same sense of humour. If the former, then you might want to bow out in favour of not embarrassing yourself any more.

Athon

 

[ArmillarySphere]

American-Swedes don't generally interbreed with Swedes, so I must insist that we consider them a separate subspecies...

And you can usually tell them apart too - just look at their *cough* volume differences.

 

[bpesta22]

Bigger brained people are smarter, independent of how we trash a 100 year old study on the topic:

http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/node/8206

 

[Kotatsu]

I'm moving on from commenting on the rest of your post because I think I've found the core of the problem; this is not true.

Historically, morphology has been used in taxonomy. It remains somewhat useful for observing relationships where genetic difference is significantly large, such as between species (yet genetic phylogeny is even overturning a number of misconceptions there). Importantly, where there is minimal genetic variation and we need to focus in on greater details, morphology plays a decreasing role in classification. I covered that when I explained how bacteriology no longer uses it at all due to massive taxonomic errors, leading to species of bacteria needing to be reclassified in light of genetic comparison.

Using morphology for analysis of relationships of populations within a species in an effort to classify them taxonomically was left behind in recent decades for genetic analysis.

In what bizarre world are you living where "taxonomy" and "phylogeny" are synonyms, and morphology has been more or less discarded in taxonomic work? I can of course only speak for the groups of animals I've been working with myself, but I have so far never seen a taxonomic description which is without morphology. I'd even be as bold as to claim that a description of a new species with no reference at all to morphology would likely be dismissed as useless (or a nomen nudum) by contemporary taxonomists. Genetics may allow you to accurately point out the existence of a new clade, but you'd get nowhere if you didn't attempt to describe it, and then you need morphology.

 

[dann]

Bigger brained people are smarter, independent of how we trash a 100 year old study on the topic:

http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/node/8206

From bepesta22’s link:

Study shows big-brained people are smarter
Submitted by BJS on Fri, 2005-06-17 08:58. Topic:
brain and behavior
Ultimate Brain Trainer
Train your brain, increase IQ, & build more neural connections now!

But what happens if you train your brain so much that your skull can no longer contain it?
http://www.lacosaonline.com/horror/imgs/escenas/2.jpg
My crash helmet is size XXL so maybe I shouldn’t worry too much, but I can’t help wondering …

 

[athon]

In what bizarre world are you living where "taxonomy" and "phylogeny" are synonyms, and morphology has been more or less discarded in taxonomic work?

I'm not sure where I said they were synonyms - phylogeny is a description of relatedness (a family tree, as such) while taxonomy is the system of nomenclature describing the groups. Not synonyms, but the fields are related.

Morphology is slowly giving way to genetics in understanding phylogeny, and in some fields taxonomic reform has occured as a result. Admittedly, my main field was pathological microbiology, where molecular genetics was causing massive changes in how bacteria were classified.

I can of course only speak for the groups of animals I've been working with myself, but I have so far never seen a taxonomic description which is without morphology.

Seriously? I've known of reclassification of wallaby sub-species in north Queensland which was done on genetic analysis alone. That was a few years ago now, admittedly, and it wasn't my field of work but rather a colleague I had worked with.

I'd even be as bold as to claim that a description of a new species with no reference at all to morphology would likely be dismissed as useless (or a nomen nudum) by contemporary taxonomists.

I'd find it odd that a species could be classified as distinct from other morphologically identical populations. However we're not talking about distinctions of species, but rather populations within a species.

Genetics may allow you to accurately point out the existence of a new clade, but you'd get nowhere if you didn't attempt to describe it, and then you need morphology.

I will have to admit my field is no longer in pathology, but rather in science communication and education. So I'm always happy to defer to expertise from those in the field. However, unless there has been a large counter revolution to work I was familiar with last decade, genetic comparison can indeed be enough to bring into question whether taxonomic descriptions based solely on morphology (and significantly for bacteria, biochemistry) were accurate.

Athon

 

[bpesta22]

From bepesta22’s link:

But what happens if you train your brain so much that your skull can no longer contain it?
http://www.lacosaonline.com/horror/imgs/escenas/2.jpg
My crash helmet is size XXL so maybe I shouldn’t worry too much, but I can’t help wondering …

The study was a meta-analysis published in the journal Intelligence.

The link was to a blog about it.

I remember when the jref had ads to psychic web sites....

 

[bpesta22]

This may be too off topic for this thread, but it's IQ related. My next project looks at whether IQ tests (and the basic information processing measures like IT and RT) predict success for MBA students.

The key thing I'm trying to predict is student scores on the capstone exam. It's given in the last class they take before graduation. It was developed by the entire college of business and is supposed to assess what an MBA student should know in each core area (management, finance, marketing, accounting, etc). It's about 80 or so multiple choice items.

I've only coded half the data, and it's only 40 students so far (about 100 total to do).

I have their GPAs as MBA students, which reflect grades for 2 years of courses each student has taken in the MBA program. I also have IQ scores--a 12 minute Wonderlic exam, group administered by me.

Although both grades in MBA classes and IQ predict scores on the capstone exam, the correlation for the 12 minute IQ test is bigger than is the correlation for the 2 year acquired GPA for students in our MBA program.

Even more compelling: The relationship between the 12 minute IQ test and capstone score is significant, even after controlling for GPA.

The relationship between GPA and capstone score is completely mediated (not significant) when controlling for 12 minute IQ scores.

That to me is amazing; data like these are why I always get tangled in threads on IQ, and it's why I'm frustrated by many skeptics here who so readily ignore the scientific data on IQ tests (what else as skeptics should we rely on?)

Just think: two years of grade point average accumulated in the program teaching you the critical skills assessed by the program's capstone course exam (the last college exam many of these students will take). A 12 minute Wonderlic IQ does a better job predicting scores on that exam.

IQ: The most powerful variable in social science (quote from D. Detterman, editor of Intelligence).

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Athon, I know you are a decent guy. I also know you are a smart guy. But most importantly in this connection, I know you are a skeptic guy.

So, given the above, how is possible for you, deep down inside yourself, to try and not see that there are obviously different subspecies among the human race? I simply don't understand it.

As I said previously, any 5-year old could see the difference between an Eskimo and an Aboriginie. And between any number of obvious subspecies.

You, yourself can do so, of course.

We don't even need to resort to behavioural differences or eating habits or other less obvious stuff. We can simply look and see the difference!

The only conclusion I can draw is that you are arguing against the obvious on the principle that if races are officially recognized then racism might also be so recognized.

Am I wrong?

Anyone can also see that my family doesn't look like my neighbor's family and we would both be considered Caucasians. So are blondes and brunettes "subspecies" too? How about tall people and short people? Type O blood groups and type A blood groups?

Just because the groups you define as subspecies happen to be rather large families doesn't make them qualitatively different that smaller families. Blood groups are also quite large. It's just that the difference is not overtly visible.

The problem is you need to define just how much genetic material must differ between races and how much must be consistent within races in order to avoid using arbitrary features to distinguish these so called "races". If not, you are fitting the evidence to the conclusion rather than seeking the conclusion from the evidence.

As for eating habits and behavior, I don't believe any biologists define species by behavior. Those are cultural ethnic differences, not race differences.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

This is hardly an issue one can find complete consensus of opinion. I have my opinion and have read quite a bit about human genetics coming from the medical field. There is a benefit in screening certain groups for certain genetic diseases or conditions. But there is also a benefit in screening certain families for particular diseases and conditions.

I don't think the evidence supports genetic divisions of race. The counter argument is that some clusters of genetic markers can predict one's "racial" identity with the traditional race definitions which have been used. Looking further into such genetic "race" markers however, reveal them to be more of a statistical prediction of ancestry rather than true genetic separation.

The human genome project on Minorities, Race, and Genomics

DNA studies do not indicate that separate classifiable subspecies (races) exist within modern humans. While different genes for physical traits such as skin and hair color can be identified between individuals, no consistent patterns of genes across the human genome exist to distinguish one race from another. There also is no genetic basis for divisions of human ethnicity. People who have lived in the same geographic region for many generations may have some alleles in common, but no allele will be found in all members of one population and in no members of any other.

American Association of Physical Anthropologists' Statement on Biological Aspects of Race

3. There is great genetic diversity within all human populations. Pure races, in the sense of genetically homogenous populations, do not exist in the human species today, nor is there any evidence that they have ever existed in the past.

American Anthropological Association Statement on "Race"

Evidence from the analysis of genetics (e.g., DNA) indicates that most physical variation, about 94%, lies within so-called racial groups. Conventional geographic "racial" groupings differ from one another only in about 6% of their genes. This means that there is greater variation within "racial" groups than between them. In neighboring populations there is much overlapping of genes and their phenotypic (physical) expressions. Throughout history whenever different groups have come into contact, they have interbred. The continued sharing of genetic materials has maintained all of humankind as a single species.

Does Race Exist? (2003 Scientific American)

If races are defined as genetically discrete groups, no. But researchers can use some genetic information to group individuals into clusters with medical relevance

And re the genetic differences one can use to predict race from a DNA sample:

What We Know and What We Don’t Know: Human Genetic Variation and the Social Construction of Race

Human genetic variation is real. It is best described by isolation by distance, meaning that individuals who have ancestry in particular geographic regions are more likely to share genes than those from disparate regions. The overall amount of measured human genetic variation, however, is very small, yet this does not mean that it cannot be categorized. This is facilitated for individuals by using multiple loci particularly when they are examined at the level of DNA sequence variation. This greater “signal,” while allowing the ancestry of individuals to be readily determined, may be discordant with any particular phenotypic trait (physical features) of interest, especially since much of the classification salience originates from DNA that does not influence the phenotype.

Genetic variation, classification and 'race'

New genetic data has enabled scientists to re-examine the relationship between human genetic variation and 'race'. We review the results of genetic analyses that show that human genetic variation is geographically structured, in accord with historical patterns of gene flow and genetic drift. Analysis of many loci now yields reasonably accurate estimates of genetic similarity among individuals, rather than populations. Clustering of individuals is correlated with geographic origin or ancestry. These clusters are also correlated with some traditional concepts of race, but the correlations are imperfect because genetic variation tends to be distributed in a continuous, overlapping fashion among populations. Therefore, ancestry, or even race, may in some cases prove useful in the biomedical setting, but direct assessment of disease-related genetic variation will ultimately yield more accurate and beneficial information.

(Some of these links may have already been posted.)