Talk:Race and genetics

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Arbitration Ruling on Race and Intelligence

The article Race and genetics, along with other articles relating to the area of conflict (namely, the intersection of race/ethnicity and human abilities and behaviour, broadly construed), is currently subject to active arbitration remedies, described in a 2010 Arbitration Committee case where the articulated principles included:

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Edit dispute

Latest comment: 25 days ago6 comments2 people in discussion

@Generalrelative I am not a fan of doing re-reverts by any means. In this one instance however, I do believe this is warranted. My edit was consistent with WP:NPOV and does not fall under WP:UNDUE. The two sources I used were already used in the specific paragraph and are both extensively cited pieces of literature on the topic. As far as I can tell, the arbitration for this article, which has apparently been contentious in the past, does not require WP:1RR or WP:0RR.

That said, I only reinstated part of my edit, which provided more greater specification of how much is "the vast majority" without challenging the "vast majority" claim. I would like to use this topic to open dialogue and see what common ground can be found. Jokojis (talk) 18:03, 26 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

I have reverted your additions again. The text that was modified and moved into the passage that is referenced to Rosenberg et al. (2002) is not supported by Rosenberg et al. (2002). The stable text, however, is supported by the AAPA source: Socially-defined racial categories do not map precisely onto genetic patterns in our species: genetic variability within and among human groups does not follow racial lines. –Austronesier (talk) 18:49, 26 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hi Austronsier. First, I want to say thank you for giving more details in your reversion.

It seems I mixed some things up, the 5% came from the "Genetics and the Shape of Dogs" article from American Scientist referenced in the 5th paragraph of the introduction, my apologies that I didn't add that citation. While the unref'd source is more than a decade newer, I do think it'll be better to go with the ~3-5% from Rosenberg et al (2002) given the higher source reputability of peer-reviewed articles, at least until any newer peer reviewed sources appear with a different estimate.

As far as the "do not" vs "don't always", the other source immediately after the sentence in question, Tishkoff, SA; Kidd, KK (2004), says in the abstract: "Although populations do cluster by broad geographic regions, which generally correspond to socially recognized races, the distribution of genetic variation is quasicontinuous in clinal patterns related to geography." This does support the "don't always" version, and is further elaborated under the subsection "Determining individual ancestry".

On a tangential note, some of the references are repeats, should we fix that?

Jokojis (talk) 19:54, 26 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Jokojis: Thank you for your efforts to get an updated figure for the average genomic distance between two individuals. I see the 2001 value of 99.9% cited even in recent publications of the last few years (with an interesting twist in a page by the NIH National Human Genome Research Institute [1]). May I ask how exactly you have extracted the figure of 99.35% from the 1000 Genomes Project Consortium paper? –Austronesier (talk) 09:40, 29 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Based on the 3.1 billion base pairs of the haploid genome (as of 2019), which is also a commonly referenced figure [2], [3] (Wikipedia Library version w/o paywall: [4]). I added a reference to the article to 2019 which supports this (see table 2). As a fraction, this comes out to 0.65%. Jokojis (talk) 17:40, 29 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

The article Human genetic variation comes to a similar number, 0.6%, though it claims 3.2 billion base pairs without a particular source for that number. Human genome seems to agree with a 3.1 billion figure, though this could be dated/incomplete. Jokojis (talk) 17:44, 29 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Genetic Basis for Race

Latest comment: 6 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I moved something from the introduction to this section, about some old argument related to human races and dog breeds. It doesn't really fit in an introduction, but I'm not sure it fits in that section either. It is related to race and genetics in general, but it is not the strongest argument either in favor or disfavor of biological race. It is fallacious in the sense that it compares a very smell set of purebred dogs to clinal human populations. It should also be tempered with the fact that (and actually this should be at the beginning of the entire article) mammal taxonomy is not generally determined by raw genetic variance, but by a multitude of factors, with evolutionary adaptations/splits being at the top. And that the primary reasons dog breeds are not considered subspecies is also due to a number of factors such as time since adapations, artificial selection, and perhaps high phenotypic plasticity. So if someone wants to review it and place it where it needs to go, or remove it. I'm not sure I will have time in the near future. Captchacatcher (talk) 20:34, 18 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Lewontin's Fallacy

Latest comment: 4 days ago3 comments3 people in discussion

The article begins with the false statement that race is a social construct. No biologist can subscribe to this, as biology has no use for social constructionism. Furthermore, the idea that people vary more within than between groups (Lewontin's fallacy) is now seen as irrelevant to the clustering of differences in different ethnicities. Very misleading article. 86.6.148.125 (talk) 19:24, 19 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

There is a strong consensus on the matter, both among scientists (see e.g. ^[1] ) and among the Wikipedia community. You're not likely to get anywhere trying to relitigate this. Generalrelative (talk) 20:52, 19 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

References

^ Using Population Descriptors in Genetics and Genomics Research: A New Framework for an Evolving Field (Consensus Study Report). National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. doi:10.17226/26902. ISBN 978-0-309-70065-8. PMID 36989389. 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.

Even sub-species and species fall under a weak form of social constructivism, as does practically any human-created taxonomy. Though perhaps the terminology of race as a social construct should be changed to terminology I have seen used more often in biology whitepages, such as that race is really just a way to say subspecies, and it is due to a conflation of social vs. biological race. The idea that humans cluster among Blumenbach races based on their perceived racial identity is true, but that depended upon the social classification of those races in the first place. Captchacatcher (talk) 22:22, 20 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Lack of Depth and proper Referencing

Latest comment: 5 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Much of this article make bombastic claims about race and only supports them with two or at times one reference. This is very misleading. 86.6.148.125 (talk) 19:26, 19 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

See my comment in the above section, and feel free to add sources from the main article Race (human categorization). Generalrelative (talk) 20:54, 19 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Add topic

[:8-1] Using Population Descriptors in Genetics and Genomics Research: A New Framework for an Evolving Field (Consensus Study Report). National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. doi:10.17226/26902. ISBN 978-0-309-70065-8. PMID 36989389. 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.

[1]