Talk:Population groups in biomedicine
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[edit] The sterile semantic debate
from race --Rikurzhen 18:06, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
A 1985 survey (Lieberman et al. 1992) asked 1,200 scientists how many disagree with the following proposition: "There are biological races in the species Homo sapiens." The responses were:
- biologists 16%
- developmental psychologists 36%
- physical anthropologists 41%
- cultural anthropologists 53%
The figure for physical anthropologists at PhD granting departments was slightly higher, rising from 41% to 42%, with 50% agreeing.
- Why is the above posted here? This article does not intend to address how many people believed in biological "races" in 1985 (nearly two decades before the human genome was decoded). It is at best an irrelevant semantic point. The article addresses different ways of classifying humans into groups for the purposes of biomedicine. Whether any given researcher chooses to call his/her set of groups: populations, groups, clusters, clines, breeds, varieties, races, or subspecies is of no interest other than to the extent that measurement ambiguity impedes others' understanding of findings. Other Wikipedia articles discuss at great length the sterile semantic debate of "is race real?" This article is only about how researchers classify humans into groups for the purposes of biomedicine, nothing more. Some researchers ask subjects their group self-identity, others measure ancestry-informative markers in DNA, others simply eyeball the person and make up their own minds. Precisely how they classify people into groups is of interest here. Whether they call their groups "races" is not of interest here. -- Frank W Sweet 18:57, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
The point of relavance is the differences which exist between disciplines, such that using anthropology an example to prove that biomedical researchers do not like "race" doesn't work. The aim was not to have this material included in the article, but rather taken into consideration in its writing. --Rikurzhen 20:09, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
- No problem. Consider it done. -- Frank W Sweet 21:07, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Merge and redirect race in biomedicine here?
The article Race in biomedicine has a "merge"-tag, but I see no clear-cut discussion on whether to merge or not. Do they actually cover the same subject? If so, they should no doubt be merged. If I understand correctly, this article is a newer version. Would it be good to simply redirect Race in biomedicine here, or should info from that article be transferred into this one first? // Habj 07:32, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
