Race science
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Race science and racial science are phrases that refer to the scientific study of race from a biological, sociobiological, or evolutionary perspective. Such study is often controversial, and in contemporary usage, the phrases are generally only used by critics, often accusing such research of scientific racism. Specific fields that investigate racial differences include race in biomedicine, and race and intelligence.
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Scientific investigation of inter-race differences, and even the validity of the concept "race", have been areas of controversy since the early 1900s. Critics argue that race is not a meaningful concept that can be scientifically studied (see Race).
While most scientists in the area argue that they are conducting unbiased science, others claim that their work constitutes scientific racism or pseudoscience. During the Second World War, purported scientific findings regarding race were combined with the social philosophy of eugenics to justify policies of Aryan superiority and state genocide. Scientific criticisms, the movement's history, and its past and present political implications, are outlined in The Mismeasure of Man by Harvard evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould.
Biologists have pointed out that race accounts for a fraction of human genetic variation. Richard Lewontin, another Harvard geneticist and evolutionary biologist, found that about 75% of genes are identical in every person; only 25% vary from person to person. Of that one-quarter variation, 85% of the difference would be present even if the two people were fairly closely related; that is, within a single ethnic group. Another 9% of the genetic variation results from individuals being members of separate sub-ethnic groups; for example, nations or tribes within a single ethnic group. About 6% was found to be the result of the two people being from what we call separate races. Hence, Professor Lewontin found that any person's race accounts for about 0.24% (or 6% of 25%) of his genetic make-up. While this percent may seem small, minor differences in genotype can have significant impact upon the expression of those genes phenotypically. For instance, a one nucleotide change can be the difference of life and death of a human. A one nucleotide difference is .00000003% of the human genome, which is 8 million times smaller than the difference shown in this study.
Race science reappeared in mainstream media in 1994 with the publication of The Bell Curve, the first prominent publication since the end of World War II to examine race and intelligence. A number of researchers carry out often-controversial research into racial differences, such as J. Philippe Rushton and Richard Lynn.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- RaceSci.org: History of Race in Science
- Gardner, Dan. Race Science: When Racial Categories Make No Sense. The Globe and Mail, Oct. 27, 1995.
- Institute for the study of academic racism (ISAR)
- Race, Science, and Social Policy. From Race: The Power of an Illusion. PBS.
[edit] Further reading
- Reviews of Race: The Reality of Human Differences.
- Efron, John M (1994). Defenders of the Race: Jewish Doctors and Race Science in Fin-de-Siecle Europe. Yale University Press ISBN 0-300-05440-8
- Sapp, Jan (1987). Beyond the Gene: Cytoplasmic Inheritance and the Struggle for Authority in Genetics. Oxford University Press ISBN 0-19-504206-9
- Asseo, Henriette (1997). The Gypsies During the Second World War, Vol. 1: From Race Science to the Camps. University of Hertfordshire Press ISBN 0-900458-78-X
