Talk:Race and genetics

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[edit] Merge from Race and multilocus allele clusters

The intro says it all:

"Racial distinctions are generally made on the basis of skin color, facial features, inferred ancestry, national origin and self-identification. Ongoing debate exists over the merit of the concept of 'race', especially from the perspective of genetics" Lukas19 17:07, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree, merge in Race and multilocus allele clusters the title is too long anyway-- it can be a section of this article. futurebird 16:56, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

• hmm the difference is that Population groups in biomedicine is mostly aboud encoding sequences coneccted with subject of medicine - diaseses. Those DNAs regions are under evolutionary presure. The other is foscus on rather evoulutionary not selectable silent gens whose jus taging inherited genoms. Do you see the essential differences ? How you want to abrig the 'biomedicine' with 70+ references :) . IMO = no. Nasz 11:51, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lukas19's edits of 20:05

regarding Lukas19's edits of 20:05 quoting the Risch article, I did a search of the Risch article using the Adobe acrobat reader's search engine and did not find the term "racial level". This leads me to believe that the quote cited does not exist in the article.

regarding his edits in the section titled "Distribution of genetic variation within/between populations", the version by Wobble is more NPOV.

regarding his edits on Lewontin's fallacy, I reviewed them and found that they did have merit, however not enough as to completely replace Wobble's version. So, I went through both versions and tried to make a compromise between the two.-Psychohistorian 20:20, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

This is the second absurd claim of yours within an hour. First, you have claimed that no material was deleted by Wobble. This was blatantly incorrect. And now this. Is this a bad faith effort or something physical on your part? Page 4:

[1]

It's a bit above "are racial differences merely cosmetic?". Hopefully these are simple enough for you to locate this time...Lukas19 20:31, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

The search engine within Adobe Acrobat reader does not find "racial level", however now that you've pointed out where it is, I will admit that the quote is in the article. I will restore that quote in just a minute.-Psychohistorian 20:38, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

And what is the excuse for changing this:

"Populations within continents are more closely related to one another than to populations on other continents. Genetic variation between races is highly structured ^[1]. Thus, when one considers many points (i.e., genetic loci) of variation one can distinguish groups and allocate people into groups (Bamshad, 2004). Whether or not these groups constitute races is a matter of ongoing dispute."

~to this:

"Humans from geographically proximate regions generally show a greater degree of genetic homogeneity with each other than they do with humans from more distant geographical regions, this applies to all geographical regions except for Africa, which has the highest genetic variation of any geographic region.[2]"

Wobble's edit deleted the fact that "Populations within continents are more closely related to one another than to populations on other continents". I fail to see any good faith in both of you...Lukas19 20:47, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

No, it doesn't. His quote says exactly that AND points out that Africa difers the most from that trend.-Psychohistorian 20:54, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Exactly? Pffft.

"...this applies to all geographical regions except for Africa...." This implies Africans do not show "a greater degree of genetic homogeneity with each other". The correct form should be:

"Humans from geographically proximate regions generally show a greater degree of genetic homogeneity with each other than they do with humans from more distant geographical regions, this applies to all geographical regions. The continent, which has the highest genetic variation of any geographic region is Africa[2]"

And geographical regions is not a substitude for continents. It's extra information to continents. Benelux is a geographical region but not a continent. So the reader should know that the scope of geographical regions also includes continents as well as sub groups within them...Lukas19 21:05, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reversion

First, there are the usual silly mistakes, similar to the inability to use Acrobat search engine.

"A study called Clines, Clusters, and the Effect of Study Design on the Inference of Human Population Structure and done by Neil Risch, Esteban Burchard, Elad Ziv and Hua Tang, two of them from Stanford University:"

No, that study was done by: Noah A. Rosenberg1*, Saurabh Mahajan2, Sohini Ramachandran3, Chengfeng Zhao4, Jonathan K. Pritchard5, Marcus W. Feldman3

Second, if humans show big DNA differences, it is important and relavant to the article. Because BBC source explicitly says:

"It would seem the assumption that the DNA of any two humans is 99.9% similar in content and identity no longer holds."

This work was on copy number and relates to differences in copy number associated with developement. It may be interesting, but has absolutely no relevance here. It neither pertains to "race" nor to hereditary. It's inclusion is either a lie intended to artificially support a POV, or it is the result of ignorance on the part of the person who added it. I note that the cite is extremely selective, and avoids context completelly, presumably because providing proper context would invalidate it's inclusion. Do you understand the difference between a Somatic cell and a gamete? This information is irrelevant. Secondly we cite science from scientific papers and books that are written by scientists. See in science avoid citing the popular press. Alun 13:05, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not an expert on genetics. I think I've been very up front about that. But I think it should be pointed out that the article Lukas sourced says the following, "the research will also inform the study of human evolution, which probes genetic variation in modern populations for what it can say about their relationship to ancestral peoples". That seems like it is relevant to the race question. Wobble, can you expound on that?-Psychohistorian 14:43, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Sure, this research was misrepresented in the British media bigstyle. Indeed, on the The Guardian "Science Weekly" podcast they commented on the fact that most of the media failed to fully understand what this research is about. Here's a brief summary. When scientists measure genetic variation as it pertains to the geographic distribution of human variability, they are measuring differences in polymorphisms. Most genes are not polymorphic in humans (this is called Gene fixation and indicates the relative youth of our species), when they are it means that more than one allele is present in the population. It's like having a gene for blue eye colour and a gene for brown eye colour, some people will have two copies for blue eye colour (and be homozygous) and some will have two copies for brown (and also be homozygous), yet other people will have one copy of each (and be heterozygous). This is a polymorphism, each of us has two copies of each gene, and so any individual can only have at most two alleles present for any given gene, but some genes are extremely polymorphic, with hundreds of alleles occuring in the gene pool, from which each individual can only ever have two, the Major histocompatibility complex is extremely polymorphic. When population biologists measure variation between populations they are measuring the occurence and frequency of different polymorphisms between "populations". That is, some polymorphisms will occur at a greater frequency in certain geographical regions than they do in other geographical regions. The more polymorphisms we measure the greater the accuracy we get for infering geographic region of origin. Most studies these days measure SNPs, which are Single nucleotide polymorphism, these are single base mutations within genomic DNA. Geneticists want to measure only selection neutral polymorphisms, because measuring mutations that are under selection (like Haemoglobin S) does not give a good indication of relatedness. This BBC article is about the copy number of a gene, this is not relevant to the type of allele that is present. What I mean is this, I have one of my father's alleles for eye colour and one of my mother's. My father may have a single copy for blue eye colour, but I may have two or three copies of the same gene from him, if there was a mistake in copying during gametogenesis or some other developemental process. But the version of the polymorphic allele I carry is not affected, it is still the same polymorphism, I just have a greater number of copies. When it comes to measuring the difference in frequencies of polymorphisms that occur between populations, copy number in the individual organism is irrelevant, what is relevant is the frequency of the polymorphism in one population relative to another population. So if I were measured they would not count my copy number variation as three versions in the population, sequencing of this polymorphism would simply tell them which allele I carry, not the number of copies of the allele I carry. So the variation they are refering has a completely different meaning to the variation population geneticists are talking about. I have tried to make this explanation as simple as possible. As to the claim that it might have implications for human evolution, maybe this is true, but not in terms of measuring the different frequencies of polymorphisms between populations. Alun 15:49, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I'll take NG's views over yours. Human genetic variation is relevant to the article.

"Scientists say that surprisingly many large chunks of human DNA differ among individuals and ethnic groups." [2] Lukas19 01:39, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

They are talking about the plasticity of the genome, not about differences between allele frequency. You really don't understand this at all do you? You are trying to compare apples and bananas here. Next you'll be telling me that my red blood cells are a different "race" to the rest of my body because the DNA there massively different to the DNA in other cells in my body, that is that RBCs are anuclear. There is massive variation in the DNA between cells within each organism. How do you think antibody diversity is generated? By chopping up the nuclear DNA in B cells. Variation in our DNA is not necessarily attributable to either "race" or heredity. There are numerous causes of variation. It is incorrect to conflate the CNV that is being talked about here with the allele frequency variation that is applicable to this article, these are different measures of variation, and as such should not be used interchangably. This article is not abut human genetic variation, it is about "genetic views on race". Please use applicable articles that stay on topic. Alun 06:48, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Third "size of variation" repeats "Genetic variation at the individual level" WITHOUT counter arguments. Again, blatant bias mixed with limited understandings.

You are talking about blatant bias and limited understanding? This is a joke, right? See above. Alun 13:05, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

The above paragraph doesnt answer this. "size of variation" talks about Lewontin's claims without mentioning opposition. Lukas19 01:39, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

So put some in then. You have been editing this article haven't you? So aren't you as responsible for this "ommision" as anyone? Indeed the size of variation section is correct, no one disputes that this is small relative to other species, even the papers you cite don't dispute this, they claim only to be measuring the small proportion of variation that does occur between "population". Alun 06:48, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

LOL. As I said size of variation and its counter arguments were already in another section. ("Genetic variation at the individual level") You seem to be needing to be told everything couple of times since I said "Third "size of variation" repeats "Genetic variation at the individual level"" but I dont so I wont ommit arguments which are already in the article. Lukas19 01:07, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with this section. It simply states that size of genetic variation is small, it mainly talks about how this supports the Out of Africa model. You don't get it do you. We don't have to include all counter arguments all the time. Please read the WP:NPOV policy. NPOV says that the article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by a verifiable source, and should do so in proportion to the prominence of each. Now an important qualification: Articles that compare views need not give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more popular views, and may not include tiny-minority views at all (by example, the article on the Earth only very briefly refers to the Flat Earth theory, a view of a distinct minority). We should not attempt to represent a dispute as if a view held by a small minority deserved as much attention as a majority view, and views that are held by a tiny minority should not be represented except in articles devoted to those views. Alun 03:53, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

LMAO. You still dont understand...wow...

Size of variation:

Since the 1980s it has been known that human genetic variation is low relative to other species, this is usually attributed to the recent origins of our species, and tends to support the recent single-origin hypothesis (or Out of Africa).[4] It has also been shown that most of this small variation is distributed at the individual and local level (about 90-94%), with the remaining 6-10% distributed at the continental (or racial) level.[5]

Genetic variation is greatest at the individual level:

Richard Lewontin argued in a 1972 paper that human races have no taxonomic value because there exists more variation within racial groups than between them. Indeed, some researchers report the variation between racial groups (measured by Sewall Wright's population structure statistic FST) accounts for as little as 5-7% of human genetic variation.

Maybe you think that they talk about different things since one mentions 90-94% and other 5-7%?

Size of variation:

Even so, it is possible to use genetic data to "distinguish groups and allocate individuals into groups",[4] genetic data also show that groups that live on the same continent tend to be more similar to each other than groups that live on different continents.[4]

Genetic variation is structured by geographic origin:

Human genetic variation can be used to deduce the geographical origins of an individual's recent ancestors, this is possible because a small proportion of human genetic variation is geographically distributed, with close geographical proximity strongly correlating with genetic similarity.

Hopefully this is simple enough for you. And this is the counter argument that is not mentioned:

However, a some geneticists now think that low FST values may not be relevant to the existence of human races due to technical limitations of FST (Edwards, 2003).

A. W. F. Edwards claimed in 2003 that Lewontin's conclusion is incorrect because the argument does not address the posibility that most of the information that distinguishes populations may be hidden in the correlation structure of the data and not simply in the variation of the individual factors.[14] Edward's paper does not address the existence or absence of human race. Lukas19 04:18, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I have addressed this issue. I have removed the section about Lewonin and Edwards and replaced the Edwards argument with a primary source that tests the validity of F_ST. This source finds that there are two main problems with the argument regarding genetic variation. Firsts that it assumes that all populations are of equal sixe, and second it assumes that all populations diverge independently. They test several models and fail to find a good fit model, though their last choice model has a much better fit than that which is usually used. They go on to conclude that sub-Saharan African populations have a far greater level of diversity than those populations that exist outside of Africa. They also show that none of the "race" models they discuss (the same four that are mentioned in this article) fit their observations. They think that human genetic variation cannot be easily measured because human population structure is very complex, but their results seem to support the idea that our species is recent and out of Africa, and also that from a biological point of view "races" do not exist. Alun 07:02, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

As you can see I wasnt joking about limited understanding. It took you 4 responses to figure it out. Maybe in future, I can just copy and paste my arguments 4 times so you wouldnt engage in silly reverts. I just dont want to think how many times I should try copy and pasting my argument in an article OUTSIDE your profession.

Why was Edwards' quote deleted? Besides allele relatedness, he also talked about overall correlation structure. Of course I can add this and I will. But YOU are the one reverting the article so make your reverts correctly....

As you can see I wasnt joking about limited understanding. It took you 4 responses to figure it out. Maybe in future, I can just copy and paste my arguments 4 times so you wouldnt engage in silly reverts. I just dont want to think how many times I should try copy and pasting my argument in an article OUTSIDE your profession.

Why was Edwards' quote deleted? Besides allele relatedness, he also talked about overall correlation structure. Of course I can add this and I will. But YOU are the one reverting the article so make your reverts correctly....

As you can see I wasnt joking about limited understanding. It took you 4 responses to figure it out. Maybe in future, I can just copy and paste my arguments 4 times so you wouldnt engage in silly reverts. I just dont want to think how many times I should try copy and pasting my argument in an article OUTSIDE your profession.

Why was Edwards' quote deleted? Besides allele relatedness, he also talked about overall correlation structure. Of course I can add this and I will. But YOU are the one reverting the article so make your reverts correctly....

As you can see I wasnt joking about limited understanding. It took you 4 responses to figure it out. Maybe in future, I can just copy and paste my arguments 4 times so you wouldnt engage in silly reverts. I just dont want to think how many times I should try copy and pasting my argument in an article OUTSIDE your profession.

Why was Edwards' quote deleted? Besides allele relatedness, he also talked about overall correlation structure. Of course I can add this and I will. But YOU are the one reverting the article so make your reverts correctly....Lukas19 22:38, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Don't worry about it, you can't help having a limited understading. What I did was use a completelly different source. Edwards does not criticise the calculation of F_ST, so your argument was incorrect. Edwards claims that the argument regarding the non existence of population structure is a fallacy, not that the calculation of F_ST is incorrect. What I have done is use a completelly different article that does actually criticise the calculation of F_ST. You have not mentioned the Long and Kittles article once, and apparently were not aware of it's existence untill I used it, so to claim that this article was the point of your complaint seems like a lie. My edit was not about Edward's oservation, which was different. So to claim that my edit was prompted by your observation is to completelly misunderstand just about the whole point of Edward's article, and that of Long and Kittles. So your little odd outburst above is somewhat moot. I went and found an article that actually did something that Edwards did not do, and you try to take credit for it and claim that this was what you were talking about all the time? Even though you appear not th have had the slightest idea that the Long and Kittles article existed in the firt place. I mean come on. Who are you kidding? Talk about re-writing history. Alun 19:36, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Fourth "But is the variation by geographic origin distinct enough to count as race" includes JUST anti-race arguments. As if the answer to that question is no. Again, blatant bias mixed with limited understandings. Lukas19 00:02, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

The answer to the question is no. Read the proper literature, from the point of view of a biologist "race" is synonymous with "subspecies", and by any measure of genetic diversity humans all group into the same subspecies. Risch admits that he doesn't use biological definitions of race, but rather social ones, such as "self defined" ethnicity or definitions from the US "census". So what is Risch measuring? He is measuring the small amount of variation we see distributed geographically, he does not claim that this represents a definition of biological "race", and he does not claim that the degree of variation is more significant than that observed by any other group. Therefore from a biological point of view humans are all part of the same subspecies, Homo sapiens sapiens. If you want to argue that Risch's definition of race is valid but ns not a biological construct, then that is a different point. Risch is arguing from a biomedical point of view and not from a biological one. There are other researchers in the field of biomedicine that do not support the point of view that the variation observed is of biomedical importance, but that is another story as they say. Only a tiny number of discredited right wing pseudo-scientific nutcases have argued that the answer to the question is yes. Wikipedia does not include tiny minority opinion as if it "fact". If it needs to be included at all, then it is included as tiny minority opinion. Stop including your distorted interpretation of science, you keep claiming that papers that show geographically distributed genetic variation are somehow supporting the concept of "race", when none of the papers claim this. This is at best a distortion, and more like a lie. Alun 08:04, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Regarding humans showing big DNA differences, I agree with you. If they do show big DNA differences, it should be mentioned as a foundational piece of knowledge before addressing whether there are races. Regarding lack of sources showing alternate points of view, I deleted no sources when I did the reorg, so your revert didn't fix that problem either and, so, there is no justification for the revert on that point. However, I do encourage you to provide such sources. In short, the huge revert you made was unwarranted, but you did raise a couple of points which were justified. So, I reverted your revert, but edited the article to conform with the points you made which were justifiable. Having said that, again, I welcome any reliable sources which are pro-race in those areas you identified as needing more balance.-Psychohistorian 02:54, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Race and genetics

This article should be called "Race and genetics", the title "Genetic views on race" doesn't make any sense to me. Alun 08:08, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Schwael 07:37, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dont change citations if you cant do it correctly

I already warned about citation of:

""A study called Clines, Clusters, and the Effect of Study Design on the Inference of Human Population Structure and done by Neil Risch, Esteban Burchard, Elad Ziv and Hua Tang, two of them from Stanford University:"

No, that study was done by: Noah A. Rosenberg1*, Saurabh Mahajan2, Sohini Ramachandran3, Chengfeng Zhao4, Jonathan K. Pritchard5, Marcus W. Feldman3"

Now, Categorization of humans in biomedical research: genes, race and disease is also attributed to Noah A. Rosenberg1*, Saurabh Mahajan2, Sohini Ramachandran3, Chengfeng Zhao4, Jonathan K. Pritchard5, Marcus W. Feldman while it was done by: Neil Risch, Esteban Burchard, Elad Ziv and Hua Tang.

So if you cant manage these simple points dont edit the correct form. Lukas19 01:44, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wobble/Alun's Reverts

This user keeps reverting. After being told 4 times, he finally comprehended that sections "Genetic variation at the individual level" and "size of variation" contain same arguments. (And section "size of variation" didnt contain the counter arguments down in section "Genetic variation at the individual level"). Now his edits put the article AGAIN repeating arguments. For ex:

Section: "But is the variation by geographic origin distinct enough to count as race"

"While geographical origin can be inferred from genetics, observed geographically distributed human genetic variation does not amount to the sort of discontinuous distribution that would be expected if the human population were descended from distinct lineages, neither is the variation great enough for human populations to be considered subspecies, the usual biological synonym for race.[7]"

Just down, section "Do biologically distinct races exist?"

Race is generally used as a synonym for subspecies, which traditionally is a geographically circumscribed, genetically differentiated population. Sometimes traits show independent patterns of geographical variation such that some combination will distinguish most populations from all others. To avoid making "race" the equivalent of a local population, minimal thresholds of differentiation are imposed. Human "races" are below the thresholds used in other species, so valid traditional subspecies do not exist in humans. A "subspecies" can also be defined as a distinct evolutionary lineage within a species. Genetic surveys and the analyses of DNA haplotype trees show that human "races" are not distinct lineages, and that this is not due to recent admixture; human races are not and never were "pure". Instead, human evolution has been and is characterised by many locally differentiated populations coexisting at any given time, but with sufficient genetic contact to make all humanity a single lineage sharing a common evolutionary fate.^[2]

Both uses same sources. One summarizes and one full quote. Again Leroi's arguments are repeated. If people will insist on reverting more than 10 times, the least they could do would be not to do such a crappy job...Lukas19 23:23, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

"Genetic surveys and the analyses of DNA haplotype trees show that human "races" are not distinct lineages, and that this is not due to recent admixture; human races are not and never were "pure". A plain lie - or a nauseating demagogy at best. No wonder that the PC anti-racial propagators never explain this claim in detail and dance around it in foggy verbal circles. Centrum99 02:12, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like your argument applies to yourself more than anyone else. So I keep reverting but you don't? Indeed you have reverted massive changes with the most spurious and tenuous excuses. There is nothing wrong with saying the same thing twice in the article if it is relevant to two seperate sections, there is nothing wrong with citing thesame source several times. Take a good look at your really poor editing, just putting long windy quotes into articles, presumably because you do not understand them well enough to explain them properly. Something you don't seem to understand is that biology is not the samer as medicine. When niologists talk of "race" they mean subspecies, medical researchers and doctors don't mean this. When you claim that the term is used heterogeneously in the literature you need to address the fact that biologists are not confused about this term, they understand it and use it consistently. Therefore if you want to talk about "race" as a biological construct you need to understand that to a biologist "race" in the human sense doesn't exist. If you want to talk about medicine and the treatment of disease, and how they categorise/classify people and do genetic analyses, they are not using "race" in a biological context, they are not using "race" as abiological construct, they are using a social construct for medical purposes. This is deliberate, because they want to see if "self identified" descent has any medical validity, if it does then simply asking someone their identity is good enough to determine what treatment to use, but this is 'not a biological construct. Biologists are scientists, they are interested in taxonomy and naturally occuring phenomena, medicine is not a science, it is clinical, they are interested in treatment, not in biological classification. It is therefore incorrect and misleadingto claim that the term "race" is used in various ways in the biological literature, biologists are clear on it's use, medical clinicians are less clear, but they are not biologists, you need to understand the distinction. Alun 07:17, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Alun, the only thing that allows me to sustain reading such cretinuos defence of a more and more collapsing fallacy is the certainty that genetic research will already soon push you to the corner (at best, if the corner were in some mental hospital), where your screaming and howling about the non-existence of human races will be for laugh to everybody. Centrum99 02:03, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Charming. I note you restrict yourself to insults and refrain from conducting constructive debats. By the way, where did I ever claim that race does not exist? Race is very real and very pernicious. It's effects are felt everywhere a person is murdered because of the colour of their skin. Race is real, as is racism, what it is not is a biologically defined concept. Go and check Homo sapiens sapiens and tell me where it claims that biologists have an accepted consensual categorisation of the human specieson the subspecific level. Furthermore there is no generally accepted definition of subspecies. So essentially your comments have no merit. Claiming that geographically distributed variation is analogous to biological race is simply a point of view, it is not a definition. Alun 10:20, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of non existent source

I have removed the following text

There are variety of ways in which 'race' is used in biological literature. <ref>Pigliucci ''et al.'' (2003)</ref>

because this citation does not occur in the references list, so how can anyone heck it claims this? I have asked Lukas before to learn how to cite sources properly, ther eis still a source cited by a single URL link in the article, this needs to be dealt with by Lukas or I will remove it. Alun 07:21, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Nice Article

There are many severe problems with this article that deserve mention. However, due to the nature of despotic supervisors, politics and the general instability that comes with being in a deadend situation (if it's not possible to agree on something like mathematical truth, then it sure as hell ain't possible to agree on the nature of human origins), I shall not criticise the whole of this article. Here are some points : 1) NO MATHS. Nowhere. There's *mention* of mathematics. But not one equation. Nowhere. That one observation attests more weight to the validity of this 'science' than all the others put together probably would. Do the math, or don't bother writing the article. 'Mentioning' Principal Component Analysis Sounds all respectable (in the same way that 'collateral damage' makes 'massacre' sound a little less harsh), but what does the term mean? Answer, you the reader can't know as they haven't been shown the workings (even if they had, they would probably pick up on the lack of 'rigour' in some of the statistical issues that are bought up (the philosophy of statistics being what it is).

2) The "This genetic distance map was made in 2007 using statistical Euclidean distance.[33]" remark is interesting - how is such a distance defined (in a reasonable and non-nonsensical way given that *so little* is still known about DNA and how it is that introns and exons fold, meander and generally dance in a way that would make Torvell and Dean look like amateurs when expressing proteins? How does *any* definition of distance make sense, let along a *linear* or 'well-behaved' notion such as Euclidean distance? Even if such a notion of distance did make sense - it wouldn't make much sense (though, again, I would have to do the maths before being capable of proving that Euclidean metrics are not curvilinear enough to do the job of describing distance - now *I'm* speaking nonsense). I'm willing to accept the validity of this reference, or whatever you call it - but it needs better explanation if this is to be done.

3) " genetic distance matrix among the 26 population samples, based on 29 polymorphic genes with 121 alleles." This remark, from Jensen, is interesting - what on earth does it mean? How are such 'genetic distance matrices' formed? Given the importance of what is being spoken about here, I would hope that all the necessary statistical theorems have been tied together using some Proof checking utilities, otherwise, well, you would be basing your conclusions on bad mathematical models (ie: you'd probably be wrong). Clearly, there is room for statistics here, which, given the amount of statistical errors that social scientists (and scientists and mathematicians) are in general prone towards making, is quite troubling given that which is being claimed.

4) General lack of a 'method' or lack of access to experimental data : It is my opinion that a graph, picture, or, indeed, a paper is not worth publishing unless all the details associated with how it was generated have been published online with it, together with useful software and tools needed to process that information.

I've rambled too long on some subjects that I don't fully understand (the point I'm making here is that I'm guessing quite a few other people publishing this stuff don't understand it that well either).

Please correct me if I'm wrong, or if you misunderstand my comments. MrASingh 23:03, 14 Feb 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the quotes you point out in 2 and 3 need to be further explained (i also don't know enough on the subject to help here). In 1 and 4, i think your criticism is not valid for an encyclopedia article. There does not need to be either math nor the tools to access the information cited. I do agree that the more citation the better, but I don't think the article should be deleted simply for not having enough citation. Schwael 00:04, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree, we need to explain context, for sure, but we do not include original research. We don't draw our own conclusions or include any of our own thinking. Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought. For example Principal components analysis has it's own article, this should at least be linked to. It is not the scope of this article to explain this concept. It is the scope of this artícle to give [[WP:NPOV|all significant points of view] regarding the topic of "race and genetics". If wikipedia's policies are followed correctly (something that hardly ever happens) then all of the information here should be verified from what are considered reliable sources. There may be some fundamental problems with explaining context in the article, but this is often the case in mant technical articles, or articles where there may be people with strong personal opinions. Alun 18:58, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm interested in the above comments. The essence of my points in 2 and 3 (that have been conceded by Schwael) is that mathematicians, statisticians and politicians have this gift of using interesting vernacular (let's call this 'the gift of the gab'). They speak quickly, write swiftly and think nonsensically when making various statements. I have always held it that everyone is intelligent enough to realise that such things occur, and then ignore such vernacular as being an interesting 'vernacular dance' but with not intrinsic and truthful meaning. To have that, such statements need to apply an objective, nearly universally agreed and somewhat provable 'scientific method'. I do not see this in either of the references referred to in 2 and 3. As for not needing math in order to justify a particular viewpoint, this is just plain wrong. Statistics are required to justify a great many things in the world. If such statistics are incorrectly applied, and if the reader is not made, or given an opportunity to deal with such mathematics within the article's context, they will not have access to that information without significant effort on their own part. They will be left with the impression that, since something like 'principal components analysis' is used to justify a viewpoint, then the very formal sounding wording justifies the truthfulness of said viewpoint. That's complete nonsense!

Clearly, I could rant on forever here... [User:MrASingh|MrASingh]] 17 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Edwards does not say it's not small

Regarding this edit. It is factually incorrect to claim that "Not a small proportion according to Edwards. ". Edwards does not dispute the fact that the differences are small. He disputes that this observation automatically leads to the conclusion that "race" is not a biological construct. Edwards argument is not that Lewonin's statistical analysis is wrong, nor that variation is not small, his argument is that what is important is how the small variation is structured when it comes to determining if races are biological or not.

These conclusions are based on the old statistical fallacy of analysing data on the assumption that it contains no information beyond that revealed on a locus-by-locus analysis, and then drawing conclusions solely on the results of such an analysis. The ‘taxonomic significance’ of genetic data in fact often arises from correlations amongst the different loci, for it is these that may contain the information which enables a stable classification to be uncovered.....There is nothing wrong with Lewontin’s statistical analysis of variation, only with the belief that it is relevant to classification.Human genetic diversity: Lewontin’s fallacy A.W.F. Edwards

Long and Kittles paper Human Genetic Diversity and the Nonexistence of Biological Races is more informative. Here they claim that F_ST is only relevant when calculated on a population by population basis. They conclude that

a great deal of genetic variation within groups is consistent with each of these [race] concepts. However, none of the race concepts is compatible with the patterns of variation revealed by our analyses.

They think that none of the current concepts of race are consistent with their observations, because their best fit model for human population structure does not conform to any of the proposed models. They do not claim that this invalidates the concept of biological "race", just that for humans this concept needs to be defined in such a way as to explain the observed diversity and population structure, and no current concepts do this. Their main criticism of Lewonin is that he assumes that all populations are independent, and that all populations are equally distant from each other, whereas in reality many human populations represent sub-sets of other populations, for example all out of Africa populations are sub-sets of the ancient African population. They claim that their observations support this.Alun 08:17, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bit of a reorganisation

I have had a bit of a reorganisation. I have tried to avoid changing the meanings or emphasis of any section. Please be assured that any section that seems to stress one point of view over another, when it didn't before is purely due to oversight on my part. I did not come intending to make such a large change, but I fond that many sections repeated other sections, and certain sections needed to be merged into other sections, I am assuming this is due to the fact that this article is essentially made up from three previous articles. The main things I have done are to try and rationalise the article, as it makes sense to me. Therefore sections that appeared to be discussing the validity of "race" as a concept I have moved to the section "Do Biologically Distinct Races Exist?", etc. Edward's criticism of Lewontin occured in several places, I have put it in the "Genetic variation and human populations", it is especially relevant to the "Multilocus Allele Clusters" sub-section as this is the crux of his argument. I have also had a go at explaining this argument, Edwards argument is excellent, and exlains why the use of multiple loci is effective very well. Further I have removed two extensive paragraphs, not because there was anything wrong with them per se, but because as I was reading them I got the impression that they were identical to something else I had read just recently. Sure enough they were directly copied from athe paper The Use of Racial, Ethnic, and Ancestral Categories in Human Genetics Research, by the Race, Ethnicity, and Genetics Working Group, National Human Genome Research Institute, Am. J. Hum. Genet. 77:000–000, 2005. This is obviously plagiarism and is not allowed, these sections were unatributed, and even if they had been they represented far too long sections to be compliant with WP:QUOTE. I'm now going to have a go at making a graphic to explain how multi-locus clusters work, I'll base it on Edward's example. Hope I have not troden on anyones toes here, it really was only meant as a bit of reorganisation, if I have inadvertantly removed important info, please understand this was not my intent. Alun 16:21, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Multi locus allele clusters

I've made some diagrams, I don't know how clear they are.

Geographical distribution between two populations for two alleles of a single locus. Population I is 70% wild type allele (+), population II is 70% mutant allele ( -). For any given individual genotyped for the blue locus there is a 30% chance of misclassification. For example someone with the mutant blue allele - will be correctly assigned to Population II 70% of the time.

Geographical distribution between two populations for three loci, each with two alleles. Population I is 70% wild type for Blue (+), 30% wild type for Red (+) and 70% wild type for Green (+). Population II is 30% wild type for Blue (+), 70% wild type for Red (+) and 30% wild type for Green (+) For any individual genotyped +/-/+ there is a 2.7% chance of misclassification if they are placed into population I. There is a greater chance of misclassification for someone genotyped +/+/+. The more loci used, the smaller the chances of misclassification.

Are these figures of any value for explaining the advantage of using multi locus allele clusters? Do they explain what Edwards is getting at in his essay? Sometimes a diagram can explain concepts better than words, but sometimes they can be confusing. These diagrams make sense to me, I'd like to include them. Some constructive comments would be nice. Alun 18:43, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Infobox Multi Locus Allele Clusters In a haploid population, when a single locus is considered (blue), with two alleles, wild-type (+) and mutant (-) we can see a differential geographical distribution between Population I and Population II, but there is a 30% chance of wrongly assigning any individual to either population based on a single allele. × + - Population I 70% 30% Population II 30% 70% For three loci blue, red and green, it becomes apparent that there is a correlation between certain allele frequencies. In this example Population I displays a correlation between wild-type blue (+) 70%, mutant red (-) 70% and wild type green (+) 70%. Population II has a correlation between the -, + and - alleles, each having a 70% frequency in this population. The genetic variation remains the same in these populations, irresepctive of the allele examined, but using a three locus approach, there is a much reduced chance of wrongly assigning any individual to a given population. × + - + - + - Population I 70% 30% 30% 70% 70% 30% Population II 30% 70% 70% 30% 30% 70% For an organism of genotype +/-/+, for each locus the chance of missclassification is 0.3 (30%), but when all three loci are take into account, the organism can be assigned to Population I with a 0.3x0.3x0.3 chance of error, that is a 0.027 (2.7%) chance of error. The two populations still share exactly the same alleles, but the frequency of these alleles varies between the populations. Using modern computer software and the abundance of genetic data now available, it is possible not only to distinguish such correlations for hundreds or even thousands of alleles, which form clusters, it is also possible to assign individuals to given populations with very little chance of error. It should be noted, however, that genes tend to vary clinally, and there are likely to be intermediate populations that reside in the geographical areas between our sample populations (Population III, for example, may lie equidistantly from Population I and Population II). In this case it may well be that Population III may display characteristics of both population I and Population II. For example Population III may be defined thus: × + - + - + - Population III 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% In which case any individual from Population III is likely to be misclassified equally into either Population I or Population II.(Edwards (2003)Kittles and Weiss (2003))

OK, I've made an infobox, thought it might be good to have a single place where this concept could be explained. Any thoughts? I'm going to put it into the article. Feel free to make changes and discuss how it can be improved. Alun 18:35, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Wow, nice work! futurebird 18:48, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

1) There are NPOV violations. For ex: "...however, that genes tend to vary clinally, and there are likely to be intermediate populations that reside in the geographical areas between our sample populations ....."

This is from one of the cited sources, Kittles and Weiss. It is also a fact. It is not a violation of POV (whatever that's supposed to mean) because both POVs are given, ie that people can be classified into groups, but that it depends on how they are sampled. Both of these are correct observations, and both are cited.

The Big Few races can seem real in samples of size N (Norway, Nigeria, Nippon, Navajo). That is, if one examines only the geographic extremes, differences appear large because they can be seen in comparisons between graphic and tree-like presentations of the same data. In that sense it is sometimes said that there are only four or five major patterns of variation. But if we look at geographically closer or intermediate populations, differences diminish roughly proportionately. Even our view of the Big Few might change were it not for our curious convenience of overlooking places such as India. Who are those pesky billion? One race? A mix of the other already-sampled races? A multiplicity of races, as has often been suggested?[3]

and this from Tishkoff and Kidd

Although the amount of genetic diversity between populations is relatively small compared with the amount of genetic diversity within populations, populations usually cluster by geographic region based on genetic distance (Fig. 4). Rosenberg et al.43 analyzed 377 microsatellites genotyped in 52 global populations using a clustering algorithm (STRUCTURE45) to assign individuals to subgroups (clusters) that have distinctive allele frequencies. They could distinguish five main clusters of individuals that corresponded to broad geographic regions (Africa, Middle East and Europe, Asia, Oceania, Americas). They identified a sixth cluster specific to a Pakistani population, which probably reflects high levels of inbreeding and genetic drift in that group. Without reference to sampling location, individuals from the same predefined population nearly always shared membership in one of the five main clusters. There were some exceptions, however, for populations from geographically intermediate regions (e.g., Central Asia, the Middle East), in which individuals had partial membership in multiple clusters, especially those of flanking geographic regions, indicating a continuous gradient of variation among some regions. Thus, although the main clusters correlate with the common concept of 'races' (as expected, because populations from different parts of the world have larger differences in allele frequencies than populations from the same region of the world), the analyses by STRUCTURE do not support discrete boundaries between races.[4]

This is more or less what the infobox actually says, except that the infobox doesn't talk about race, because it is about a method, not a concept. Besides which, this is not a comment on the validity of the statistics or method, it is a comment on sampling errors, all statistical analyses are contingent on non biased sampling methods, it is also true that in genetic studies there is a bias in sampling, the vast majority of samples are taken from Europeans, the descendants of Europeans and the North American population, look at any of the papers and it is obvious this is true. It is also obvious that regions like Africa (which, let's face it is appallingly under represented given it's greater genetic diversity) and India usually only have small segments of their populations sampled, but to get a good unbiased sampling there should be more sampling from different geographic areas in these regions. This is just my opinion, but I doubt that any geneticist worth their salt would disagree, the more samples from as diverse a population as possible would be the aim of all people associated with this field. Alun 13:55, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

This summary make it seem like this is the only opinion out there. This is blatantly POV. For ex: "...At the same time, we find that human genetic diversity consists not only of clines, but also of clusters, which STRUCTURE observes to be repeatable and robust..." [5]

This is not a summary, it is an explanation of how multiple loci can be used to differentiate different populations and how individuals can then be assigned to those populations. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, it's purpose is to educate, this article is about "race and genetics", it seems tha certain users want to make claims for multi locus allele clusters, but don't want to explain what they are. This shows that multi locus allele clusters map genetic variation, but variation is not the same as distribution, we are not talking about people having different genes, just that they have different ratios of those genes in different parts of the world. This infobox is about what researchers do when they use multiple loci to identify populations, and about the theory behind it. It cannot be POV, because it's about a methodology and not about opinion. It nowhere disputes the quote you have given, it nowhere claims that the results of these analyses are not reproducible, nor does it claim that the results are not robust. Clustering does not invalidate the fact of clines, all genes must be clinal, just as there is clustering of alleles, such as in the example, Population I displays clustering for wt blue, mut red and wt green, but it does not preclude these genes from being clinal, neither does it mean that the results obtained are not reproducible. Indeed the infobox clearly states that the use of more loci makes the results more robust, and also states that modern techniques can utilise hundreds or even thousands of alleles. Indeed your complaint does not appear to apply to the infobox at all. You do not seem to have read the infobox at all. Alun 13:00, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Then why not clarify it further and also explain while genes are clinal, genetic variation is also composed of clusters? Why not make a reference to only clines but not to clusters? Lukas19 17:07, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Clusters are mentioned. Have you actually read it? It clearly states that certain alleles correlate and form clusters: it is possible not only to distinguish such correlations for hundreds or even thousands of alleles, which form clusters, it is also possible to assign individuals to given populations with very little chance of error. Alun 17:39, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Similarly, about Observations and recommendations regarding race and genetics by the National Human Genome Center of Howard University, it says: "The demographic units of human societies (and of the U.S. census) are the products of social or political rules, not the forces of biological evolution." while not mentioning this: "Nevertheless, recent research indicates that self-described race is a near-perfect indicator of an individual's genetic profile, at least in the United States...."

This infobox contains the Observations and recommendations regarding race and genetics by the National Human Genome Center of Howard University, so it is directly relevant to this article, and it is from a reputable source. If you do not like their guidelines, then I suggest you take it up with them. Your quote does not seem to be from this organisation, but from a single published paper, therefore it does not represent a document used by any national or international body. If you can find a similar document, from a similarly high profile organisation that gives a different perspectivee, then please include it. I am of the opinion that we should also include the AAA and AAPA statements on race as well. Statements like this from authoritative organisations, which are draghted by experts in the field certainly represent reliable sources. Alun 13:00, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Then source the importance of National Human Genome Center of Howard University relative to many other scientist whose some of views contradict the "Observations and recommendations " of HU. Why is HU on top while their views arent? Provide reliable sources to address this. Lukas19 17:07, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand what "whose some of views" means. The National Human Genome Center recomendations are on the top of the article for the simple reason that they are a nationally and internationally recognised center of excellemce. These are their recomendations. The opinions of individual scientists are not the same as recomendations from leading international organisations. This document carries the weight of a whole orgańisation, which is a world leader in human genetic research and which is dedicated specifically to this goal. It is therefore more important than the opinion of a single scientist or group of scientists. Alun 17:39, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

I have removed the template, I did a bit of checking and discovered that I was mistaken. I had confused the National Human Genome Research Institute with the National Human Genome Center, so I'm not so sure it has the same international reputation. My mistake, the similarity in the names misled me. Alun 07:03, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

So the info box does not comply with WP:NPOV. It is right at the beginning and an infobox, making it look like a summary of the article, or the most important part, but it does not include some counter arguments.Lukas19 03:25, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

It does not claim to be a summary of the article, so why should anyone think it is? It is clearly labelled, and represents the considered opinion of one of the most authoritative and important organisations in the field of human genetic research. It is therefore highly relevant and of great importance. Alun 13:00, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

2) Too big: The infobox is too big. It makes the reading really hard. The pictures about Multi Locus Allele Clusters may stay but in a different location. Lukas19 03:25, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't think you have the right to make decisions unilaterally, "The pictures about Multi Locus Allele Clusters may stay but in a different location." do you think this is your article? Alun 13:00, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

I was stating my opinions and I had clearly not touched the infobox. Your question was therefore redundant and silly. Lukas19 17:07, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Silly? Please see WP:CIVIL. You did not express it as an opinion. If it is your opinion, then please clearly state "IN mt opinion..." otherwise how else are we to know? Alun 17:39, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Human Genetic Variation

"Human genetic variation can be used to deduce the geographical origins of an individual's recent ancestors, this is possible because a small proportion of human genetic variation is geographically distributed"

Whether only a small proportion of human genetic variation is geo distributed or not is disputed. This is discussed in "Multilocus Allele Clusters" section:

"Since the 1980s it has been known that human genetic variation is low relative to other species, this is usually attributed to the recent origins of our species, and tends to support the recent single-origin hypothesis (or Out of Africa).^[3] It has also been claimed that most of this small variation is distributed at the individual and local level (about 90-94%), with the remaining 6-10% distributed at the continental (or racial) level.^[4] This observation has been used to argue that racial classifications are not valid when within group variation exceeds between group variation.^[5]

A. W. F. Edwards claimed in 2003 that such conclusions are unwarranted because the argument ignores the fact that most of the information that distinguishes populations is hidden in the correlation structure of the data and not simply in the variation of the individual factors.^[6] While it makes Lewontin's argument unwarranted, Edward's paper does not address the existence or absence of human race, see Lewontin's Fallacy.

Also, it has been argued that the calculation of within group and between group diversity has violated certain assumptions regarding human genetic variation. Calculation of this variation is known as F_ST and Long and Kittles (2003) have questioned the validity of this reproducible statistic....... "

So the method of calculation is disputed. That also means that numerical results are also disputed since different methods may yield to different answers. Hence it is disputed that only a small proportion of human genetic variation is geo distributed. Indeed, Edwards accuses popular articles:

"In popular articles that play down the genetical differences among human populations..." and goes on "...It is not true that ‘‘racial classification is .. . of virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance’’. It is not true, as Nature claimed, that ‘‘two random individuals from any one group are almost as different as any two random individuals from the entire world’’, and it is not true, as the New Scientist claimed, that ‘‘two individuals are different because they are individuals, not because they belong to different races’’ and that ‘‘you can’t predict someone’s race by their genes’’. Such statements might only be true if all the characters studied were independent, which they are not."

So it is POV to include "small" there. If people insist, we can repeat the debate in "Multilocus Allele Clusters" section but that would be stupid given the size of the article. An alternative would be to say that that "small variation" conclusion is found by locus by locus analysis, as apposed to a more comprehensive analysis which would find the correlations and hence yield a different number. Lukas19 03:04, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

It's OK to include any point of view if it is verified from a reliable source. Small is not a POV, but it could be considered a relative term. I have modified the text to read this is possible even though most human genetic variation occurs within sub-populations and not between sub-populations. Long and Kittles do not find any sub-population where within group variation is smaller than between group variation, so even for their work this statement is correct. If it is POV then please provide evidence and the alternative POV, and cite appropriate sources. We can explain how this minority of variation can be used to assign people to different groups, as Edwards suggests in his paper, but he nowhere claims that the amount of inter-group variation is greater than the amount of intra-group variation. This is an encyclopaedia, we say what the researchers say, and you are disputing what the published research states. Alun 07:04, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

• So the method of calculation is disputed.

The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability not truth. (see WP:V) So if it can be verified from a reliable source, then it can be included. The fact that there is a dispute about calculation of F_ST is mentioned in the article already, it does not mean that we dismiss the statistic. The section you changed did not include any mention of F_ST or it's calculation, or it's value. Alun 12:36, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

• That also means that numerical results are also disputed since different methods may yield to different answers. Hence it is disputed that only a small proportion of human genetic variation is geo distributed. Indeed, Edwards accuses popular articles:

Umm...when did "small" become a "numerical result"? You claim that numerical results are disputed, but the word "small" is not a numerical result, so the claim that this makes the word "small" POV is somewhat strange. Besides which you are incorrect about the inclusion of numerical results. Have you actually read either Long and Kittles or Edward's papers? I think not. What Long and Kittles state is that calculation of a single F_ST datum (ie a single figure) for the whole of humanity is disputed. They nowhere dispute that diversity is largest at the individual level, they nowhere claim that inter-population diversity is not smaller than within group diversity. Their claim is that a single value of F_ST cannot be calculated for the whole of humanity, this is the method of calculation that is disputed. As for the comment that "small variation would be found on a locus by locus basis", this is not what Edwards claims. Edwards specifically states that using multiple loci does not affect variation, but does help with classification.

With k loci, therefore, the distance between two individuals from the same population will be binomial with mean k(p2þq2) and variance k(p2þq2)(1�p2�q2) and if from different populations binomial with mean 2kpq and variance 2kpq(1 2pq). These variances are, of course, the same.[6]

Your quotes of Edwards above regarding popular articles are irrelevant, none of the quotes deals with variation, only with classification. That's kind of the point he's making, that humans can be classified into different groups, even though variation is mainly at the individual level, with only a small amount at the population level. Edwards comments are quite correct, but they do not support your assertion that there is a dispute about the variation mainly existing at the within group level, and he clearly does not make this claim. Please provide evidence that most variation is not distributed at the within population level, because neither Long and Kittles, nor Edwards dispute this and it is incorrect to claim that they do. This fact has been reproduced hundreds of times, and I do not believe that any reputable geneticists disputed it. I have tried to explain in the infobox how multiple loci can contribute to classification, it is clear in the infobox that although variation remains constant between Population I and Population II, it is easier to assign an individual to either population based on three loci instead of one. This is due to the cumulative effect of the loci, not due to a lowering of variation. Alun 06:38, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Looking at the sources, none of them say "small". There is only "smaller": "In particular, the finding is consistent that although there are rare variants, about 85–95% of all genetic variance occurs within populations (almost no matter how they are defined) and only the remaining smaller fraction occurs between groups". Again it seems to be your POV that that number is "small". Lukas19 17:14, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Edward also argues: "Now suppose there are k similar loci, all with gene frequency p in population 1 and q in population 2. The ratio of the within-to-total variability is still 84% at each locus. The total number of ‘þ’ genes in an individual will be binomial with

mean kp in population 1 and kq in population 2, with variance kpq in both cases. Continuing with the former gene frequencies and taking k ¼ 100 loci (say), the mean numbers are 30 and 70 respectively, with variances 21 and thus standard deviations of 4.58. With a difference between the means of 40 and a common standard deviation of less than 4.6, there is virtually no overlap between the distributions, and the probability of misclassification is infinitesimal, simply on the basis of counting the number of ‘þ’ genes. Fig. 1 shows how the probability falls off for up to 20 loci."

He clearly argues that numerical results (15% and such, not "small") may change. Lukas19 17:14, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Well this is just a question of wording. We don't actually need to mention it here, and maybe "small" is a poor way to describe it. I don't have a problem removng this from this section of the article, it's mentioned a bit lower down anyway. Alun 13:58, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

About the modified form, statements, "this is possible even though most human genetic variation occurs within sub-populations and not between sub-populations" and "therefore close geographical proximity strongly correlates with genetic similarity" seem contradictory so we need to explain those terms; ie: genetic variation and genetic similarity Lukas19 17:31, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

There is no contradiction here, but you may be right, it may need to be explained better. Any suggestions? Alun 17:45, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Too Long

We need some clean up Lukas19 03:33, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Well I'm not convinced we need the section about "biogeographic ancestry" at all, or at least we can cut it down to a much smaller section. It's mostly not about genetics anyway. Alun 18:15, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Likewise the section "Do biological races exist?" can be cut down. Currently it is a mess, with just lots of quotes. I suggest we do not try to "answer" the question. I suggest we take the main points and outline them. This sort of layout would make sense to me.

Main: Different concepts of biological "race". Mainly it involves two ideas: subspecies and geographically distributed genetic variation.

a. Race and subspecies. Discuss the idea of subspecies, but not in too much detail, we don't need to define it, just give an overview and link to the subspecies article. We can include multiregionalism in this because it is practically a definition of subspecies, ie independent lineages etc. We can conclude that multiregionalism is not supported by genetic data, and that humans do not form subspecies, I don't think anyone supports this observation, and the genetic data certainly do not.

b. Race as geographically distributed variation. State that this is not race as subspecies, but it is possible to differentiate people genetically by geography. Give the points of view of Risch, Rosenberg and Leroy, that human genetic variation is measurable and basically conforms to the major continents, but that there is a great deal of continuity between the groups. State that these researchers think that "race" should be defined as geographically distributed variation, as tey have stated this. Give the point of view of other scientists who think that the human species is too similar to form "races" from a biological perspective even if variation can be measured. They think that "race" then becomes too arbitrary and is not a properly quantifiable concept. I think we need to differentiate between biomedical observers and biological observers, there is clearly a different way of looking at this in the biological community and the medical community. Medical doctors see race as real, because they see people of different "races" with different disease risks etc. Biologists are scientists who would like to see an unambiguous way to classify people, and do not see this in the human population.

Not make any real conclusions in this section, just give the various povs. I don't think we need such long quotes, I think it is a violation of WP:QUOTE. Alun 18:15, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

We can lose the section at the beginning "Race as a biological concept", this seems to deal with definitions of subspecies, but these belong in the subspecies article and not here. We should concentrate on discussing the population genetics of human variation, explaining the various points of view and methodologies used, and conclude that some geneticists think race is simply geographically distributed variation, and others disagree, we should also state that genetics supports the ROA model and has more or less discredited the multiregional model.Alun 18:15, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to put some more graphics in, especially about human lineages and population history, how all out of Africa populations are a sub-set of African diversity etc. We need to discuss the origins of human diversity, this means covering the ROA model, probably at the start of the article, we can cover it briefly and link to the ROA article, it can replace the section about subspecies and their definitions. Alun 18:15, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

I have made several proposals and am happy to discuss more if anyone has any other ideas. Alun 14:09, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Nature "Race and Genetics" supplement

Genetics for the human race lots of papers and reviews. Good resource. There was a symposium at Howard University as well, sponsored I think by Nature. Alun 19:17, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Clean-up: "some says..."

The vast majority of scientists state that : "common racial classifications are insufficient, inaccurate, or biologically meaningless." Thus, writing that "Some scientists argue that common racial classifications are insufficient, inaccurate, or biologically meaningless." is giving undue weight to fringe theories. This is not acceptable, even less on such a sensitive subject where people are looking for what modern science has to say concerning this problem. This article needs expert attention from a mainstream scientist. Tazmaniacs 23:15, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

this article needs a major clean up and reorganization. a lot of stuff is repeated. I think we need a defninite split into a for and against camp of scientists and their respective views.Muntuwandi 23:55, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

It would be probably the best solution, although we need to remember WP:UNDUE and not give too much weight (and space) to proponents of scientific racism. Tazmaniacs 21:37, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Do Biologically Distinct Races Exist?

I think this section should be delected. It is mostly a collection of various quotes. Most of the arguments have already been presented in earlier section, so it adds nothing new but takes up unnecessary space.Muntuwandi 17:51, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree, or at least the quotes could be replaced with a brief section discussing the various POVs. On the whole though the existence or non existence of biological races is not a subject for this article. Whether biological races exist or not is totally dependent upon the definition of "race" used, and given that there is no universally accepted definition of "race", or even subspecies in the biological sciences it seems like a pointless excercise to try to "answer" the question. Certainly if this question needs to be addressed at all it is not in this article because this article is not about biological race, it is about "Race and genetics", the question of the existence or non existence of "biological races" cannot be answered by the discipline of genetics, it can only be answered by a universally accepted definition of "race". Therefore this question belongs in the "race" artice and in the subspecies article. Alun 12:54, 8 April 2007 (UTC)