Nor the history of the science too.
It seems he understands it perfectly well. There is no correlation, no matter how weak.
Sickle cell is found in a tiny minority of Black Africans, a tiny minority of White Africans, a tiny minority of Levantines and a tiny minority of Europeans.
In contrast, dark skin is found amongst Aborigines, Melanesians, Adamanese, Tamils, Sub-continental Indians, South American Indians … As soon as you pool all the people in the world with dark skin, there is no more correlation between dark skin and sickle cell than there is between white skin and sickle cell.
Correlation is not all or nothing, but it has to exist. There has to be some sort of statistical test that concludes that when a sample has trait X, it has a higher chance of having trait Y.
If you can present evidence of this kind that skin colour is correlated with sickle cell, then please do so.
Never claimed to.
If I may answer on his behalf. The position is that there is no such thing as a biological race. Arguing over whether there is or is not a genetic explanation for racial differences is begging the question. First, you need to show that race exists in any meaningful way.
Is it your position that we don’t have genetic evidence that leprechauns are a distinct species from goblins, or that we have definite genetic evidence that leprechauns and goblins are different species? That’s essentially the question you have asked.
First you define what you mean by “race”, and then we can tell you where the evidence stands regarding that.
Since the references here have already shown that he can’t even present evidence for the *existence *of these 5 races, why the hell would anybody credit any argument he makes *regarding *them?
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What is an African American? What is a Caucssian? Is an Egyptian an African American? A Berber? Is a Georgian a Caucasian? A Pakistani? A Tamil? If these questions can’t be answered then how can the traits of these groups be discussed in any meaningful way?
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Is Caucasian a race? Is African American a race? Is Liberian American a distinct race, or the same race? What about Tswana American? If African American is not a race but Caucasian is, then this is a blatant false equivalence isn’t it? That’s not science. And if African-American and Caucasian are both races…
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What is the geographic spread (in millions of square kilometres) in the ancestry of 95% of “African Americans”? What is the geographic spread ((in millions of square kilometres) of Caucasians? Are they equivalent even to within 2 orders of magnitude? If not, then how can any comparison of the genetic variability within those races have any validity? If we did an equivalent comparison of Negroes and Belorussian Americans, would you expect the same results, or exactly the opposite? Why?
Why have you suddenly leapt from race to population? Why can’t we keep talking about races?
Once again, why the constant switch from race to population? Why do you need to keep conflating these terms?
If we just stick to race, this is simply begging the question combined with an argument from ignorance.
There is no evidence that races even exist. To then claim that *because *we have no evidence we have to accept that they exist is just ludicrous. Yet that is what you have just posted: We don;t know that there are any genetic differences in these traits. And because we don;t know we have to accept that the groups have a biological utility.
It’s nonsense.
:rolleyes:
We’re not stupid, we all know when something is said to be correlated, the implication is a strong correlation. Anything else is just weaselling. So fuck off with your pedantry, Frothing-Weasel.
I’m aware of weak correlation. You know how you can know that I’m aware of it, if you had any reading comprehension? The part where I said “skin colour […] the correlation there is piss-poor.”
Golub deserves credit for his summary, you were the person who mistook it for a transcription.
Why am I citing comments now? I watched the one hour debate and read the follow up articles. Fuentes takes Wade to task for almost everything; his lack of definitions, his use of “5 races,” his sampling bias, his reliance on STRUCTURE dependent clusters, his fear mongering, his racialization of population genetics, his declarations of gene driven behaivour, his reinterpretation of studies’ conclusions, his conflation of variation with race, and so on… You switching discussion to the comment section of one link is a deflection.
[QUOTE]
[li]Nobody said that Golub called Fuentes a creationist. Golub explained what he thought Wade meant: “that both Fuentes and creationists make the same epistemic move: assume that what you know is true, and explain away all contradictory evidence.” I don’t know if Golub agrees with that or not but it is a fair criticism. [/li][/QUOTE]
No Golub did not agree with it, nor is it a fair criticism. Calling anti-racialists “(liberal/Marxist) creationists” is a silly slur well beneath the author of that blog.
What do you think racialism is about? It’s the rehashing genetically deterministic behavioural qualities for people based on racial groupings, summed up, such as “blacks iz dum.”
And the fact that the book in question does not actually say anything about a conspiracy and/or politics makes no impact whatsoever?
This was wholly inappropriate for this forum, and I’m sorry, F-P. What can I say, I forgot what forum I was in for a sec, but that’s no excuse.
That claim doesn’t hold in even of the mildest of readings. Wade screams politics at every turn (in both his book and further interviews). His claim is that politics silences “the truth” about race. I simply don’t think I need to cite him any further.
Yet, our 130 population geneticists did not deny the existence of human biological races nor did they claim that there were no significant behavioral genetic differences between either these or other genetically defined groupings. What they did claim, or rather what they meant, is not clear. Here is what they said, mainly:
"We reject Wade’s implication that our findings substantiate his guesswork [with regards to natural selection and worldwide differences in I.Q. test results, political institutions, and economic development].
We are in full agreement that there is no support from the field of population genetics for Wade’s conjectures.”
Wade himself claimed that genetic research has not established or substantiated such differences. Presumably, the authors of the letter read the book and knew this. So what could they have meant? As for support, population genetic research obviously provides some insofar as it shows copious, regional, and rapid selection acting on, among others, neurologically related sections of the genome. This finding surely supports Wades speculations more than the opposite would.
The authors then must mean that there is no population genetic support for specific behavioral genetic differences. But this is silly because the support that is comes from behavioral genetics, econometrics, psychometrics, cultural neuroscience, etc. It’s stuff that gets published in the journal of Intelligence, not Molecular Ecology Notes.
It seems that our population geneticists decry only the “speculating” on the matter. But what about everyone else? A number of vocal anthropologists still claim that races are not biological in some sense. But around half of those polled argue the reverse. And the argument turns on semantics. And some vocal e.g., intelligence researchers claim that certain well known group differences are completely environmental, but the majority disagree.
Does the response to Wade’s book make racialism easier to refute? Maybe rhetorically for the time being.
No, it’s not, as its inappropriate even for the Pit. But you don’t seem to get that.
“Does the response to Wade’s book make racialism easier to refute? Maybe rhetorically for the time being.”
To be clear, I have no idea what other people, in recent months, have been arguing on this board.
The recent dust up over Wade’s book should provide ample evidence against the view that the majority of population geneticists and anthropologists are secretly convinced of the existence of large behavioral genetic differences between races/biogeographic groups/genetic populations.
If that was the point, I do not disagree.
And like a bad neighbour, or a bad penny the very same survey that was dismissed in the pit (even acknowledged as being very weak by some defenders of this nonsense) is there.
Sorry, but besides being found as being flawed, that survey was only good in showing mostly the opinion that intelligence experts have about what population geneticists, biologists, anthropologists may know.
This is what pseudo scientist deniers on the climate change debate did also with a survey of meteorologists, a good chunk of the weather people really do not know what climate scientists do and so the misleading result is advertised as the “climate scientists are ignorant” when in reality it is a few meteorologists who are.
Your post was self-contradictory, in that you said “piss-poor” but you also said “There’s no such correlation”. Based on context, I assumed the “There’s no such correlation” was what you meant.
You’re weaseling yourself here. Your claim that “we all know when something is said to be correlated, the implication is a strong correlation” is absolute nonsense. As it happens, what we’re talking about here is a pretty weak correlation. (The counterclaim is that there is zero correlation.)
The claim that what we’re talking about is strong correlation is a bogus strawman invented by you and others on your side of this debate, so that you can refute it by pointing to variation within populations and/or among subgroups (as you do here).
It’s not an honest technique, but anything goes in the Holy Battle Against Heresy.
*Correction - These series of articles were guest written by another scientist: Christopher Irwin Smith (Associate Professor of Biology)
With all of your links I don’t understand why you are defending this one.
I ask you, Did Golub make any reference ANYWHERE that his summary was not of the entire debate?
He states at the beginning “After a brief introduction by Liebow, Fuentes began the discussion.”
Then later, “This is the point at which Wade’s connection went on the fritz, so Liebow invited Fuentes to talk about geographic drift.”
Later still: “Wade then rejoined the conversation and turned to the topic of the definition of a race.”
And finally,“And with that the session ended.”
If you can’t agree that this is deceptive and unprofessional, then I don’t care one whit about anything else you have to say.
I would expect any debater to “take his opponent to task for almost everything” and vice versa. It doesn’t prove one or the other is right or wrong.
Why do you not address that “assum[ing] that what you know is true, and explain[ing] away all contradictory evidence” is not a fair criticism. Your saying so, does not make it so. And why must you continue to raise the creationist strawman when no has called anyone that.
Seems like everybody has a different definition of “racialism”. It doesn’t seem like anyone here is arguing for “determinism” so I guess that is just another strawman in your barn along with the other muck.
Since the OP told us that this is a reply to the ones that indeed are arguing for determinism in the PIT I have to say that here you are not paying attention.
OTOH, no one actually is arguing for determinism in the Pit.
So I guess it’s back to being a strawman.
So it is back again on denying that Chief Pedant and others are not doing that in the pit and in many past discussions.
Telling others that you did not pay attention is not my problem.
No, I’ve paid attention and no one has ever made that argument.
Interesting this is that you’ve probably paid attention too, and should know better. But you have other reasons for making this claim (as does the OP).