Russians are Slavs; Lithuanians are not.
I’m arguing that the concept of race can be applied to humans. Whether you focus on major geographic races (eg the major groups mentioned by Lahn & Ebenstein above) or a greater number of groups within those major clusters comes down to whether you’re a “lumper or a splitter”. For example the five major groups identified by McEvoy et al 2010:
Something the 2004 winner of the Curt Stern award for outstanding contributions to genetics over the previous 10 years appears to agree with.
In relation to your later paragraph I think you need to re-read Lahn & Ebenstein.
No. Arguments between “lumpers” and “splitters” have to do with demonstrated hierarchical groupings. In evolutionary biology it is valid to have such arguments when you’re looking at higher level relationships, but the hierarchical approximation stops working when you’re looking at relationships among groups this closely related, because we can and do mix freely, and the influence of mixing begins to erase any higher level categories (or, quite likely, prevent them from forming in the first place.)
The discussion of five races is spurious (and it’s not the topic of the paper you linked, which makes it poor evidence) because – and you would know this if you really understood this material – such an analysis will always lead to this type of higher-order grouping, because even pure chance will result in some greater similarities between ethnic groups in the polymorphisms under examination, even if the groups are not actually be historically or genetically closer than any other two groups.
Assuming that a statistical result necessarily describes a real-world relationship is a common error when non-experts are trying to understand statistical analyses without having the background required to evaluate what they’re reading. As a simpler example, it’s obvious that one can come up with a correlation between any two pieces of data, and given enough pieces of data – even random data – one can find some strong correlations. Such results are spurious, though – the fact that statistics allows us to measure a correlation doesn’t mean we’ve proven any actual relationship, and says nothing about whether the correlation is any stronger that pure random chance would produce. Similarly, subjecting any analysis of SNPs and ethnic groups would result in some higher-order relationships between those groups, but that doesn’t mean those relationships are anything other than statistical happenstance. Being able to calculate a number doesn’t mean the number measures anything real.
What a lovely argument from authority. But it is interesting how often the authors of the paper have to point out that they’re arguing against the conclusions of most experts in the field.
Somehow I’m feeling confident that they are every bit as good evidence for your point as the other papers you cite, and thus I don’t feel I particularly need to.
They reflect evolutionary history. They also reflect patterns of variation within the species (again, I’m wondering if you have this hostility to the existence of races in other species too).
No. For the reasons I’ve just explained, they are quite likely to reflect absolute chance.
If you can’t understand that, I’m sorry. I don’t know a way to simplify it further. I’m trying to help you understand how you failed at interpreting the thing you cited.
Risch et al, Lahn & Ebenstein, not to mention Jerry Coyne must all be badly mistaken 
I suppose it is chance that those clusters just so happen to coincide with major geographic areas where populations were separated by physical barriers. 
Steve Hsu also summarizes the reason for the clustering here:
Yes, but Croatians and Serbs are Slavs and you’ll notice quite a few of them in the NBA.
Somehow or other the mighty Serb basketball gene didn’t get passed on to Russians.
That or the dominance in certain athletic activities by ethnic groups or nationalities is due to reasons other than genetics.
Of course, there must be a genetic explanation why Russians do so much better at Chess than Canadians.
As has been pointed out in this thread, many of the people you reference – I pointed this out myself in regard to Coyne – do not make the claims you are making. So I’m not sure if you’re repeating this out of dishonesty or confusion, but what you’re saying here is at very best a massive overstatement.
Ah, yes, such as those firm geographical barriers that render east asia so completely isolated from Central Asia (since your sources indicate that Central Asians are a different race from East Asians). What an odd natural geographical coincidence it must have been for that great big wall to have formed that separated China from Central Asia.
I notice that this is an informal paper, and he is engaging in the same type of strawman argumentation you and your fellows are, attributing all disagreement to “PC” and representing his claims as “dangerous” (and thus, presumably, ‘realist’ claims that reject ‘PC dogma’). Coincidentally, it’s the same sort of reasoning consistently used to argue against evolution, or the moon landing. And coincidentally he doesn’t even refer to actual data – he just invents numbers to illustrate his claim; he doesn’t make any attempt to demonstrate it. He also makes the false strawman argument that those who reject the notion of race claim that the only population-based differences between human groups are cosmetic surface traits. (Whereas, in real life, as I mentioned before, no one discounts the fact that diseases like Tay-Sachs, cystic fibrosis, sickle-cell, and numerous others are concentrated in certain ethnic groups, and in many cases due to specific, well-identified genetic differences.)
So: he argues on the basis of attributing unscientific motivations to those who disagree with him, he claims they believe things which they don’t, and he has no actual evidence for what he says. I can see why you appreciated his work so much.
[QUOTE=Ibn Warraq]
Yes, but Croatians and Serbs are Slavs and you’ll notice quite a few of them in the NBA.
[/QUOTE]
I haven’t, but I’ll take your word for it. Apologies for misunderstanding what you were saying.
Certainly the success of polynesians in physical contact sports such as rugby, rugby league & NFL seems partly to do with the prevalence of certain physical traits.
Abso-fucking-lutely. Nobel Prize, here I come!
And I say, “Hot damn! Tell me more!”
And I say, “Okay, fine, great… so?”
And from then on, the conversation goes more or less like this:
Hypothetical Assistant: Well, don’t you think that suggests a shared genetic component in this elite category?
Me: Well, it certainly could, I guess. How elitely unusual is it for people to have “black person category” skin and to have some West African ancestry within the past 400 years or so?
H.A.: Um, let’s see… Now, this’ll interest you: probably not more than 20% of the global population shares these characteristics!
Me: …Oh. So, not all that unusual, then. All right. So then, have you compared their sequences?
H.A.: Um, sequences?
Me: Yes. How much did you sample? How do the Y-DNA and mtDNA stack up? Common haplogroup, I assume? L1 or L2? And what’s the admixture of L3-derived European ancestry? Any commonalities in the PC2? How much Mandenka, Bantu or Yoruba? Too much to hope for an exact mtDNA match, I suppose? Come on, give me the details, what have you found?
H.A.: Er…well…I’ve been looking at their skin, see… All of them are definitely black. Oh yes, definitely.
Me: (reaching for clue-by-four under desk) “Definitely black”?
H.A.: Yes, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that turns out to indicate that they share a common West African gene that gives them their sprinting power!
Me: (vigorously smacking H.A. with clue-by-four) YOU GORMLESS POINDEXTER, DO YOU MEAN TO TELL ME THAT YOU HAVEN’T EVEN SEQUENCED THEIR INDIVIDUAL GENOMES?!?? *We’ve got some of the most amazing high-achievers of the human species to study in detail here, and instead of trying to figure out exactly what genes they may share you’ve been faffing around looking at their SKIN?!!!?? *
Is that what you think I’m paying you a research assistant stipend for? So you can loll around at leisure in your Salvation Army T-shirts eating your ramen noodles and babbling about phenotype characteristics while I’m not getting MY NOBEL PRIZE?!??? Now get your goddamned ass back in that lab and DO SOME FUCKING SCIENCE!!!
:dubious: Really? You think that all sub-Saharan Africans look more like other sub-Saharan Africans than like Aborigines? Considering the huge range of phenotype variation among sub-Saharan Africans, I kind of doubt that.
That’s because, as I think the above little vignette suggests, there’s no earthly reason why I should waste time comparing skin color if I can compare actual genetic information instead. Color is merely a crude and unreliable proxy for the information that I’m really interested in: namely, scientifically determined genetic relationships.
Blind or not, examining strands of DNA is going to pay off a hell of a lot more in establishing real genetic similarities and differences between individuals and populations than simply noticing whether or not they’re Black, or noticing any other phenotype similarity. In fact, since phenotype similarities and disparities often don’t correlate well with genetic ones, paying attention to phenotypes rather than to actual genes is a potentially misleading and pointless distraction.
@ mister nyx;
Just to clarify, you are disagreeing with Lahn, Ebenstein, Risch & co regarding the clusters reflecting evolutionary history: Particluarly do you disagree with this statement?
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7265/box/461726a_BX1.html
Variance within a category is just variance. Its an estimate of variability. I will give you the ANOVA version of variance between categories. This is just the variance among groups using their group means as data points. As the group means grow farther apart then the variance increases. Then there is the total variance of all the data which is composed of the between and within group variance. So the more difference there is between groups the greater proportion of the total variance is accounted for by between group differences. A meaningful category will allow me to make predictions about that category that are typically statistically different.
Then for every special characteristic they have we’d find “greater variation between two categories than within a category”. I would like to modify the last word to categories.
To see if you would understand the last two things I said.
And if BMI allows me to sort people into categories that make reliable predictions like these then I am fine with it.
At this point, I can no longer trust your summaries of what your citations say. Not only have they repeatedly been erroneous, but you have also failed to acknowledge that and correct yourself when I’ve pointed out instances.
Nope. But it doesn’t necessarily lead to the conclusions you draw.
Hahaha, nice dodge 
I was specifically asking whether you disagreed with that excerpt (quoted word for word). Not the article as a whole, or my summary of it. Note the part I quoted from isn’t longif you want to read it.
Again: Do you disagree with this:
I specifically answered the question in the post you quoted. I merely began it with an aside about your . . . difficulties . . . with reading and responding to text.
It would be the second paragraph I wrote. I see you didn’t get that far. Perhaps your . . . difficulties . . . are even more pervasive than I had imagined.
Yes, and I was seeking clarification because while you suggested the clusters could be completely due to chance, you didn’t really address the evolutionary history referred to by Lahn & Ebenstein. That’s why I wanted a straight answer on whether you disagreed with this:
It seems you’re becoming snotty in having to explain your position so I’m going to leave you to it. I’ll address any further comments you have at a later stage.
I told you. I don’t have a problem with that quote. For some reason you missed that and asked me again. My answer remains the same: I have no problem with that quote.
Impressionistic statements about “reduced gene flow” are a reasonable, if vague, hypothesis to explain something. But as I mentioned with my comments about the clusters potentially being a statistical artifact – comments that, after reading this post, I’m increasingly certain went above your head – there is not necessarily anything to explain. You have a phenomenon you obviously dearly wish to be true – supposed racial distinctions among humans – and you have a hypothesis to explain it – geographical separation limiting gene flow – but you have yet to provide any compelling reason to think there is anything to explain. And, worse, you have linked to things that don’t really make the point you want them to, which makes it seem likely that you don’t have any good evidence.
Based on this thread, I’m noticing something of a pattern among you advocates of ‘race realism’ – you tend to leap to make excuses not to talk with people who can’t be fleeced with nonarguments. I wonder why.
The argument about clusters being a statistical artifact is looked at by Rosenberg et al 2005.
Thankfully, I had no such illusions about you.
…and injecting a racial joke into this thread seemed like a clever thing to do to you? You make my point for me.
No. We’re aware racists like you think that, but we’d hoped by now we’ve shown that to be bullshit. But looks like we had to do it again.
That you are a racist is not new knowledge.
That you’d be so gauche about it, is.
Oh, I’ve no doubt you thought it, or similar. I was just amazed at your restraint, is all.
Here’s a pro-tip, though: real non-racists? They wouldn’t have made a “racial” joke* at all* (unless it was an ingroup joke, possibly - but you’re not West African)
Dark Gods preserve me from that.
I don’t see how the speed of an imaginary sky pixie can ever be faster than a real thing.
A citation that brings strong doubt onto the notion that there are major discontinuous genetic differences in human populations rather than general regional tendencies, because the differences only become clear when a very large number of loci are examined. Whereas, were your hypothesis about very limited gene flow true, you wouldn’t have to look that hard before you’d find some loci that were highly diagnostic of a person’s “race”. In fact, it seems that these data support the consensus view that there are genetic traits associated to some degree with geography – something no one argues against.
Interestingly, the authors state clearly that their data don’t support notions of “race”. They say it explicitly:
So let’s chalk this up as yet another citation that goes against your claims.