I was just going to ignore this. But, then I realized that your little mind would interpret that as a victory. So, I was reading through this thread for a cite when I found that Kimstu had already cited a lie of yours in this very thread.
The failure rate in distinguishing Melanesians from sub Saharan Africans is closer to 100 per cent.
Unless you’re willing to abandon phenotype entirely - in which case we’re not really talking about race - your classification system also fails in Brazil, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Madagascar, and parts of the US. Mighty leaky boat you got there, sailor. Maybe you want to head back to port.
If I understand you correctly, you’re pointing out that shared genes in a population often result in members of that population looking similar. Yes, that’s certainly true. And if you’re making the point that racial categories can to some extent overlap with actual genetic populations, yes, that’s true too. Some populations who are classified as being in the “same race” because they look alike are indeed quite closely related to each other genetically.
:eek: But but but but but… you just last page were saying that having dark skin and kinky hair is NOT a reliable identifier for classification in “the Black race”! Specifically, that there are entire populations of people with dark skin and kinky hair who are not included in “the Black race”, such as Australian Aborigines:
If not all groups of people with black skin “are of the Black race”, then how on earth can we claim that having dark skin is an “identifier” that is “very reliable for classification” into racial categories?
That just doesn’t make sense.
If by “racial groups” you mean “genetic populations”, then sure, as I’ve already said, there’s nothing wrong or unscientific about that.
It might have scientific validity or it might not, depending on what characteristics you used to categorize people.
Here’s an example of a scientifically valid criterion (not the only possible one, of course) for grouping the human population according to their cigarette smoking levels (ignoring cigars, pipes, and other smokable substances for the moment):
Non-smokers: Never smoke at all.
Light smokers: Smoke more than zero but fewer than ten cigarettes per day, on average.
Heavy smokers: Smoke ten or more cigarettes per day.
The dividing lines between these categories are of course somewhat arbitrary, but they’re well-defined and reliably distinguish between the smoking levels of the different groups.
Here’s an example of a scientifically invalid criterion for the same grouping:
Non-smokers: Do not cough, clothes don’t smell of smoke.
Light smokers: Cough infrequently, clothes smell slightly smoky.
Heavy smokers: Cough persistently, clothes reek of smoke.
What’s wrong with that classification scheme is not that the category boundaries are somewhat arbitrary, but that the different categories intrinsically don’t accurately represent different smoking levels.
All the smokers who don’t cough and who are very fastidious about always having fresh-smelling clothes will be mis-classified as non-smokers. All the non-smokers who have smoky-smelling clothes because they live with smokers and/or work in smoky environments will be mis-classified as smokers.
Although I doubt that you intended it to, your example illustrates perfectly what’s wrong with attempts to use phenotype-based racial categories as proxies for genetic populations.
When we want to know how much somebody smokes, we seek to find out how much they actually smoke, rather than just examining their superficial characteristics to see how “smoky” they seem and drawing conclusions from that.
Similarly, when we want to know the genetic relationships between populations, we should look at their genes, rather than putting them into categories based on superficial phenotype characteristics and trying to deduce or assume their genetic similarities from their shared categories.
Again, the problem is not that the category boundaries are a bit fuzzy, but that the categories themselves aren’t reliable indicators of what we’re trying to find out.
Super. We have no beef, then. Welcome to my fan club.
Really? John Relethford found from WW. Howell’s craniometric data looking at six geographic areas, polynesia (Easter Island, Mokapu, Moriori), australasia (Tasmania, Tolai, Hainan) sub saharan africa (Teita, Zulu, Dogon), east asia (South Japan, North Japan), americas (Peru, Arikara, Santa Cruz) & europe (Berg, Zalavar & Norse), 97% classification accuracy for males and 96% for females.
In terms of DNA, they’re quite separate clusters when you aggregate individuals.
See comments aboveregarding intergradation areas. That is actually what you would expect within a species, as opposed to groups of different species.
How prescient. 
Chenny Chen Chen, we’re talking about magellan’s claim of being able to visually ID different populations.
Exactly! It totally makes scientific sense to distinguish between different genetic populations on the basis of differences in their genes.
In fact, it’s so sensible that it’s damn near tautological. Like classifying the severity of someone’s smoking habit based on how much they smoke.
What isn’t so sensible is to try to use an unreliable superficial phenotype characteristic as a proxy for actual genetic relationship.
Can anyone tell me what it means when we can break people into groupings based on genetic markers? Tell me what it means specifically other than being able to make cool maps based on the genetic markers.
Exactly so. Genotypes and phenotypes are different things, as I (and a lot of other people) keep saying.
Folks like magellan like to trot out the idea that people with the same genotype will tend to share phenotypical traits, which is certainly true. The problem is that, by implication or direct statement, the conclusion meant to be drawn is that people with the same phenotype can be assumed to share genotypical traits, which is demonstrably not true. This is equivalent to saying that if an animal is a cat it probably has four legs, therefore if it has four legs it is probably a cat. You don’t even really need genetic research to kick the (four) legs out from under that argument, you just need Logic 101.
Please give me the post number of the post in this thread where Kimstu does that. Although Kimstu is on my ignore list, I intend to click the “view post” button to see what you are talking about.
I am disappointed. You forgot to mention that he’s also a fat socialist pedophile terrorist who smokes, doesn’t tip and declaws cats.
Well, you could use it to track things like genetic diseases I guess, if the marker in question is associated with the genes at fault. You could possibly use it to track people’s ancestry if they were curious.
Brazil84
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14857170&postcount=81
This is just the first that pops up.
Since that is pretty much the answer, why do people keep thinking its somehow important for classifying races or even people into distinct populations?
Why do people conflate genetic markers with genes?
Because they want to say “black people are stupid” without appearing stupid.
Unfortunately, they’re a hundred years behind the times.
You say that, but have you read Risch?
The issue isn’t the term, it’s the definition for what that term means. What are the criteria for inclusion in that category? Be sure to make this a phenotypical definition, not a social one, since that’s the issue under discussion.
Okay, so according to you, the following statement is a lie:
Do I understand you correctly?