From the FAQ:
Then:
But a person’s “race” has no predictive value regarding their possession of the Sickle Cell trait. Millions of “blacks” do not have the Sickle Cell trait and millions of “blacks” are not susceptible to the Sickle Cell trait. It is not predictive about a person’s genetic makeup (which was the statement you assigned to the “strong” argument).
Just when you think it is safe to tread in GD…
Sounds like an argument for POPULATIONS to me. (since it is not universal, only SOME blacks are more likely to have it, and SOME medditerranians [spe;;ed horribly wrong] are more likely to have it.)
I’m not sure we’ve found anything major. I could be wrong, writing this off the cuff as i have to go soon.
We are saying race doesn’t exist as a scientific construct. It IS a sociological construct (as has been said in several if not all of these threads).
If you know that a person is black, it follows that there is a higher probability that the person carries the SCA allele than otherwise.
Thus, a person’s race has predictive value as to his or her genetic makeup.
It sounds as though you don’t understand what “predictive value” means. (It’s also possible that I’m using the term in a non-standard way.) I suggest you google on the term “predictive value” and think about it a bit.
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I’m not sure what you mean by an “argument for POPULATIONS.” In any event, the fact that the SCA allele is distributed as it is lends support to the “medium” interpretation described in the Race FAQ. If you want to argue all day in favor of the “medium” interpretation, I can’t stop you.
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Ok, let me rephrase what is in the FAQ:
By the way, do you mind if I quote your previous post on that website?
And if I go to Capetown and pull 50 “blacks” and 50 “whites” off the street and test them for Sickle Cell and they all test negative, what has your Predictive Value shown us?
(True Positive / (True Positive + False Positive)) × 100 = Predictive Value
(0 / (0 + 0)) × 100 = 0 (or undefined with the division by 0)
Which part? if you do the “I’m not sure we’ve found anything major.” make sure to add the "I could be wrong, writing this off the cuff as i have to go soon. " otherwise i could end up looking like a fool. You should probably include a link to this thread at the bottom.
I used populations (which was capitalized for emphasis, not yelling, hindisight is 20/20) because that is the term scientists usually use. Populations fit here because the North Africans are the ones that have most of the SCA trait while the sub-saharans have less.
Here are some links for you to read: http://www.aaanet.org/stmts/racepp.htm which i got from http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/misc/race.html (some of the links require membership)
http://www.annieappleseedproject.org/racclingoods.html
Hmmm. Some posts have been lost to the crash.
OK. From my memory, lucwarm is actually using “predictive value” not as a measure of the validity of testing (which is the only way I have seen it used in a technical setting), but as a “general view of the proportion of occurrences.” This would mean that my interpretation that the perceived “race” of an individual had to be “predictive” of values in every individual was a misinterpretation of his intent.
Since the whole “strong” version is lucwarm’s invention, I would say that he gets to set the rules of what it means.
Just to make things clear, I am using the term as follows: A condition “A” has predictive value as to trait “X” if the satisfaction of condition A changes the probability that an individual bears trait X.
i.e. if P(X) != P(X|A)
or, more specifically, if “S” represents the trait of carrying the SCA allele, and “B” represents the condition of being black, then
P(S) != P(S|B).
In essence, your post above attempts to argue that both sides of the inequality are equal by adding an extra condition - being from Capetown. So you are saying that:
P(S|C) = P(S|B&C).
Possibly true, but irrelevant.
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Agree.
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Sadly the “strong” viewpoint is based on actual posts I have seen on these boards.
If I am understanding your agrument correctly, you have used circular reasoning. How do you define “black” in this case? Is it people of African ancestory? North African, Southern African (I understand only one of the two groups have a true statistical correlation to the SCA allele)? People with dark skin and curly hair?
If the latter, you must include Australian Aborigines, correct? After all, it gives you the exact same statistical correlation so there is no reason not to include them. And if I found another group with dark skin and curly hair you’d have to include them in your race, right? How about Standard Poodles? They seem to qualify, and amazingly, they produce the exact same statistical correlation.
It seems that any arbitrary collection of populations will produce the statistical correlation you are describing. Assume it’s the north African population that actually has the SCA allele (I’m taking this from notes lost in the past few days, sorry no cite), the fact that you can add in the southern population and still get a result says very little. The fact that you can use Lithuanian farmers instead of southern Africans and get the same result shows that this method of defining race has little or no use.
I’m not sure if this comment is addressed to me, but assuming it is, you don’t understand the argument at all. See below.
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And this is a decent argument in favor of the “medium” viewpoint discussed in the Race FAQ. Irrelevant to the “strong” viewpoint, however. You do understand that there’s a difference, don’t you?
Anyway, it’s interesting how people seem so irresistably drawn to making points of the sort you just made.
There is a simple answer here. Data. And what the primary investigators say.
Now, lucwarm et al continue a fine little game of “but what if” sophistry, or more clearly, argument to ignorance (argumentum ad ignorantiam). A fine little logical fallacy our ever so-well-informed contrarians keep falling back on, resting their essential claim that race is true proposition of some utility (** in the context of the biological argument **) only because it hasn’t been proved false to some “principled” standard, although our dear lucwarm has failed to define in a rigorous scientific manner what principled actually indicates in the context of applying this knowledge or unknowledge as the case may be. Of course, he also seems unable and unwilling to substantiate much of his argumentation and accusations, preferring straw men.
However, it has readily been apparent that there is a general illiteracy in re the substance throughout this argument in re the contrarian position. I draw attention to the illiteracy of the argument in the prior thread that somehow Whale and Human could be conceived of as a “ring species” – an illiterate abuse of the concept worthy of the creationists. Or here in this thread that somehow the lumping of disparate groups together to create statistical artefacts is a useful exercise. To undertake a counter argument in a technical field, one has the burden of first informing oneself as to the meaning and usage of terminology and standards in that field, rather than to blunder about blindly flailing about without the slightest grounding.
Further that, the hand-waiving claim that if somehow “race” is not a category of examination (in the context of human genetics) that genetic differences will go unfound, as we will see. A clear argument to ignorance insofar as the wealth of primary research to date identifying such differences, research which has consistently led such researchers to view race as a category that obstructs understanding actual structuring of human populations by imposing unsupported
I draw attention, *** once more *** to the material which was evidently not understood the first time around – although this is hardly a novelty at this time. Indeed let me repeat myself from .
Let me draw attention to (a). Perhaps it is difficult for our contrarians to grasp this, but it remains the fact that race has been an obstacle even in medical inquiry. The recent NEJM article and editorial inviting primary researchers and medical practitioners to abandon race as their primary means of thinking about population differences on a biological level was motivated by the accumulation of “revisions” of medical “facts” finding issues previosuly assumed (due to improper conceptualization) to be rooted in race-biology were in fact rooted in socio-environmental differences. (“Racial disparities in Medical Care”
Editorial. NEJM May 2001, p. 1471-3, also see for example Schwartz LM, et al. “Misunderstandings about the effects of race and sex on physicians’referrals for cardiac catheterization.” NEJM 341 1 Jul 1999, p. 279-83; 286-7)
Differential treatment patterns (e.g. heart disease, for unknown reasons black Americans receive differential treatment (sub-standard) resulting in a large statistical difference in results) – the hand-waving counter argument that the contrarians simply don’t think that socio-economic/environmental differences can produce large group differences is utterly unsupported by data. That is there is clear data from a variety of different ethnic groups/races/populations which clearly indicate such differences can and do produce large, observable differentiations in population health outcomes – which is to say the expression of their underlying genetics.
I further note that the contrarians continue to labor under the largely inexplicable attachment to the idea they are “more closely” related to someone of their own race – the question asked in the other thread I believe, and nonsensically several times, was whether it was not more likely to be more closely related genetically to someone of one’s own race than not.
That question is in fact quite simple. Some probability calculations should resolve it, if the askers would simply reflect on the general observation that around 85% of variation does not map unto groups, only around 10-15% does map unto groups, that variation being tied to, of course, regional environmental selection factors such as climate etc. I believe that some simple probability calculations can relieve them of their misapprehensions.
Now this brings us the much ignored paper, I have cited several times Chiara Romualdi et al “Patterns of Human Diversity, within and among Continents, Inferred from Biallelic DNA Polymorphisms” Genome Vol. 12, Issue 4, 602-612, April 2002 which noted:
This is but the most recent paper, and this one clearly responding to the question of whether one can tease meaning out of macro-structures in populations. And, once again, the answer is no, the data does not support the tired old macro-populations known as the classical races.
Returning to the argument then: Even those traits derive from multiple alleles such that the same, more or less, skin color can not be said to mean that the persons ipso facto even share the same alleles for that phenotype. Different paths to the same surface expression.
Further, as cited in the article above, a mere 10-15% of the overall package of our genetic diversity varies by region. 90% varies on an individual basis: around 90% of your variation is individual and the remainder is regional such that 90% of the difference in between any two humans does not map unto whatever regional grouping one may want.
Now, let me dredge up past questions from prior threads that I should have responded to, but had not the time.
emphasis added, focus on the issue of evidence and not the underlying question of sport.
Absolute and complete misunderstanding.
Ongoing research on populations is what gives us the data. If there are ‘racial,’ or better some population differences, they will be uncovered. They will be uncovered and better understood by structuring that research in a manner which best fits the data.
In a real sense, the question you ask suffers from incomprehension of where the science is going. There is no lack of study of population differences – that is the essential science on this – other than of course lacks driven by limited resources. Structuring and determining the research on ‘racial’ grounds simply does not help with uncovering, rather it introduces inefficient hypotheses.
Your worry then is almost entirely misplaced. If the data emerges which indicates say upper Sahelian derived populations have some package of traits which give an advantage at the margin – well then it will emerge, and then when the alleles are identified, research will look for them. Abandoning the race concept as the driver and looking for specific traits allows one to come up with better, more accurate and ultimately more efficient hypotheses and thus better research.
Simple as that. In other words, if you’re worried that somehow population factors will be missed the best way not to miss them, given our current state of knowledge is to ditch the classical race concept and build up rigorous population models – and not allow the sociological issues to confuse the primary research.
Further returning to a past question on differences and performance:
Wonderful, now this is what I was getting at. Now you’re advancing something which makes sense on the evidence. Indeed, if you look back to the linked discussion you’ll note that this was among the hypotheses I advanced as areas where someone looked for biological explanations to complement the socio-cultural factors would want to look.
Now, I am going to break my promise to myself and introduce yet more materials. It is perhaps an exercise in almost delusional optimism that this primary literature, from peer reviewed journals, will make the slightest dent in our sophists’ argumentum ad ignorantiam, however there is enough of interest here that it may be worth while.
First, the brand new review and comment on the literature by David B. Goldstein and Lounès Chikhi “Human Migrations And Population Structure: What We Know and Why it Matters” Annu. Rev. Genomics Hum. Genet. 2002. 3:129-152; and if I do not lose steam L.B. Jorde, W.S. Watkins and M.J. Bamshad1 “Population genomics: a bridge from evolutionary history to genetic medicine” Human Molecular Genetics, 2001, Vol. 10, No. 20 2199-2207. I also would like to draw attention to the following:
Luísa Pereira, Isabelle Dupanloup, Zoë H. Rosser, Mark A. Jobling and Guido Barbujani “Y-Chromosome Mismatch Distributions in Europe” Molecular Biology and Evolution 18:1259-1271 (2001) which is less directly relevant but interesting article illustrating direction of research and structure of populations.
Michael F. Hammer and Stephen L. Zegura1 “The Human Y Chromosome Haplogroup Tree: Nomenclature and Phylogeography of Its Major Divisions” Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2002. 31:303-321. Again an interesting overview which I looked at very rapidly, notes further support for OoA in a complex form, uses multidimensional anlaysis to get at groupings, and also notes, that although Africa exhibits greater divergence among haplogroups, Asia contains the largest number of major haplogroups, with a multidimensional scaling analysis plot indicates that the Americas, Africa, and East Asia are outliers, whereas the rest of the world forms a large central cluster. Interestingly, they advance a high percentage for the examined NRY haplogroups, 43% of the total variance, as attributable to differences among populations.
Now, these citations aside let us look at what Goldstein and Chikhi have to say first. The article presents an engaged overview of the current literature and issues, and argues for a more sophisticated and engaged use of population genetics, historical observations on populations based on the same, and medical genetics. It also directly addresses the issues often raised here.
I think the article is interesting enough to quote extensively from it. Much of the commentary and analysis revolves around the importance of linkage disequilibrium analysis (the non-random association between alleles at different sites/loci) as a means of getting at complex traits (as opposed to monogenetic) – which would include almost all non-infectious disease of concern to most modern medicine.
However, as they note, linkage disequilibrium in any given population is driven by numerous factors of which admixture, genetic drift, bottlenecks, rate of mutation are important. These bear directly on the historically focused genetic research. There is, then, a direct tie between better genetic medicine and better, more sophisticated understanding of genetic populations and their histories. (As I have frequently argued) As the authors state “the optimal design of association studies depends not only on the relationship between genetic variation and disease status but it must also be guided by what is known about the pattern of LD [nb: linkage disequilibrium] in the population and genomic region under study.”
They note for example that it “ is also clear … that demographic events such as bottlenecks and admixture have elevated LD in particular populations. For example, non-African populations generally have much higher levels of LD than African ones (Tishkoff et al. 1996) (Reich et al. 2001) and admixture was shown to have dramatically increased LD in a Bantu-Semitic hybrid populations (Wilson & Goldstein 2000).”
Now they also further discuss the complexity of untangling disease-allelic relationships, which bears quoting en extenso:
Now, perhaps of most interest to us is there discussion of “Geographic structure of medically-relevant mutations”
Again, their discussion merits quoting en extenso, from the beginning:
First they situate the issue as follows, readers will note that their argumentation on this issue is precisely what I have presented to date, of course providing further citational support:
Emphasis added. Why? Well, as argued and as my citations supra indicated, variation does not map onto races, it is incoherent on that level.
Or to further follow the authors:
I do note the emphasized sections of text, which further confirm similar observations by Roumaldi et al, as cited above. Again the evidence speaks strongly against the utility of the classic race concept in a bio-medical context for confusing rather than clarifying the source of medical problems.
Now an interesting side point, but of utility for illustrating the importance understanding population histories is their discussion of “Population differentiation and gene function” connected with a side issue on Neanderthal.
They propose that looking SNPs (Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms: most frequently found DNA sequence variations in the genome) across multiple populations as a way to get at a variety of important insights as loci under selection may be identified through differences in the average degree of differentiation between discrete populations. They argue that the “dramatic increase in genomic data” should allow for assessment of large sets of variants and identification of empirical outliers.
An interesting suggestion of where and how differences btw populations, in terms of distributional frequencies will be located. Well, this is already far too long, I think I shall place the Neandertal materials in the Cecil column thread on “why white people look different,” as it is more directly relevant.
The essence in the end is the same. Or let me put it in another way, let’s face reality, my dear contrarians have yet to present any kind of scientific argument. Or to illustrate another way, in response to Telemark pointedly drawing lucwarm’s uneducated attention to the incoherence of his argument, he responds:
I believe he understood the arguments defined on that unlearned collection maundering to be straw men.
Rather, he was pointing out that your “method” is nothing but a useless statistical artefact without underlying explanatory value.
Yes, interesting. It probably would be ever more interesting to observe the high degree of correlation between an education in genetics and biology and the advancing of pointed commentary in regards to the incoherence of arguments made by those not so educated. Or the dodges and lack of substance in the replies by the same.
I believe there is one race. i dont see why every breaks them down. there are many diffent skin clor many diffent backround belief places but ine race.
bruna
Well Jon Entine would agree with that. So would I. Now if only you volunteered this little tidbit to answer the innumerable queries regarding why blacks seem to dominate athletically two years ago rather than leave us with what appeared to be the only alternative answer namely “cultural influences”
I’m afraid I missed your post where you first acknowledged this. What linked discussion?
As far as I know, I was the first poster to present Jon Entine conclusions particularly the qualification that evidence of the “black advantage” exists only at the elite level. Never once did you acknowlege the rationality of my position in this regard but instead ridiculed me and Jon Entine each and every time you responded to me. What made you change your mind?
Jon Entire advanced an illiterate mish-mash of misunderstanding, his “black excellence” does not respond to the data.
The hypotheses I advanced were done so long before, in regards to restricted specified populations and a warm-climate phenotypical advantage hypothesis in conjuction with socio-cultural constraints and influences.
All on the same thread.
Your lack of understanding of the same, notwithstanding.
No change of mind, not one whit. Your position, and Entine’s nonsensical ignorant argument, are still fully deserving of ridicule for their over-reaching, unfounded conclusions. I was encouraging Izzy’s further specification of where he was thinking and attempting to encourage him to think further-- evidently I became too generous for it encouraged the unformed to scurry forth.
Again. What linked discussion in your Part I post are you referring to ?
I don’t recall - this was a partial piece I decided to rescue from my harddrive’s obscurity. In retrospect I should have eliminated portions to focus on the immediate issue.
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Fascinating how people continue to confuse the “strong” and “medium” viewpoints. It’s like moths drawn to a flame.
Anyway, I’m not going to bother responding to the rest of your nonsense. I don’t really see much point in your conclusory meanderings, but perhaps they are therapeutic to you.
No, not really. Rather strawmen are strawmen, and the data is the data.
Yes, nonsense. Of course you don’t see a point, lacking a grounding in what you pretend to speak to. Uncomfortable that, this primary research thing, actual data as opposed to empty sophistry, unsupported by any glimmering of science, eh my dear fellow?
Feel free to point out (in a non-conclusory manner) where and how I have misrepresented anyone’s position.
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Umm, I don’t see a point because your posts are so nonsensical.
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None of the data you have posted contradicts anything I’ve said.
I imagine you are unaware of this, since your posts display such minimal comprehension of the relevant issues.