Is there such a biological thing as a racial group?

[Blake]

@Chuck11

3. If you want to stipulate that races qua ancestral population clusters need to have been completely reproductively isolated during a specific period of time, than the number will be less than 18.

No, it will ether be none or it will be 6.2 billion. No large human population has ever been reproductively isolated for more than a few generations, and all populations have been isolated for that period of time.

4. Note, for the authors to say that the current African ancestral population clusters are mixed, there must have been relatively reproductively isolated populations that could mix.

Nonsense. the authors are talking about clusters produced by a computer analysis. Such clusters need never have been isolated.

Do you even understand the mathematics being used by the authors? Do you understand that I can (and have) done such analyses on herd management techniques? Do you think that the cluster of people who dip their cattle every time they are mustered was once geographically isolated from the cluster of people who only dip their cattle prior to sale??

Someone asked my definition of race and I said “ancestral population clusters.” We could refine that if you like. I see no need to.

Can you name one other person in the world who uses race in this way? Because if not then you are simply engaging a fallacy of definition.

You can not define the problem out of existence by calling a tail a leg. Race does not mean “ancestral population cluster”, race also needs to encompass shared, characteristic phenotypes at the very least.
You were also not just asked to define race, you were asked to name them and tell us what people fall into those races and based upon what. SO far you have done none of these things.

[Blake]

@Chuck11

Obviously, they are multiracial.

:rolleyes:

And Ethiopioans, Indonesians, South Americans, Central Americans, Mexicans and Indians are all mixed populations?

Indonesia: population 230 million
India: population 1.2 billion
Ethiopia: population 82 million
Central America: population 40 million
Mexico: population 100 million
South America: population 400 million

And we also have to add in Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Eritrea, Somalia and other nations that have equally “mixed” populations.

So that means that about 3 billion humans are part of mixed populations that do not fall into any of your racial groups. When over 1/2 of the entire species fails to map onto your racial grouping, that rather proves that the groupings have no objective existence.

Thank you for demolishing your own nonsense argument.

Of course if you want to play a game whereby I post pictures of random people from those regions and other regions, and you attempt to place them into one of your racial groupings, then let;s have at it. Because of course if you can not assign random Indonmalayans or Indics to any racial group at better than chance, then clearly they do not meet any racial grouping standard.

Has anyone else noticed that every time that the people who promote the race concept get called on identifying the race of particular area, it is “mixed race”? Chen started this with India, expanded it to include Ethiopia, then Indonesia and now all Chuck wants to extend it to all of Latin America

This is some objective racial scheme that is utterly incapable of categorising over 1/2 of the population in question.

[Chen019]

@GIGObuster

I will have to agree with **Blake **, you are really not being honest with this point.

The supplement makes it clear that indeed it does not apply to humans.

The first definition is explicitly phrased in reference to humans *a group or population of humans categorized on the basis of various sets of heritable characteristics (such as color of skin, eyes, and hair). *

Underneath it says that the classification is disputed. But this doesn’t explain why those definitions do not apply to humans. They plainly can. Blake and yourself appear to be focussed on pure absolute categories, but biology is all fuzzy borders. Think about populations and population genetics is as a statistical curve. Imagine fuzzy balls all jostling around with each other.

From the perspective of genetics, structure in the human population is determined by patterns of mating and reproduction. **Historically, the greatest force influencing genetic differentiation among humans has been geography. **Great physical distances and geographic barriers (e.g., high mountains, large deserts, and large bodies of water) have imposed impediments to human communication and interaction and have led to geographically determined endogamous (i.e., within-group) mating patterns resulting in a genetic substructure that largely follows geographic lines. The past two decades of research in population genetics has also shown that the greatest genetic differentiation in the human population occurs between continentally separated groups.

First, investigators studying the population genetics of indigenous groups from around the world have constructed ancestral-tree diagrams showing branching relationships among the various indigenous groups. **Despite differences in the types of markers used, these studies have been consistent in showing that the human population has major branches corresponding to the major racial groups, with subbranches within each racial group associated with indigenous groups.**13-15

**Second, analysis of genetic clusters has been applied to persons of diverse ancestry, with a focus on genotypes at multiple genetic loci. These analyses have also consistently resulted in the delineation of major genetic clusters that are associated with racial categories.**16-19 The primary difference between the results of these studies and the categories used by the U.S. Census is that South, Central, and West Asians cluster with Europeans and are separate from East Asians…

Although studies of population genetics have clustered persons into a small number of groups corresponding roughly to five major racial categories, such classification is not completely discontinuous, because there has been intermixing among groups both over the course of history and in recent times. In particular, genetic admixture, or the presence in a population of persons with multiple races or ethnic backgrounds, is well documented in the border regions of continents and may represent genetic gradations (clines) — for example, among East Africans (e.g., Ethiopians)18 and some central Asian groups.…

We believe that ignoring race and ethnic background would be detrimental to the very populations and persons that this approach allegedly seeks to protect. Information about patients’ ethnic or racial group is imperative for the identification, tracking, and investigation of the reasons for racial and ethnic differences in the prevalence and severity of disease and in responses to treatment. This information is also crucial for identifying different risk-factor profiles even when a disease does not occur with dramatically different frequencies in different racial or ethnic groups.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsb025007

[Chen019]

I was just going to add, that whether you call them populations, breeding groups, races, or whatever, there are clearly varieties that reflect regional ancestry. Humans would be pretty remarkable among animals if these population variations didn’t exist.

[Blake]

@Chen019

The first definition is explicitly phrased in reference to humans *a group or population of humans categorized on the basis of various sets of heritable characteristics (such as color of skin, eyes, and hair). *

Underneath it says that the classification is disputed. But this doesn’t explain why those definitions do not apply to humans. They plainly can:

Oh good.

Chen has said that Pacific Islander and East Asian are two of the races.

Chen has now said that can races plainly be categorized on the basis of various sets of heritable characteristics such as color of skin, eyes, and hair.

Well, if they plainly can then tell us which sets of heritable characteristics such as color of skin, eyes, and hair allow you to categorise your Pacific Islander and East Asian races.

We have asked you to do this 12 times so far. And you always weasel away form it.

Since you are now explicitly claiming that humans can clearly be categorized on the basis of various sets of heritable characteristics such as color of skin, eyes, and hair, the time has come for you to do so. You have made the explicit claim in GD that you are able to do something. So now lets see you do it.

And everybody remember, Chen’s Pacific Islander race encompasses Polynesians, a population that not infrequently has red hair, along with Mongoloid Indonesians, Singaporeans Australian Aborigines and New Guinean Melanesians.

Chen has now painted himself into a corner. Watching him try to weasel out of this should be good.

[Blake]

@Chen019

Blake and yourself appear to be focussed on pure absolute categories, but biology is all fuzzy borders.

Absolute bullshit. Biology is ahard science. Biology is all about objective classification and statistical certainty.

I have been a biologist for 20 years and have never used or even heard of somebody who works with fuzzy borders. Biology is one of the hard sciences. It does not tolerate fuzzy borders.

I was just going to add, that whether you call them populations, breeding groups, races, or whatever, there are clearly varieties that reflect regional ancestry.

Oh this just gets better.

Chen has said that Pacific Islander and East Asian are two of the races.

Chen has said that can races plainly be categorized on the basis of various sets of heritable characteristics such as color of skin, eyes, and hair.

And Chen has now said that these races *also *reflect regional ancestry.

Well Chen, the time has cone for you to put up.

Tell us which sets of heritable characteristics such as color of skin, eyes, and hair allow you to categorise your Indomalayan Pacific Islander and from your Indochinese East Asian races and tell us what the regional ancestry is that separates them.

Because you just told us that you can do all this.

[Chuck11]

@Blake

I would like to think this is a joke. Unfortunately it isn’t. :

Had you bothered to read Berbajuani et al. you would realise that they are referring to the subjective, cultural construct known as race. Race is not a coherent concept. It is purely a subject cultural concept, with no more coherence than other social constructs such as fashion or religion.

Here’s the paper.

This is what they say:

1. • “Differences among continents represent roughly 1/10 of human molecular diversity, which does not suggest that the racial subdivision of our species reflects any major discontinuity in our genome.”*

2. *“But what do these results imply for the race concept? Although no consensus has ever been reached on how many races exist in our species, with proposed figures ranging from 3 to 200 (20), in general a species is divided in races when it can be regarded as an essentially discontinuous set of individuals (21). Studies on a limited number of populations, like ours, cannot exclude that there are true discontinuities in the distribution of some genetic markers all over the world. However, only for one of the 109 loci studied was the within-population component of variance less than 50% of the total. If loci showing a discontinuous distribution across continents exist, they have not been observed in this study, and so the burden of the proof is now on the supporters of a biological basis for human racial classification.”

The first point indicates that they have a coherent concept of racial classification (Continental ancestral population clusters). If they didn’t, they could not speak of the “the racial subdivision of our species” The second point indicates that they do not think that continental population clusters OR other populations qualify as subspecies (i.e taxonomic races).

Note that they do not rule out the possibility of human subspecies or other taxonomic classifications. This is important in light of Edwards’ point (i.e Lewontin’s fallacy). Edwards point was later confirmed by Witherspoon et al, 2007.

Thus the answer to the question “How often is a pair of individuals from one population genetically more dissimilar than two individuals chosen from two different populations?” depends on the number of polymorphisms used to define that dissimilarity and the populations being compared. The answer, can be read from Figure 2. Given 10 loci, three distinct populations, and the full spectrum of polymorphisms (Figure 2E), the answer is 0.3, or nearly one-third of the time. With 100 loci, the answer is 20% of the time and even using 1000 loci, 10%. However, if genetic similarity is measured over many thousands of loci, the answer becomes “never” when individuals are sampled from geographically separated populations.

Whatever the case, whether or not various ancestral population clusters qualify as subspecies, is irrelevant to whether or not the concept of ancestral population cluster is coherent and is biologically meaningful.

[Clark_K]

@Blake

You were also not just asked to define race, you were asked to name them and tell us what people fall into those races and based upon what. SO far you have done none of these things.

This.

[Chuck11]

delete

[Blake]

@Chuck11

The first point indicates that they have a coherent concept of racial classification (Continental ancestral population clusters). If they didn’t, they could not speak of the “the racial subdivision of our species”

So your response to me pointing out that your assertion is bollocks… is to repeat exactly the same assertion.

The I will repeat exactly the same refutation:

Bollocks.

Had you bothered to read Berbajuani et al. you would realise that they are referring to the subjective, cultural construct known as race. Race is not a coherent concept. It is purely a subjective cultural concept, with no more coherence than other social constructs such as fashion or religion. At no point do they claim to be discussing a coherent biological race. They are only ever discussing the cultural construct known as race.

It is sad that you do not understand the difference between a cultural and objective concept, yet still feel the need to expound loudly on the subject.

Note that they do not rule out the possibility of human subspecies or other taxonomic classifications.

They don’t rule out the possibility of unicorns either.

Whatever the case, whether or not various ancestral population clusters qualify as subspecies, is irrelevant to whether or not the concept of ancestral population cluster is coherent and is biologically meaningful.

Nobody in this thread is talking about ancestral population clusters. We are talking about races.

You did not claim that ancestral population clusters have a biological definition. You claimed that races have a biological definition.

I do not think that this blatant attempt to move the goalposts has escaped anybody’s notice.

You claimed that human** races** are real. you can not now weasel away from that by discussing ancestral population clusters, which we have already shown do not map onto race.

[Chuck11]

@Blake

There is absolutely no justification in claiming that race must be a coherent concept for someone to study the links between genetics and race…And that one simple fact makes a nonsense of everything else that you have posted.

And yet I never claimed this. I said:

*According to the very sources you cite race is a coherent concept. You cite, for example, Berbajuani et al who claims that there is no major discontinuity between racial subdivisions. For Berbajuani et al’s findings to support your position, you necessarily must grant that race is a coherent concept. Since you think that these findings do provide support for your position, you apparently agree that race can be coherently defined. *

*(It is interesting that you quote Berbajuani to dismiss the concept of racial differences. Clearly, for Berbajuani’s results to be valid, he must have a coherent definition of race, right? You seem to want to have it both ways – race is an incoherent concept AND races, coherently defined, aren’t too different. It’s rather disingenuous of you. Which is it? Are “racial subdivisions” incoherent groupings or is there no major discontinuity between them? *

Coherent means “consistent.” For anyone to claim that there is little genetic difference between racial populations or that there is little genetic difference between individuals belonging to different racial classifications-- and for this to make sense – they must have a coherent concept of race (at least while they are making this claim).

For example you state that:

Regardless of the racial group to which an individual belonged, two people from different racial groups were more different than two individuals from the same racial group approximately twothirds of the time…"

If you are not using a consistent definition of “racial groups” in this sentence, your sentence can not make sense. What definition are you using, by the way? We can compare it with mine. (Obviously, if by “racial groups,” you mean “groups of people defined by lactose tolerance” or “groups of people defined by color” I agree with you – but not if you mean groups of people defined by shared ancestry.)

[GIGObuster]

@Chen019

But this doesn’t explain why those definitions do not apply to humans. They plainly can. Blake and yourself appear to be focussed on pure absolute categories, but biology is all fuzzy borders.

It is not widely accepted, and that was the point, there is a retreat on using the old terminology and just pointing out at the ones that are just insisting on using old terms is not demonstrating that the consensus is in favor of continuing using it.

And in any case one of the doctors in the study you cited (Esteban González Burchard of The Importance of Race and Ethnic Background in Biomedical Research and Clinical Practice) does not agree that this overturns the definition as anthropologists or biologists do, if medical people use the term, it is a proxy as the reality is more complex.

Is There A Biological Basis For Race?

Dr. OSSORIO: Well, I think I wouldn’t entirely agree. And in fact, even in that answer I felt like there was some ambiguity because Esteban, on the one hand, said, well, certain alleles or certain gene variants are African-specific, for instance. But then in the next breath said, well, yes, but of course this same allele is found and the same disease is found in people of the Mediterranean, also in some people from India, people from Greece. Also some portions of Greece have very high rates of sickle cell, for instance.

So I think we have to be careful here in talking about a gene variant as being specific to some population or another. There are also parts of Africa where sickle cell alleles are very, very rare. And likewise, cystic fibrosis, although many doctors think of it as a quote, unquote, “white disease,” is actually found in all populations, not as frequently as it’s found among people of Northern European descent, but it is found among all populations.

And here in Wisconsin, where we do neo-natal screening for cystic fibrosis, the people who seemed to have benefited the most from that are African-American kids who otherwise often would not be picked up so early by their pediatrician and diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, perhaps in part because pediatricians get this idea that cystic fibrosis is a white disease.

So one of the problems with this idea of using race to guide diagnoses is that there are probabilistic events, it’s probably the case that, you know, certain symptoms could be sickle cell in an African-American more likely than they would be in somebody of other ancestries, but not always the case. And it’s very hard to sort of translate the probabilistic information into good, clinically useful diagnostic information. But I think…

FLATOW: Let me get an answer from Esteban.

Dr. BURCHARD: Sure. So that - Dr. Ossorio’s completely right. But what the subtlety here is that I said it’s an integrated process, so we try to use every tool in our tool box to make a clinical decision. So it’s more likely that if a person has symptoms that are consistent with sickle cell, that it’s likely that they’d be African-American, less likely to be Caucasian.

That is not the only clue that we will rely on. We would rely on blood tests and so forth. Now, until we get to the point where we’re genetically testing everybody, we have to use these clues to help us make a clinical decision. And it’s very clear that there are genetic risk factors that are population specific, and the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, is acting on that.

So for example, one of the most prominent ones is the recent treatments for epilepsies that we know that there are genetic mutations that are specific to Asian populations. And in fact there’s an FDA black box warning, if you’re going to get medication for epilepsy and you’re Asian, you need to be genetically tested to see whether not you have this particular mutation.

FLATOW: All right. Let me interrupt and say that this is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR News. And so the…

Dr. GOODMAN: So the one - the last thing that I wanted to say about the sickle cell disease or cystic fibrosis, where Dr. Pilar Ossorio mentioned that African-Americans are benefiting - what this really reflects is that today, 2010, we are looking at a cross section of time of how we view race. With an increased appreciation of interracial marriages, what we call admixture, we’re seeing that more European genes are coming into the African-American population to highlight Dr. Ossorio’s example.

And so, yes, she’s right that in Wisconsin, the population that benefit the most from cystic fibrosis testing were African-Americans, is because they are part European, so to speak. And therefore, as those genes come in to the African-American population, we are going to see genes that are more prevalent in European populations popping up in the African-American population.

And that is the beauty of our changing population. We can leverage the mixture in these populations to scientific advantage, particularly recently mixed populations - African-Americans, Latino Americans, Filipino Americans, and what we know about race today in 2010 is not going to be same what we know about race in 100 years from now. It’s a dynamic process.

FLATOW: Dr. Ossorio, did you want to jump in there?

Dr. OSSORIO: Oh, well, sure. I - so I think part of what happens is that when scientists say something like a gene is - or an allele, a version of a gene is specific to a certain racial group of people, sort of non-experts might think that that means that gene just isn’t present in anybody else in any other racial group, and that it might - people might infer that, well, it’s always present in people, say, of Asian ancestry, if we say a gene is - if someone says a gene is specific for that group. That’s not really what scientists mean. So it means that that version of a gene may or may not be in an Asian person. And in fact, it maybe in people of other races exactly because - of course races aren’t really separate.

Dr. OSSORIO: So if I could follow up too. I think, one of the reasons this is a hot-button issue in science and medicine is because there really has been a history in the 19th and 20th centuries, well-documented, of science and medicine using racial categories…

Dr. BURCHARD: Yes.

Dr. OSSORIO: …in research to support very racist and oppressive policies of the majority. And so, people who are concerned about minority and underrepresented and oppressed populations, on the one hand, want the best scientific information that we can get. But on the other hand, our concern that by using these same categories, it’s entirely possible that scientists will reinforce or recreate negative stereotypes and do it inappropriately. And it’s very hard to use these categories well in research.

I think, as Dr. Goodman pointed out, you know, we see lots of health disparities. Lots of differences in the amount of disease or severity of disease between different racial groups, but explaining why those differences occur is very difficult, and we’re only beginning to tease those things apart. And the problem is that when we use the racial categories, many people will jump to the conclusion that genetics must be the explanation when, in fact, quite often the explanation has to do with things like access to health care or the quality of health care that people are getting, different diets and et cetera. And so teasing all of those things apart when often those things are correlated with race, its very, very difficult to use race well in scientific research.

Dr. BURCHARD: I agree with you. And I think that most physicians and most physician/scientists would be would say that the biggest determinant of health is probably socioeconomic status and lifestyle. That’s below that are going to come other factors, biologic factors and so forth.

[Chuck11]

@Blake

So your response to me pointing out that your assertion is bollocks… is to repeat exactly the same assertion.

Had you bothered to read Berbajuani et al. you would realise that they are referring to the subjective, cultural construct known as race. Race is not a coherent concept.

What definition of race or “racial subdivision of our species” are they using? They must have something in their mind. If they didn’t they could not say that “the racial subdivision of our species reflects any major discontinuity in our genome.”

It’s sad that you don’t understand the meaning of a “coherent concept.” I have a coherent concept of unicorns, don’t you? I also have a coherent concept of race. The question you – or somebody – asked is: is there such a biological thing as racial group? I said yes. I pointed out that race means regional ancestry and that ancestry is a biological concept, isn’t it?

Nobody in this thread is talking about ancestral population clusters. We are talking about races.

We’ll, which definition of race are you using? I’m using the one that is related to ancestry. This seems to be the one that almost everyone uses.

You claimed that human** races** are real. you can not now weasel away from that by discussing ancestral population clusters, which we have already shown do not map onto race]

No, I never claimed that “races are real.” Race is a classification – I don’t know what it means to say that classifications are real. You ask “Are racial classifications coherent” and “Do they refer to biological based groupings?” I replied “yes!” If you asked “do you think that there are human subspecies?” I would have a more circumspect answer.

I’m not sure what the problem is. Maybe I missed some important parts of the debate. Could you ask the questions that you want answered again?

[Chuck11]

@Blake

Absolute bullshit. Biology is ahard science. Biology is all about objective classification and statistical certainty.

I have been a biologist for 20 years and have never used or even heard of somebody who works with fuzzy borders. Biology is one of the hard sciences. It does not tolerate fuzzy borders.

You have never heard of a Fuzzy set or seen Fuzzy logic applied to biology?

Chen has said that Pacific Islander and East Asian are two of the races.

Chen has said that can races plainly be categorized on the basis of various sets of heritable characteristics such as color of skin, eyes, and hair.

And Chen has now said that these races *also *reflect regional ancestry

How is this difficult? Race = ancestral populations; given different selection pressures ancestral populations show phenptypic differences.

What definition of race are you using? It’s funny that you say “race is incoherent” and then when someone comes along and tries to give a coherent definition you say “that’s not really race!” Well, what do you have in mind?

[Blake]

@Chuck11

And yet I never claimed [that race must be a coherent concept for someone to study the links between genetics and race].

:rolleyes:

Just to prove how dishonest Chuck is being:

According to the very sources you cite race is a coherent concept. You cite, for example, Berbajuani et al who claims that there is no major discontinuity between racial subdivisions. For Berbajuani et al’s findings to support your position, you necessarily must grant that race is a coherent concept.

So yeah, he did say that race must be a coherent concept for someone to study the links between genetics and race.

I think we can now all easily judge whether he is being honest in this debate.

Clearly, for Berbajuani’s results to be valid, he must have a coherent definition of race, right?

And yet again, Chuck says exactly the same thing that he claimed he never said.

And no, this claim is still bollocks.

Had you bothered to read Berbajuani et al. you would realise that they are referring to the subjective, cultural construct known as race. Race is not a coherent concept. It is purely a subject cultural concept, with no more coherence than other social constructs such as fashion or religion.

You seem to want to have it both ways – race is an incoherent concept AND races, coherently defined, aren’t too different. It’s rather disingenuous of you. Which is it? Are “racial subdivisions” incoherent groupings or is there no major discontinuity between them?

You have gone from bollocks to utter bollocks. This is the most blatant false dichotomy i have seen for many months.

Both those statements are true, and there is no conflict between them. “Racial subdivisions” are incoherent groupings precisely *because *there no major discontinuity between them.

That is why you and Chen and Max repeatedly refuse to answer us when we ask you to name these races and tell us the differences between them. It is because you know that any such racial groups will exhibit no major discontinuities, and hence are incoherent.

You are asking whether the TV is showing a picture or whether it is plugged into the wall socket and switched on, and then telling me that it is disingenuous of me to claim that it is showing a picture *because *it is plugged into the wall socket and switched on. :rolleyes:

Your arguments seem to be becoming increasingly feeble with each post.

Coherent means “consistent.”

Utter, utter bollocks. So full of bollocky bollocks that if you looked it up “bollocks” a dictionary you would find this quoted.

Coherent means “orderly, logical, *and *consistent”. It is in no way a synonym of consistent.

Most racial schemes are indeed consistent. So are most fairy stories. What they are demonstrably *not *is orderly and logical.

To take the most obvious example, the racial scheme being championed here by Chen proposes a single “Black” race and 4 other races. Yet the Black race contains 90% of all human diversity and the others only contain ~20% each. How is that an orderly classification scheme. The scheme also groups phenotypically indistinguishable people from India, Indonesia and Africa into three distinct races. How is that logical for a scheme that purports to divide people based on measurable physical characteristics?

This scheme is perfectly consistent, insofar as anybody from India is part of the Indo-European race and anybody from Indonesia is part of the Pacific race. Consistency is not the problem. Where it fails the coherence checklist is in logic and orderliness.

I think that next time that your argument hinges on the definition of a word, you should consult a dictionary.

For anyone to claim that there is little genetic difference between racial populations or that there is little genetic difference between individuals belonging to different racial classifications-- and for this to make sense – they must have a coherent concept of race (at least while they are making this claim).

Bollocks.

Had you bothered to read Berbajuani et al. you would realise that they are referring to the subjective, cultural construct known as race. Race is not a coherent concept. It is purely a subject cultural concept, with no more coherence than other social constructs such as fashion or religion.

If you are not using a consistent definition of “racial groups” in this sentence, your sentence can not make sense.

Bollocks. If I am using a consistent but not orderly and logical definition of “racial groups” the sentence makes perfect sense.

What definition are you using, by the way?

a) any of the traditional divisions of humankind, the commonest being the Caucasian, Mongoloid, and Negro, characterized by supposedly distinctive and universal physical characteristics: no longer in technical use.

b. an arbitrary classification of modern humans based on any or a combination of various physical characteristics, as skin color, facial form, or eye shape

c. a human population partially isolated reproductively from other populations, whose members share a greater degree of physical and genetic similarity with one another than with other humans.

Those are the standard definitions. But as I said above, I will accept any definition used by any reputable source that you can find. The sole qualifier I will insist ion is that the races must correspond, at least in part, to observable physical similarity. Any definition of race that groups people based on invisible features is clearly not in any way related to the word race as used by 99.9% of people.

[Blake]

@Chuck11

What definition of race or “racial subdivision of our species” are they using?

Well they state that quite clearly in the paper.

Are you admitting that you have not read the paper?

They must have something in their mind.

They do have something in mind. And they ate quite clearly what that is.

If they didn’t they could not say that “the racial subdivision of our species reflects any major discontinuity in our genome.”

Utter tripe.

Once again, had you read the paper you would know that this is not true. And once you admit that you can to find this information in the paper I will provide it for you.

I do this because at this point the best tactic for discrediting the nonsense you are posting is simply to discredit you. And forcing you to admit that you can not find this information in the paper is a very good way to do that.

It’s sad that you don’t understand the meaning of a “coherent concept.”

:rolleyes:
This from a person who thinks coherent is synonymous with consistent.

I have a coherent concept of unicorns, don’t you?

No, by definition. A concept can only be coherent if it is logical, orderly and consistent.

How can unicorns be logical? How can unicorns be said to be consistent when they variously fly, walk, swim, live underground, are blue, white black, green, ferocious, peaceful, intelligent, savage. magical animalistic, deer-like, rhino-like, horse-like and lion-like and spiritual?

The fact that you think you have a logical and consistent concept of a unicorn demonstrates only that you have no idea what coherent means and know nothing about the mythology of unicorns.

I also have a coherent concept of race.

Then share it. We have asked you about a dozen times. Why do you people keep *saying *that you have this knowleldge but refuse to share it even when asked multiple times?

I pointed out that race means regional ancestry and that ancestry is a biological concept, isn’t it?

And I pointed out that this is a rather pathetic attempt to utilise a fallacy of definition. You can not define the problem out of existence by calling a tail a leg. Race does not mean “ancestral population cluster”, race also needs to encompass shared, characteristic phenotypes at the very least.
Yet here you are, repeating the same nonsense that I have already debunked.

I’m using the one that is related to ancestry. This seems to be the one that almost everyone uses.

I ask for the fourth time: can you name one other person in the world who uses race in this way. If this is the definition that “almost everyone uses” then you should have no trouble doing so.

But I think you are not telling the truth. I do not believe that anybody else uses that definition of race, and that is why you steadfastly refuse to provide a reference to somebody using race to mean " regional ancestry".

You ask “Are racial classifications coherent” and “Do they refer to biological based groupings?” I replied “yes!”

And we asked you many, many many times to name these coherent classifications and tell us what these biological bases of such groupings is and you replied…

with deafening silence.

Which probably tells us all we need to know about the validity of these claims.

Could you ask the questions that you want answered again?

Why? We have asked you these questions multiple times already very clearly, and you refused to answer. Why should we believe you will answer now?

Oh well, it’s waste of time, but it will demonstrate your credibility to any lurkers.

@Blake

Do you even understand the mathematics being used by the authors? Do you understand that I can (and have) done such analyses on herd management techniques? Do you think that the cluster of people who dip their cattle every time they are mustered was once geographically isolated from the cluster of people who only dip their cattle prior to sale??

Can you name one other person in the world who uses race in this way? Because if not then you are simply engaging a fallacy of definition.

You were also not just asked to define race, you were asked to name them and tell us what people fall into those races and based upon what. So far you have done none of these things.

Can you also provide a definition of “coherent” that is synonymous with “consistent”?

We’ll start with those 5 and see how you go. I don’t expect to receive answers to any of them

[Blake]

[quote=“Chuck11, post:334, topic:577007”]

You have never heard of a Fuzzy set or seen Fuzzy logic applied to biology?
[/quote

Yes!

Race = ancestral populations…

No, it does not. You just made that up.

It’s funny that you say “race is incoherent” and then when someone comes along and tries to give a coherent definition you say “that’s not really race!”

You mean when you invent a definition out of whole cloth that *defines *race as being biological, and then attempt to use that to *demonstrate *that race is biological?

Well yeah, I do kinda object to that. Dopers often object to the use of proven logical fallacies. :rolleyes:

We’re a funny bunch.

[Blake]

I don’t expect it to do any good, but I will attempt to demonstrate to Chuck the difference between a coherent racial classification scheme and a merely consistent one.

In my first scheme I establish 7 races: Caucasoid, Negroid, Mongoloid, Australoid etc. I then generate a randomly sorted list of all ZIP codes, and I assign a race to each zip code based on the order on that list. So if the first code is 60612, that Zip code is now Caucasian, the next code is 20896, so it is Negroid, the next code will be Mongoloid and so forth. After I reach the last racial category I start assigning races from Caucasoid again. All the people living in those codes now belong to those races.

This scheme is perfectly consistent. Once it is done, anybody at all will be able to identify the race of anybody in the us with >99% accuracy. Even if I repeat the same test years later, the results will still be the same to within 95% tolerance because people just don’t; move that far. It is a perfectly consistent classification scheme. What this scheme is not is coherent. It is in fact batshit crazy. It is a perfectly circular, totally illogical, utterly random and thus totally incoherent racial classification scheme. But it is also perfectly consistent.

Despite the scheme being totally incoherent, and despite me knowing that it is incoherent, it is perfectly possible for me to do a genetic analysis on each race to see whether they are related. The fact that it is incoherent both in my mind and on paper does not stop me from conducting analyses on it. Indeed such incoherent schemes are often used as controls for statistical evaluation methodologies.

In my second scheme I will measure the reflectivity of the skin of each newborn at birth. I will measure eye and nose shape at age12 and use a computer package to sort those shapes into categories. People with a skin reflectivity higher than X and nose width:length ratio less than Y and eye width:length ratio greater than Z will go into the Caucasian race. All other possible permutations of those factors will also be assigned to one of my 9 races.

This scheme is also perfectly consistent, but it is also perfectly coherent. The data are collected in a logical and orderly manner and people are classified in a logical and orderly manner. Nothing at all is random. This classification scheme will produce perfectly coherent phenotypic racial groups. The problem is that they will not be in any way reflective of geography, culture, language or genetics.

And that, my friend, is the difference between coherent and consistent. I hope you understand now.

[Chuck11]

“Had you bothered to read Berbajuani et al. you would realise that they are referring to the subjective, cultural construct known as race. Race is not a coherent concept. It is purely a subject cultural concept, with no more coherence than other social constructs such as fashion or religion.”

Ok, I think what you mean is that race has no more biological basis than fashion or religion. Just to clarify, the claim that “race is an incoherent term” and “race has no biological basis” are separate claims. For example, I could a mishmash of multiple and conflicting biologically grounded definitions of “race” (e.g race as species, race as ancestry, and race as superfamily.) If so, my concept would be incoherent and yet biologically grounded, right? On the otherhand, I could have a coherent concept of race (e.g race as color of shirt) which has no biological grounding.

@Blake

:rolleyes:Just to prove how dishonest Chuck is being:
So yeah, he did say that race must be a coherent concept for someone to study the links between genetics and race. I think we can now all easily judge whether he is being honest in this debate.

Now, let’s look at what chuck said:

According to the very sources you cite race is a coherent concept. You cite, for example, Berbajuani et al who claims that there is no major discontinuity between racial subdivisions. For Berbajuani et al’s findings to support your position, you necessarily must grant that race is a coherent concept.

Berbajuani et al obviously have a coherent concept of “racial subdivisions.” Otherwise they could not say what they said. (Their concept is continental population clusters – if you were familiar with (co-author) Cavalli-Sforza’s other work you would know this).

To restate what Chuck said: “Coherent means “consistent.” For anyone to claim that there is little genetic difference between racial populations or that there is little genetic difference between individuals belonging to different racial classifications-- and for this to make sense – they must have a coherent concept of race (at least while they are making this claim).”

To clarify what Chuck did not say. Chuck did not say “for there to be no genetic basis to race” race must be a semantically coherent scheme of classification of individuals, given some theory of semantics.

Chuck just said that you need a coherent concept about race to make a claim about it. For example, if I said “race is an incoherent concept,” I must have a coherent concept of race. The concept would be “The thing people talk about that goes by the term “race”” And the real meaning of my statement would be "the thing people talk about that goes by the term “race” (i.e “race”) does not refer to a semantically coherent scheme of classification of individuals, given some theory of semantics. Right?

I bring this up since you keep claiming that “race is an incoherent concept” and I’m never sure what you mean. If you were familiar with the philosophy of biology, like I am, you would know that the claim is actually that “the social categories of race are not semantically coherent schemes of classification.” My point was that Berbajuani et al are using a coherent scheme of classification: continental population clusters. (They are not using “color” in the first paragraph and “hair texture” later on. They are not using “city of birth” and then switching to “cranial size.” Right?)

You have gone from bollocks to utter bollocks. This is the most blatant false dichotomy i have seen for many months…Both those statements are true, and there is no conflict between them. “Racial subdivisions” are incoherent groupings precisely *because *there no major discontinuity between them.

That is why you and Chen and Max repeatedly refuse to answer us when we ask you to name these races and tell us the differences between them. It is because you know that any such racial groups will exhibit no major discontinuities, and hence are incoherent.

First, refer back to my comment above. Racial subdivisions can be a coherent grouping without them being biologically grounded groupings. Now with that aside, you seem to be saying that Racial subdivisions can’t be biologically grounded groupings without there being major discontinuities between them. I’m not sure where you get this criteria. Obviously, the term population cluster is a biologically grounded term. Does the same logic apply? Can there be no population clusters without there being major discontinuities between them?

Coherent means “orderly, logical, *and *consistent”. It is in no way a synonym of consistent. Most racial schemes are indeed consistent. So are most fairy stories. What they are demonstrably *not *is orderly and logical.

To take the most obvious example, the racial scheme being championed here by Chen proposes a single “Black” race and 4 other races. Yet the Black race contains 90% of all human diversity and the others only contain ~20% each. How is that an orderly classification scheme. The scheme also groups phenotypically indistinguishable people from India, Indonesia and Africa into three distinct races. How is that logical for a scheme that purports to divide people based on measurable physical characteristics?..I think that next time that your argument hinges on the definition of a word, you should consult a dictionary.

When it comes to consistent versus orderly and logical, I’m not getting your distinction. I think what you mean is “is not consistent with the genetic data.” (If it was consistent, would it matter if it was orderly? And what does it mean to say that something is consistent by not logical?) This gets back to my point that “racial subdivisions can be a coherent (logical, orderly, consistent) grouping without them being biologically grounded groupings.” Or without them being consistent with some taxonomic criteria. You seem to be conflating two different issues 1) the logical consistency of a given race concept and 2) the consistency of a given race concept with the genetic data.

Those are the standard definitions. But as I said above, I will accept any definition used by any reputable source that you can find. The sole qualifier I will insist ion is that the races must correspond, at least in part, to observable physical similarity. Any definition of race that groups people based on invisible features is clearly not in any way related to the word race as used by 99.9% of people.

As I noted earlier, a coherent biologically grounded concept of race would be regional ancestry (where we qualify the terms a bit – i.e where X% of your ancestors lived during such and such time). This, however, would not necessarily be consistent with a cladistic scheme or with fst values – as you note with your African example. This is why I suggested regional ancestry defined along cladistic lines – other have likewise. Or are you contending that we can’t break the human population intoclades?

[Chen019]

@Blake

I don’t expect it to do any good, but I will attempt to demonstrate to Chuck the difference between a coherent racial classification scheme and a merely consistent one.

In my first scheme I establish 7 races: Caucasoid, Negroid, Mongoloid, Australoid etc. I then generate a randomly sorted list of all ZIP codes, and I assign a race to each zip code based on the order on that list. So if the first code is 60612, that Zip code is now Caucasian, the next code is 20896, so it is Negroid, the next code will be Mongoloid and so forth. After I reach the last racial category I start assigning races from Caucasoid again. All the people living in those codes now belong to those races.

This scheme is perfectly consistent. Once it is done, anybody at all will be able to identify the race of anybody in the us with >99% accuracy. Even if I repeat the same test years later, the results will still be the same to within 95% tolerance because people just don’t; move that far. It is a perfectly consistent classification scheme. What this scheme is not is coherent. It is in fact batshit crazy. It is a perfectly circular, totally illogical, utterly random and thus totally incoherent racial classification scheme. But it is also perfectly consistent..

And of course it wouldn’t matter where they tried to get a bone marrow transplant from.

http://www.mavinfoundation.org/projects/matchmaker.html