# Meaningfull Biological Definition of Race **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 19, 2011, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472 "2011-05-19T17:11:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![heatmiserfl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/df705f/32.png) [@heatmiserfl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/heatmiserfl)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/141 "2011-05-23T15:58:52Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > No, they’d be half great at climbing walls and half terrible, so on the average, ok/good at climbing walls. The average wall-climbing ability of a pea-and-gekko is much higher than that of a banana-and-canary, it just has a very high variation, it’s a bunch of 1’s and a bunch of 0’s averaging out to 0.5. > > And, key point, this is undeniably due to genetics/biology as opposed to any societal issue. It’s clearly nature, not nurture. > So in that universe, you can make a statements saying “on average, group X is significantly better at skill Y than other groups, and for reasons of nature, not nurture”. It’s a wildly imprecise statement that is clearly based on a massive misunderstanding, but it’s still TRUE. But if you did any kind of statistical analysis to compare this group with any other, it would fail the null hypothesis and be considered NOT TRUE. And again, the hypothesis is whether greenness correlates with climbing. Even a non-scientist who actually observed a significant number of each individual within the group would see that there’s actually two different groups. So saying on “average group x is significantly better at skill y than other groups because of nature” would be false because group x really doesn’t exist beyond being green. The only thing one could say that is true is group x is green. Whether or not gekko climbing ability is really due to nature is irrelevant to the premise of greenness relates to climbing. The reason people lump humans into incorrect ‘races’ is because they really don’t observe differences within groups of which they are not members. Just like when people joke that all x’s look alike. This is why some people are claiming that races aren’t just lumped by color. But they are lumped by only a few superficial characteristics that happen to be different than the superficial characterstics in their own group. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/142 "2011-05-23T16:26:01Z")
Let’s just set the record straight about the whole red herring concerning people who live close together looking more alike than they do to people living further away (as a general rule). No one is disputing that. Bot for those who seem to think that piece of evidence is conclusive for the existence of races, please do as the OP requests: Tell us what the races are. How many, where are the borders, and what are the defining characteristics? So far, no one has done that. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/143 "2011-05-23T16:48:39Z")
> [@heatmiserfl](#): > > But if you did any kind of statistical analysis to compare this group with any other, it would fail the null hypothesis and be considered NOT TRUE. Please elaborate. > [@](#): > > And again, the hypothesis is whether greenness correlates with climbing. Even a non-scientist who actually observed a significant number of each individual within the group would see that there’s actually two different groups. Well, now we’re quibbling about the rules of the hypothetical. In this hypothetical, people really can’t tell the difference between peas and gekkos, even though it seems so obvious to us. > [@](#): > > So saying on “average group x is significantly better at skill y than other groups because of nature” would be false because group x really doesn’t exist beyond being green. Of course the group “exists”. It’s defined in a way that to us outside observers seems bizarrely arbitrary, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Or at least, I’d like you to explain a lot more clearly what you think it means for a group to “not exist”. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/144 "2011-05-23T17:23:28Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > Of course the group “exists”. It’s defined in a way that to us outside observers seems bizarrely arbitrary, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. “Bizarrely arbitrary” is at odds with “meaningful biological.” ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/145 "2011-05-23T17:47:15Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > “Bizarrely arbitrary” is at odds with “meaningful biological.” Well, now we’re just discussing semantics. What does “biologically meaningful” mean in the first place? I claim that in that universe (and remember, this is not a hypothetical I created), it is possible for someone to make a true claim about the average abilities of that group, one that might help in a practical fashion (ie, you need to find someone to climb walls), and one that is based solely on nature and not nurture. And this is in fact not a trivial statement that would be true about any possible groupings, ie, group-by-last-digit-of-SSN. In other words, even if you would never start from pure biology and end up creating those classifications, you can take those classifications, run them through various biology-based analyses, rank them on a scale from 0 to 100 in terms of meaningfulness, and as long as they’re not 0, then they’re not “meaningless”. ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/146 "2011-05-23T18:11:59Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > And its lack of precision and accuracy is exactly why we should be avoiding its use in discussions of biology. Claims that “race X” have certain traits in one context lead to stupid claims that “race X” is defined by some trait in a totally separate context. It is the sort of nonsense that leads to people making the absurd claim that Sickle Cell Anemia is a “black” disease when it affects large numbers of whites and is absent in a large number of black populations. Your need to cling to the misleading word “race” when it actually causes confusion seems like an odd position to hold. > [@Telemark](#): > > Because the word “race” has social meaning that doesn’t correspond to biology. Genetic clusters and populations are more appropriate terms because they are more precise and don’t have the baggage that race does. It’s not a hang-up, it’s about precision. Race is imprecise to the point of being wrong. > [@MrDibble](#): > > This would be fine, if pointless, if those same people didn’t always “happen” to \*only \*choose clusters that map to skin colour and call it race (or “geographic origin”, same difference). As opposed to the near-infinite other possible clustering mechanism that don’t map to skin colour. No-one goes on about the O, A and AB races, for example. When someone uses a word that can have multiple meanings, and you don’t know which meaning they mean, you can simply ask them what they mean. You don’t need to fly off the handle and assume they are an evil evil person simply because they said “race” instead of “genetic cluster.” A scientific article that uses the word “race” would generally define its terms, so you can decide whether you are happy with exactly how that researcher drew the circle around particular genetic clusters. And I have no “need to cling” to the word “race.” I’ve just been trying to explain that people can use the word “race” to mean only “genetic clusters” and don’t necessarily have any bad motive. ---
**Author:** ![heatmiserfl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/df705f/32.png) [@heatmiserfl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/heatmiserfl)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/147 "2011-05-23T18:20:00Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > Please elaborate. Well, it’s as bimodaly as a bimodal distribution can be. An average doesn’t really mean anything. Now that I’m thinking of it, can you even test significance between the other groups if they’re not even close to being normal distributions? > [@MaxTheVool](#): > > Well, now we’re quibbling about the rules of the hypothetical. In this hypothetical, people really can’t tell the difference between peas and gekkos, even though it seems so obvious to us. Even though they can’t tell the difference, that doesn’t make their observations true. > [@MaxTheVool](#): > > Of course the group “exists”. It’s defined in a way that to us outside observers seems bizarrely arbitrary, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Or at least, I’d like you to explain a lot more clearly what you think it means for a group to “not exist”. I said in my post, exists beyond greenness. Beyond green, there’s no reason to group them. I guess I’m trying to stay close to the OP, which is biological meaning. That’s why I still don’t get what you’re trying to say. I have a serious block. Of course, I’m defining biological as genetic. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/148 "2011-05-23T18:35:16Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > When someone uses a word that can have multiple meanings, and you don’t know which meaning they mean, you can simply ask them what they mean. You don’t need to fly off the handle and assume they are an evil evil person simply because they said “race” instead of “genetic cluster.” A scientific article that uses the word “race” would generally define its terms, so you can decide whether you are happy with exactly how that researcher drew the circle around particular genetic clusters. > > And I have no “need to cling” to the word “race.” I’ve just been trying to explain that people can use the word “race” to mean only “genetic clusters” and don’t necessarily have any bad motive. First, you can certainly specify that by ‘race’ you mean populations or genetic clusters if you want. But it’s not good science. Terminology should be chosen for uniqueness, specificity, and a lack of ambiguity. There are terms fitting those criteria that should be used instead of ‘race’. Secondly, even in the quotes you are responding to, nobody is calling you evil or ascribing a bad motive to you. You do seem to be using the same arguments as people who do have bad motives, even though you seem to understand the the facts. That’s what is curious about your responses. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/149 "2011-05-23T18:45:54Z")
> [@heatmiserfl](#): > > Well, it’s as bimodaly as a bimodal distribution can be. An average doesn’t really mean anything. How do you figure? If there’s a room with 10 people in it and 5 are billionaires and 5 are homeless, they have an average net worth of $500 million. That’s somewhat meaningless in that saying to a homeless guy “hey, you’re in a group with an average net worth of $500 million” doesn’t really help him much. However, if you’re going to attempt to fundraise for charity from that group while I’m attempting to fundraise from 10 people who each have a net worth of $20,000, then that average is pretty darn meaningFUL, although granted it would be nice if you could tell the homeless people from the billionaires so as to not waste your time with them. > [@](#): > > Now that I’m thinking of it, can you even test significance between the other groups if they’re not even close to being normal distributions? I can’t swear I understand what you’re asking, but I’m pretty sure you’re talking in an abstract statistical sense, rather than in actual practicality… see the above discussion re billionaires. > [@](#): > > Even though they can’t tell the difference, that doesn’t make their observations true. What observation? Those people put “peas and gekkos” into a group. They do. That’s a matter of definition. Those groups “exist” in that universe. What we’re discussing is what can be meaningfully said and done with or about those groups. At least, that’s what I think we’re discussing. > [@](#): > > I said in my post, exists beyond greenness. Beyond green, there’s no reason to group them. Sure, but the grouping has already been done. It’s fait accompli. Remember, I’m not claiming “here is the way that grouping SHOULD be done, or here is the BEST way, or even here is a GOOD way”, I’m just saying “grouping already IS done this way, is it correct to say that that grouping is truly and completely without any biological meaning”. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/150 "2011-05-23T18:47:21Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > First, you can certainly specify that by ‘race’ you mean populations or genetic clusters if you want. But it’s not good science. Terminology should be chosen for uniqueness, specificity, and a lack of ambiguity. There are terms fitting those criteria that should be used instead of ‘race’. Exactly. For every-day use, “race” is OK and we generally know what people mean when they use it, especially in the US where we don’t have the full continuum of populations represented to any proportional degree that the exist over the globe. Or, when we don’t know, we can ask the person to be more specific. IOW, it’s a fine and dandy social construct. But you don’t want to use such terms in a scientific (ie, biological) context where it’s never quite clear what any given scientist means when he uses that term. _AND_ when that term actually has defined meaning (subspecies) that does not apply to humans. ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/151 "2011-05-23T19:02:58Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > You do seem to be using the same arguments as people who do have bad motives, even though you seem to understand the the facts. For example? ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/152 "2011-05-23T20:17:19Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > For example? > [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > What? > > :rolleyes: And around and around we go–youve taken us all the way back to the OP. To repeat, you are essentially constructing a false dichotomy. You are saying “either (1) tell me what the races are or (2) the term race has no meaning biologically.” You are ignoring the huge middle ground of “race has meaning biologically even though it’s possible to draw the lines in different places and come up with different numbers of races.” You can’t say that biology has an infinite numbers of ways to define race. It would still be somewhat limited. This doesn’t create a false dichotomy. This is a common argument used to say that any definition of race is as good as another. Well it isn’t, not in a scientific context. > [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > Yep, I agree with that. > > But that doesn’t mean that if you examine Barack Obama and Bill Clinton you can conclude only that “there’s no meaningful way to differentiate between these two people based on biology alone.” It doesn’t mean that if you examine Chelsea Clinton you’d have no way of predicting whether Bill or Barack is her dad with a probability greater than chance. > > As I’ve said in other threads, I think many people here have essentially let the racists win. They’ve gotten so fed up with racists that they’ve taken the silly position that “there’s no such thing as race.” I think it’s possible to say that the racists are wrong but it’s still possible to differentiate among different races based on biology alone. > [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > Tripolar, if you were to examine any biological aspect of Chelsea Clinton that you choose to examine, could you determine whether her father is more likely to be Bill Clinton or Barack Obama? You’re contrasting the obvious connection between child and parent with the arbitrary relationship to a person chosen at random. This is a logical fallacy which can’t be used to draw a conclusion. You’ve also brought in something about fed up people and silly positions that haven’t been expressed in this thread. > [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > What are the factors you used to determine which one is more likely to be her father? > > ETA: I’ll cut to the chase. Whatever those factors were, you could probably look at every human and put them into groups based on those factors. And you could call some of those groups “races” if you wanted to. And, bingo bango, there you go, you’ve arrived at a grouping of people called a “race” that you derived based purely on their biological aspects. Here you clearly take that position that one definition of race is as gpod as another, based on the logical construct _bingo bango_. > [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > It might help if you tried reading my posts for comprehension instead of looking to find another petard that you think you can hang me on. > > You have consistently ignored the middle ground here. All I’m saying is that it’s possible to divide people into groups based on their biological characteristics. That’s it. That doesn’t mean that any such dividing only has meaning if it’s done in an objective manner. It’s possible to create groups subjectively and then use objective measures to divide people into those groups, all done on biology alone. > > So, the questions in your OP are meaningless, but that doesn’t mean that “there’s no biological thing as race” or “there’s no scientific definition of race” or any other such sideways nonsense that people throw around all the time. > [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > So, now we have several people saying “sure you can divide people up into groups according to biological characteristics, but that doesn’t mean you can make any further conclusions about people in those groups.” > > However, many of these same people reject any evidence of such further conclusions out of hand without actually considering. So of course you reach that conclusion–it’s what you’ve been aiming for all along. You assume the conclusion then conclude it is correct. More strawmen, over-generalization, and discussion of matters not present in the thread. Yet amidst these statements you clearly reject conventional notions about race and decribe something like sound biology. Maybe you just have some left over frustrations from other threads. This one has (remarkably) stayed on the track of biological reality instead of all the other possible uses of the term ‘race’. I’m not clear what you are arguing against. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/153 "2011-05-23T20:25:12Z")
> [@heatmiserfl](#): > > I said in my post, exists beyond greenness. Beyond green, there’s no reason to group them. > > I guess I’m trying to stay close to the OP, which is biological meaning. That’s why I still don’t get what you’re trying to say. I have a serious block. Of course, I’m defining biological as genetic. Here’s a different way to think about this… so a new disease comes up which is particularly deadly to peas. So a pea has 30% likelihood of being susceptible to it, whereas for non-peas it’s \< 1%. So, some guy studying this disease and cross-referencing it with census data using the groupings that everyone in this universe is used to is going to notice that there’s a 15% susceptibility rate among peas-and-gekkos, compared to \<1% for the other groups. He reports that to the scientific authorities. How should they proceed? Is it unreasonable for them to immediately (well, as soon as they’ve confirmed the basic data) send an alert warning all peas-and-gekkos about this disease and how to protect themselves, etc? Or should their response be “well, we happen to know that peas-and-gekkos is a biologicaly meaningless group, therefore we reject your data, la la la la la”. (I mean, ideally they’d also continue to research and would presumably at some point isolate the disease to peas, not gekkos, but there’s no reason they should refuse to act on the potentially important information they have until they get that far…) ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/154 "2011-05-23T20:46:01Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > OK. > > I don’t think the medical community uses race to diagnose disease all that much, but I’m open to being convinced otherwise. > Well, that’s not a bad analogy. There are many “language continuums” around the world where we artificially (ie, socially) impose a boundary that doesn’t exist. One Example would be German-Dutch. It’s convenient to say that people in Germany speak German and people in the Netherlands speak Dutch, but the reality is that the language changes from one to the other in a continuum. > > No, you don’t. Not in the animal kingdom when we assign subspecies status to populations that have abrupt morphological and genetic changes that correspond to geographic barriers. Populations that would interbreed easily if those boundaries didn’t exist. > > You don’t find that with _H. sapiens._ But that is exactly why you find these clusters - they correspond to geographic barriers that [reduced gene flow](http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.0010070). > [@](#): > > For population pairs from the same cluster, as geographic distance increases, genetic distance increases in a linear manner, consistent with a clinal population structure. However, for pairs from different clusters, genetic distance is generally larger than that between intracluster pairs that have the same geographic distance. For example, genetic distances for population pairs with one population in Eurasia and the other in East Asia are greater than those for pairs at equivalent geographic distance within Eurasia or within East Asia. **Loosely speaking, it is these small discontinuous jumps in genetic distance—across oceans, the Himalayas, and the Sahara—that provide the basis for the ability of STRUCTURE to identify clusters that correspond to geographic regions.** ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/155 "2011-05-23T21:08:57Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > But that is exactly why you find these clusters - they correspond to geographic barriers that [reduced gene flow](http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.0010070). That would be excellent support for the existence of biological races if the authors of that paper didn’t say: > [@](#): > > Our evidence for clustering should not be taken as evidence of our support of any particular concept of “biological race.” You trot that out in every thread on this subject, and someone always has to point that out to you. Will you never stop with the nonsense? Your cites do not support your conclusions. So what if gene flow is not linear with distance? So what if there are “small” discontinuities in the clines if you do some incredibly complex statistical analysis as these guys have done. This is not the same as what we see when we say there are subspecies of populations. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/156 "2011-05-23T21:12:24Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > Is it unreasonable for them to immediately (well, as soon as they’ve confirmed the basic data) send an alert warning all peas-and-gekkos about this disease and how to protect themselves, etc? Are we somehow incapable of identifying Peas from Geckos? Take the concrete example of Tays-Sachs. There are three major populations/elasticities that are carriers of the disease; Ashkenazi Jews, Cajuns, and French Canadians. Should you warn and test all Jews because one particular group of Jews is at risk, or everyone in Louisiana or Quebec? In the real world, we can study things beyond the fact that they’re all green and find a true biological connection. Once we have discovered that we can apply testing and remediation efforts to the affected people. You’re analogy only holds if there’s no way to distinguish between Peas and Geckos. If we can only see color and nothing else, then perhaps your analogy would hold. But you are putting restrictions on your case that simply don’t apply in the real world of human ancestry. We are able to tell peas from geckos, and we’re able to tell Ashkenazi from Sephardi. People may be unclear of their heritage, or adopted, or simply may be unaware. As a first order approximation you could test everyone in a geographic area that has a higher percentage of Ashkenazi (or Cajuns, or French-Canadians) as a public safety matter but you’d never call them a race. It’s an artifact of statistics - there are no biological underpinnings. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/157 "2011-05-23T21:25:28Z")
Most biologists classify the common chimpanzee into 3 or 4 subspecies (depending on who is doing the analysis). If you want to see a real species that can be subdivided into geographically isolated populations, look at figure 3 in [this link.](http://www.bookrags.com/research/population-bottleneck-gen-03/) The amount of human variation is much, much less than that seen within any given subspecies of chimps. Add to that the fact that things like rivers (or even oceans) don’t stop us from interbreeding (as they do for chimps), and it just makes no sense to talk about isolated populations of humans forming some sort of subgroup. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/158 "2011-05-23T21:56:00Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > That would be excellent support for the existence of biological races if the authors of that paper didn’t say: > > You trot that out in every thread on this subject, and someone always has to point that out to you. Will you never stop with the nonsense? Your cites do not support your conclusions. > > So what if gene flow is not linear with distance? So what if there are “small” discontinuities in the clines if you do some incredibly complex statistical analysis as these guys have done. This is not the same as what we see when we say there are subspecies of populations. I quoted it because you said: > [@](#): > > Not in the animal kingdom when we assign subspecies status to populations that have abrupt morphological and genetic changes that correspond to geographic barriers. Populations that would interbreed easily if those boundaries didn’t exist. > > You don’t find that with H. sapiens. Now, clearly that is incorrect - that is why the clusters are found, because of geographical separation leading to restricted gene flow between groups. > [@John\_Mace](#): > > This is not the same as what we see when we say there are subspecies of populations. So what do you see when there are subspecies of populations? Consider the genetic differentiation in other [species](http://www.goodrumj.com/RFaqHTML.html). > [@](#): > > Here are some comparative figures for humans and other species (again, sampled across most or all of their ranges except as noted), based on autosomal microsatellites: > > Species FST > > Gray wolves (North America) [82] 0.168 > Pumas [83] 0.167 (mean pairwise) > Humans (14 populations) [84] 0.155 (AMOVA) > Asian dogs (11 breeds) [85] 0.154 > European wildcats (Italy) [86] 0.13 > Humans (44 populations) [87] 0.121 (AMOVA) > Coyotes (North America) [88] 0.107 > Wolverines (North America) [89] 0.067 (mean pairwise) > Jaguars [90] 0.065 > African buffalo [91] 0.059 > Polar bears [92] 0.041 (mean pairwise) > Canada lynx [93] 0.033 > Humpback whales [94] 0.026 (mean pairwise) Also, what is your take on the cladistic race concept that Robin Andreason suggests? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/159 "2011-05-23T22:00:29Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > I quoted it because you said: > > Now, clearly that is incorrect - that is why the clusters are found, because of geographical separation leading to restricted gene flow between groups. Unless it is your contention that gene flow has to be exactly equal everywhere and at every time, then… so what? “Restricted” gene flow can mean almost anything. In a subspecies, it has to be nonexistent (or nearly so). ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2011, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472/160 "2011-05-23T22:14:41Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Unless it is your contention that gene flow has to be exactly equal everywhere and at every time, then… so what? “Restricted” gene flow can mean almost anything. In a subspecies, it has to be nonexistent (or nearly so). That’s why I provided the information on differentiation amongst other species above. The discussion of which ones have subspecies is interesting, as it appears human populations have sufficient differentiation to meet that criteria. Also, races are less distinct that subspecies? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaningfull-biological-definition-of-race/582472.md?page=9)