I wasn’t impressed by the paper. I linked to it because I thought Chen might be interested (and because most people don’t have access to MH). When it comes to a definition of subspecies, I already cited two which are in current use and according to which humans are polytypic. Since no one has challenged these or rebutted the one(s) that I put forward in “Is there such a biological thing as a racial group?” I will assume that it is conceded that human subspecies exist according to some (taxonomically) meaningful definitions.
I will concede that there are many definitions according to which human are not polytypic. In that sense humans can be said to straddle the divide between monotypic and polytypic. This is what allows the debate to be shaped by politics. Depending on how you gerrymander the data and depending on which definitions you choose, you get different answers. Currently in the West, polytypicality is disfavored because the Western elites are globalizing the region; this is not the case, for example, in the PRC; there the idea of human subspecies has relatively strong currency.
Now, given the above, what are we left with to debate? Whether populations ft this or that individual definition and whether taking all definitions together, having weighed their various strengths, human subspecies emerge. This, I suggest, is what we should discuss.
Now since you commented on Woodley’s paper, perhaps we could discuss the authors definition:
“race and synonymous concepts can be defined as populations expressing a composite number of traits whose distributions intercorrelate in such a way so as to give rise to a particular, distinct correlative structure.”
Neven Sesardic (“The social deconstruction of a Biological reality”) suggests a similar definition. Both Woodley and Sesardic try to address two hurtles for potential human races: there are no unique phenotypes that all individuals in the race-like populations share – but rather there’s patterns of phenotypes and, moreover, the phenotypic differences (unlike genotypic differences) are (mostly) clinal. (This, of course, is a problem only for some conceptions; by the definitions I use it isn’t).
I guess the questions I would ask are: “By your understanding, how important is it for a “race” definition to have the criteria of distinctive phenotypes?” and “Does the above correlational approach meet this criteria?”
By correctness, you mean scientific correctness, don’t you? Why yes, I think in a scientific debate, you need to at least acknowledge that science, not pseudoscience. It should have been clear, not innuendo, that the article was not scientific. I spelled it out. A non-peer reviewed journal infamous for continuing to publish the thimersol-autism link after the original article was retracted. AIDS-HIV denialism. Really?
The author is a graduate student working on Arabidopsis. That’s a plant,dude. We have no evidence that he has research experience or even extensively studied human evolutionary genetics.
Now maybe I’m just strange, but I find it odd when non-experts won’t acknowledge the scientific consensus. There are people like CannyDan, MrDribble and Buck Godot presenting the scientific view. Now they, themselves may or may not be experts in this field but they seem to have some background to able to present the view of the experts.
However, if you want to present a view that counters the prevailing scientific view, wouldn’t it help to have some expertise in the topic? For example, Chen19 is posting numbers from a table that came from an unknown website and I criticized that because none of us has the expertise to properly discuss those numbers. Even worse, I couldn’t even figure out where the numbers came from.
I don’t even know if it’s informative to compare heterozygosity of humans with mammals that are endangered. Wouldn’t those mammals be in an existing population bottleneck, the whole point of the studying allelic diversity? So is that even remotely informative? See the problem of non-experts throwing out numbers like that?
It doesn’t take a lot of expertise to deal with many of the issues here. It is clear from reading even the dissenting views that definitions applied to endangered species are political in nature, and not biological. It doesn’t take a lot of expertise to see that the conventional definitions of sub-species are pure nonsense. Look at the definition of subspecies and you will see that it was not based on an understanding of genetics, and is being modified to try and arrive at a meaningful definition, with little success.
The most apparent reason why comparisons of subspecies categorization between humans and other species are usless is the definition of sub-species itself. Even on a genetic basis, its definition is specifically different for every species.
Nonsense like the 75% rule is not science anymore. The genetic makeup of a species can be absolutely determined now, so categorization based on characteristics that are not genetically distinct, IMHO, has no scientifc value.
At the beginning of this thread, you asked for a “meaningful biological Definition of Race.” I gave you two. The definitions are meaningful because they are still commonly used in conservation biology.
Now you contend that these definitions really are not meaningful because they do not have a genetic criteria. You now want a phylogenic definition that either sets a necessary level of differentiation (say Fst value) or that stipulates that the said populations must be genetically distinguishable. When it comes to your critique of human subspecies, since the said populations are genetically distinguishable via cluster analysis (which is the technique used when delineating subspecies in non-human species), the problem can not be that definitions lack the criteria of genetically distinguishability. So your critique must be that I am not giving a phylogenic definition that sets a Fst etc. value of necessary differentiation. You want something like what Alan Templeton refers to:
The problem is that there is no such definition! [Templeton curiously cited Smith et al, but Smith et al did not discuss a genetic differentiation criteria but rather the 75% criteria that you ridicule. (“The non-discrete nature of subspecies is evident from their definition as geographic segments of any given gonochoristic (bisexually reproducing) species differing from each other to a reasonably practical degree (e.g., at least 70-75%), but to less than totality")]. In effect, you want me to give you a definition that does not exist. I could satisfy your request, of course, by arbitrarily making one up – but you would likely dismiss it.
Basically, you are saying:
A meaningful definition of subspecies is one which categorizes on the basis of genetic differentiation
Human subspecies don’t exist because there is no meaningful definition which would lead to the classification of human populations as subspecies.
Because…
The amount of differentiation between human populations is too small
When asked for a justification of point 3, you or others fail to give it. As it is, we have showed that the amount of differentiation between human populations is not particularly small as compared to a number of other polytypic species. In response you or others state that it’s invalid to use the standards used for other species; we have to basis it on humans – apparently on a criteria of differentiation arbitrarily set to rule out the possible existence of human subspecies! (For example, Canny Dan goes from saying “Humans though are not nearly so complex. Genetic diversity of humankind is quite low” to " Nothing in biology or systematics demands that a given species must be assigned multiple races simply because another species has races.")
Since you are contending that my definitions are not good enough, and that by the only valid one human populations are not subspecies because they are not differentiated enough, why don’t you explain to us how differentiated they would need to be and explain how you derived this value.
Since you already have a definition in mind – “Populations genetically differentiated more than any human populations are” – why did you ask this?
Why not just say, “Based on my arbitrary standards, there are no human subspecies”?
You and I have different ideas about the meaning of meaningful. If I haven’t stated clearly enough already, my definition is an opinion, as I assume yours is. So I’m not discarding your argument. It seems to be consistent, and not irrational. We simply disagree about the word ‘meaningful’.
As far as subspecies goes, I’m not claiming to have a definition. I contend that no meaningful one exists to apply across species, and as defined within species are aribitrary (I can’t say if that’s the case for all species, but certainly in humans). It’s certainly fair to say that life forms that share a common ancestor and can no longer reproduce with each other, are different species.
But what is the magical distinction of sub-species? If physical barriers are removed and reproduction can still occur even though there are different frequencies of genetic factors, what difference does that make in a biologically meaningful way? If it is simply statistical, I fail to find meaning unless the statistics lead to a better understanding of the genetic process. But so far the statistical observation of genetic clusters hasn’t done that. Certainly not in the sense of defining a small number of human races or sub-species. If there has been a verified prediction about the future genetic structure of people whose ancestors came from a particular continent, either through continued inbreeding or outmixing, that would be meaningful to me. But so far, what we know remains bound to the simple genetic principles of inheritance, which don’t change based on continent of origin (and that would have to be an arbitrary definition of origin anyway since Africa is the continent of origin for all of us).
Not exactly. Your concept of continental “races” really isn’t much help to people looking for compatible bone marrow. In order to be efficacious, the search needs to be much more specific than that. That is to say, specific population groups, not “races”.
We’ve discussed this before. I consider this a medical utility (assuming it is of value), while you find this meaningful in a biological sense. We’ll probably to continue to disagree on this point.
The statistics work out because the restricted ancestry in the US due to the founder effect mentioned above. It doesn’t say much about the relative close ancestry of the self-reported race of the donors. We’ve gone through this time and time again with Chen019 but he hasn’t responded to any of the criticism yet.
Yes, but he’s not making arguments about skin color or ‘I know the races when I see them’. If he feels statistical coincidence is meaningful, I doubt we’ll convince him otherwise.
True. But you could lump any small or under-represented population in with one of the “established” ones (say Basque in with Black) and the statistics would still work out. It’s clearly an arbitrary statistical classification that works for a variety of non-biological reasons.
Granted, at this point you and I are simply discussing the ways in which it’s non-meaningful.
What would you define as meaningful? As discussed on the previous page, Chuck’s Phillips et al., 2009. Systematics of Steller sea lions reference notes:
Tripolar is saying that the subspecies category itself is meaningless; You seem to grant the meaningfulness of the subspecies category but contend that humans fail to meet the criterion. I gave a number of definitions according to which humans are polytypic. Apparently, you think these definitions are invalid. I have also shown that a significant fraction of the international scientific community agrees that human populations can meaningfully be described as “biological races” and that a smaller but still significant fraction agrees that human populations can be meaningfully described as “subspecies.” In short, there is no consensus as some have contended.
Now, since you contend that human populations fail to qualify as subspecies, the onus is on you to provide the definition and criterion you are using *and * to provide a justification of this definitions. (e.g. it’s commonly used in conservation biology; it’s adopted by such and such society; it’s a definition with genetic criterion and this is a superior basis for classification) That way we can discuss:
whether this definition itself in meaningful and
whether any human populations qualify by it and
what would have needed to have been the case for humans to qualify
For example, I cited Templeton –
– and then explained why this definition was invalid (he basis it on a misreading of Smith et al).
(For the record, I’m agnostic on this matter. As I stated earlier, IMO humans are borderline polytypic. By a number of definitions – which I am aware of and have been waiting for you to cite – they do no qualify; by others they do.)
