I’m not sure what Izzy is retracting and not, but i’ll try to explain stuff that may have already been explained. Any two random Africans will probably vary more than a random African and a Random European. Africa is where people first evolved, and there was a large base population there. From that base population, they spread out covering teh entire continent. The northern tribes soon expanded into Europe and the Middle East. The southern tribes were too far away to do that. Tribal groups and mixing due to war or other reasons caused lots of mutations to become present that were not present in the groups that left Africa and headed for Europe. The European tribes had a set characteristic pattern of mutations to start with, and soon developed their own. As they spread across the continent, the southern mosts ones were still interacting with the northern-most africans, causing some intermixing of mutations, but as the southern africans were too far south to interbreed, those mutations were not adopted. Europeans spread to Asia, which spread to Australia/America. Each group was started by a small group which had their own set mutations and eventually developed their own. Since the African people had more time to make more africans, they have a higher percentage of mutations, which leads to higher differentiation. Europeans have lower, and Asians lower, etc etc. (Native Americans should have the lowest differentiation between their populations, but i’ve not seen any data on it myself, and the data might be corrupted by breeding with European settlers).
The article as i interpreted it was that the segemnts of populations in each land mass that are near each other have a similiar genetic base, which is to be expected. And by picking out certain markers, and enough of them, you can get a rough guess as to the country of origin, this would help to determine if the patient may be from an area with a specific type of heart disease.
“But why not just look for the markers for the disease itself?” you may be asking. We might not know it. but if we do, then it is stupid to do all these tests when we can do just one. Lots of primers are expensive, and the mutation might not be populationally exclusive.
Hopefully i can get back here more frequently when on vacation to continue in this discussion.
I’m glad to hear that you disavow that race is a scientifically meaningful concept, since the premise of this op was that the Science study
Now the position has evolved to one
And this, to me, is less a hoary question than it is a question that is occasionally whored. Of course groups have physical differences and of course some of those physical differences may have orgins in genotypes. It gets whored when such a truism is used to imply that the observation of one set of physical features has meaningful positive predictive value about a genotypic origin of, or even the presence of, a variety of other features.
OTOH, “race” isn’t without scientific meaning. Sociocultural groupings can tell us about risk factors. They should not be ignored. It is in this regard that I return to a cite provided in my first post on this thread
Well the term “races do exist” does not necessarily mean that it is a scientifically meaningful concept. I don’t think I’ve said anything here that is not consistent with my previous positions, as expressed for example here & here & here. For whatever reason, the very meaning of such terms as “races do/don’t exist” has been the subject of much dispute in these debates, e.g. here & here. Perhaps I need to put automatic disclaimers on all posts on the subject.
I’m unsure of the meaning of your second sentence here. Does this mean that you now accept that there is a possibility that there are genetic bases for differences (on average) between, say, Europeans and Asians in matters such as intellectual or athletic ability, or genital size (to seize on some matters that have been debated here at length)? If you answer affirmatively, then it turns out that you are a full fledged “pro-race” poster, and it’s a shame you did not come out of the closet in time to be assaulted by our late friend ;). But then, your third sentence seems to contradict your second. Because if you agree that different groups have physical differences that have origins in genotypes, then it would follow hat there would be some amount of predictive value. Because if A correlates to both B & C then B would have some correlation to C as well. Unless you meant to stress the word “meaningful positive predictive value”, in which case you are merely saying that you don’t think there is enough predictive value to be useful in a given case. I would not argue with that. But your position is a bit unclear.
[hijack]Hey, I miss our departed but foul-typed freind. His expletives were a fair enough price to pay for his knowledge and intelligence. After reading them once it was easy to just laugh at them the next time. Oh well.[/hijack]
Truth be told I have been boringly consistent on this subject. Race is a crude concept of little scientific value. Little does not mean none, but more precise words and concepts should be utilized whenever possible.
American “Blacks” have a higher infant mortality rate than “Whites”. African “Blacks” have a higher infant mortality than American “Blacks”. Is this a function of a genetic differences? Access to health care? Other nutritional and environmental factors? Is it fair to lump American Blacks and African Blacks as members of one “race”? I would no more ignore the possibilty that some of the difference between Black and White American infant mortality is based on some genetic factor than I would ignore the possibilty that it has to do with access/utilization of prenatal care and other socio-environmental factors. But the data is reported as White/Black/Hispanic/other so I can’t figure it out.
You may recall that I did argue that, given equal opportunities and environments, the elite of any particular activity would be expected to be of African origin more likely than not, just because of the greater diversity in that gene pool. The elite is always made up of the sigma outliers, and the diversity of the African pool would be expected to land a few individuals that hair’s breadth farther out, even with the same exact mean. And I have never even denied that the mean for any particular trait might be slightly different for one population group than another.
It may be true that there be a genetic contribution to a variety of phenotypic differences between different population groups. Or not. So far the evidence is lacking for making the case for significant (or any even) genetic contribution for those traits that you named, so at this point I would leave that as a speculative hypothesis without evidenciary merit. And OTOH there is strong evidence that educational and sociocultural factors do influence achievement in intellectual and athletic accomplishment (and I’ll leave your big penis … example … alone if you don’t mind). There is good but not conclusive evidence that these socioclutural classifications based on superficial characteristics have little, if any, correlation with much genotypic other than those that code for those superficial characteristics themselves. And the Science study does not change that statement.
I’d love to see evidence that the observed differences in various traits are solely the result of sociocultural factors. (Sorry Izzy, I realize the question is off-topic).
Now luc, what makes you read “solely” into that? I wrote with some precision and did not say “solely”. What I wrote was that there is a paucity of evidence for any “racial” genetic contribution and plenty of evidence for sociocultural contributions. It may be solely or not. As of yet there is no evidence that it is not solely.
You know I’ve rethought my African diversity leading to more sigma outliers position and wonder if the greatest diversity might not be in the Black American population … presuming that the wide spectrum of African gene pools is represented within it, then it also has contributions of any changes that may have occurred in populations seperated from the African population many generations past but reintroduced into its pool in American where allegedly most “Blacks” can trace some heritage to various non-Black ancestors as well. But such is merely speculation, not evidenciarily based.
Can’t argue with that (see also subsequent discussion). Still, some of your colleagues have been reluctant to embrace the possibility of a relationship among larger groups; e.g. tomndebb, Collounsbury, & edwino just to pick some posts that came up in a quick search.
Your final sentence is the only part of your post that I disagree with. Because if one is considering the possibility that a continent-sized group differs (on average) in some physical way, I don’t see how one can deny that the feasibility of this possibility is strengthened (not proved) by the discovery that there is a degree of continent-wide commonality to the distribution of genes.
lucwarm, I don’t see DSeid claiming to have evidence that “the observed differences in various traits are solely the result of sociocultural factors”. Only that there is evidence for such factors actually producing a difference, and no evidence for specific genetic factors doing same, making the latter assumption more speculative. Which is fair enough, as long as the case is not overstated - meaning that you cannot rule out genetic factors as well. And the absence of evidence as evidence of absence is weakened by what I understand to be a paucity of research (and general primitive understanding at this time) of the field.
On further thought, strike that. If a difference is measured, the measurement itself isn’t evidence about the cause of that difference. At the same time, I would point out that certain observed differences seem (based on common sense) to be more likely genetic in origin, such as genital size. Also, to the extent that sociocultural explanations fail, genetic explanations become more viable.
From work i’ve done myself, with American populations of European ancestry vs. American populations of African ancestry, the African americans and european-ams shared many of the same SNPs (Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms, where one base varies between people), while the Chinese/Japanese pools did not have them (although at different percentages). Overall, the AA pools had the highest diversity of SNPs, followed by the EAs and then the asians. We did not do an African only population (though i beleive we are going to use some in the HapMap project), so i cannot compare them to the African Americans.
