Basically what the article says is that:
- GWAS, as currently designed, is very promising for finding disease genes which have large effects, but there probably aren’t a whole lot of those out there; most genetically-influenced diseases probably involve multiple disease genes which each, individually, have small effects.
- GWAS technology currently is biased towards looking for common variants, but to be useful for finding genes with subtle effects the arrays will need to be redesigned to also look for rare variants, which will make the arrays larger; improved technology is required to create and handle these larger arrays.
So I’d summarize as “GWAS is still promising but we’re having to reassess exactly what for and how to use it.”
WTF!?
I think it is an excellent red herring to throw into a thread about “THE LOOMING GENETIC CRISIS™”
I’m with Kimstu: still looming, and what “crisis”?
Piece by piece we’ll figure out how much of who we are is our genes, and who has those genes. The rest is rhetoric.
It will turn out to be mostly genes; of that I have no doubt. The simplest proof case I offer is the utter failure to eliminate differences so far.
On the one hand, the genetic “crisis” side wants to pretend a timeline is Real Soon Now. I’m in that genetic camp generally, but I think the timeline might be closer to 10 or 15 years, especially to persuade the last stubborn soul that I don’t have the genes for golf and never will, and a better environment ain’t gonna get me there.
On the other hand, the genetic egalitarians keep hoping to uncover the long-hidden nurturing-difference Secret preventing whole groups from performing equally, Real Soon Now. However the clever among them will continue to develop new potential nurturing-difference Secrets that then have to be disproved, so they have an almost unlimited amount of time in which to advance nurturing arguments. (Until all 6 Billion have been genome-mapped and compared, for some of them.) Still; their arguments are getting feebler: for children of wealthy, educated blacks underperforming in the US system, they are down to stuff like crappy grandparents, low self-esteem and low teacher expectations–slim pickings indeed, and the recognition of which have not changed the scoring landscape in at least the last ten or fifteen years.* But I’d say they can milk those indefinitely for the Egalitarianly Devout.
There was one study this year, Orcenio, which seemed to be an initial shot across the bow against the general argument that we are all more or less equivalent branches of the same genetic trunk: this Science article is one of the first to provide at least one genetically-based distinction between Eurasians and sub-saharans.
It’s a long way from that, though, to showing exactly which genes (Neandertal or otherwise) are different, and what they govern, and while that difference is “looming” in my opinion, it’s a stretch to say it’s “looming in 2010.” It’s my personal opinion that, like the Creationist-type mentality from which the egalitarian argument derives (one common ancestor; we are pretty much all God’s beloved and equal children), many will quietly set aside the nurturing explanation for differences as a personal belief while being publicly non-committal about it. There is no extra love or academic hoorahs extended toward those who want to raise the specter of genes as the driver for the differences among us.
*The Black-White Test Score Gap, c 1998 e.g., which I just bought and am perusing now. 15 years on from the data in this cheerily optimistic position, standardized test scores are still wretchedly disparate by race. See, for instance, MCATs here.
One bright and optimistic note for those of us discouraged by the belief that our differences are in fact genetic (and therefore immutable) is that inter-racial marrying is apparently on the rise. Perhaps a modern and mobile society can create such a dispersion of genes than none of us need take up one side of the argument or the other.
One more thing, Orcenio:
You are aware that headlines, and particularly ones leaning toward rhetorical hyperbole, are used to sell magazines and newspapers, right? They aren’t always some sort of accurate succinct summary of the people whose opinions are contained therein…but neither does an overly-dramatic headline necessarily confer a refutation of the key content simply because it over-reaches. Brangelina could still be in trouble even if they aren’t separating tomorrow.
Not sure, it’s already apparent that some genes relating to neurological function have had different selection across populations.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/science/26human.html?pagewanted=print
Read the introduction. These predictions are a mixture of the speculative to the certain; they are designed to make the reader think.
They went at least a decade predicting Castro’s demise iirc, for example, making light of it every year.
Question for CP:
do you understand why this is completely irrelevant to the question of the black/white test score gap?
Gene prevalences vary by racial groups.
At a point when they cannot be shown to vary in prevalence by races, there won’t be a “black” or a “white” group. That point will come when there is enough intermixing of the source populations.
Although one of the current politically-correct-driven assertions is that race is a social and cultural phenomenon, this is only partially true. While identification with race is mostly social and cultural, from a biological perspective it can easily be shown that various gene prevalences (including the genes which create cosmetic appearance differences) vary even at the “race” level of grouping.
As a small example, if we were to look at precocious puberty among US female children, we’d find a several-fold factor increased incidence among children identified by their parents as “black.” While that identification as “black” in any particular case is purely cultural, it’s clear that such a culturally-based division is accompanied by something related to biological differences (beyond those biological differences affecting appearance).
A thorough mixing of the gene pool would leave such biologic distinctions behind.
So you can’t answer the question?
I think that what the Chief meant is that the black/white test score gap by definition will be nil when the racial distinction between “blacks” and “whites” disappears due to interracial mating.
I agree that that in itself doesn’t necessarily tell us anything about the nature and causes of the black/white test score gap as it currently exists.
Personally, while I think it would be ridiculous to declare that interracial test score differences can’t possibly have a significant genetic component, I think it’s equally ridiculous to declare based on our current knowledge that they must have a significant genetic component.
It’s only been for the past few decades that systematic efforts have been made to counteract entrenched racial discrimination and prejudice, which is not a very long time in terms of cultural and social reform. I wouldn’t really expect to see anything approaching a truly “egalitarian” culture resulting from such efforts within a period of at least a century or so.
That’s why I think Chief Pedant’s assertion that the fact that racial differences in test scores have not so far been eliminated constitutes any kind of “proof case” for the position that they innately can’t be eliminated is unconvincing. His conclusion might in fact turn out to be correct, but the evidence he’s basing it on is at present very inconclusive.
IMO, what will give us reliable information about genetic differences among racial and other groups within (probably) the next several decades will not be dubious inferences from studies of how various culturally-defined and culturally-influenced racial group samples perform on various culturally-dependent tests. Rather, data from direct genetic studies of populations and individuals will build up, as the OP’s linked op-ed predicts, “a detailed family tree that links all living humans”.
However, I think everybody agrees that nothing of the sort is going to become available in the immediate future. That, AFAICT, pretty much resolves the issue that the OP actually raised for debate (i.e., “where is this looming genetic crisis?”).
Namely, the predicted attempts by geneticists to question and re-evaluate the usefulness of GWAS have materialized, but don’t actually constitute any kind of serious “crisis” in scientific terms. The predicted discoveries of socially or politically awkward results about definitive genetic differences among racial groups are still too far in the future for convincing forecasts.
So the looming part wasn’t really a crisis, and the crisis part isn’t really looming. Next question?
One thing that will go away early on is the notion that, with the exception of genes controlling cosmetic differences (“skin color” e.g.) we are all basically composed of the same family of genes. That is, gene sequencing studies will prove that various gene (sets) vary in prevalence among populations, including races.
The clever among the egalitarians will switch over from pretending we are more or less all sharing the same library of genes to demanding proof that all those genes actually code for disparate ability, and that will be be a much longer task.
It’s interesting to see this shift in argument take place already, and I think it’s fair to say this is in response to heading off what would otherwise be a crisis: The dissolution of the notion that there are no biologically-defined races. At some strict level, of course not; there is no specific gene marker that makes you Race A or Race B. However the absence of that strict definition does not mean that those (self-sorted/cultural/social) races are not also associated with varying prevalences of genes and phenotypic characteristics resulting from those genes.
And for any forseeable future (assuming my position is right) there will remain this obvious fact braying in the background of every argument: We are not going to see equal performance by races given equal nurturing no matter how hard we try to identify where the nurturing is different and how we might address those disparities. The differences are going to remain immutable, best and sincerest efforts to the contrary.
The egalitarians will be left stumbling along pretending that nurturing can never be equalized for underperforming groups (while other, similar groups who have been undernurtured catch up and do fine). We’ll see plenty of criticisms of study after study showing differences; never any studies proving those differences go away as soon as you fix putative nurturing difference X or Y. Asia will take its turn producing a large share of the world’s quantitative scientists and engineers or high-cognitive industries, sub-saharan Africa will not.
Like it or not, we are our genes. Whether that’s a looming crisis or not depends how passionately you are married to the notion that we are not. It will be a rather indefinite wait, I’m afraid, for those who keep hoping to unlock and and address some hidden nurturing variable that affects only certain races for certain skillsets.
From the article quoted by Kimstu:
That to me seems to be the heart of the issue. Genetic information is a lot more complex than they thought it was going to be. They can’t just look at someone’s genetic profile and read what is in their future in terms of health and potential with any kind of certainty.
And that’s why all of the whispering about race, regions and ethnicities sounds like somebody tacted it on to the report. The last part contradicts the notion that things are more complex than they had thought. Even the writing style varies from one section to another. Examples:
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Scientifically worded statement: “The missing heritability may reflect limitations of DNA-chip design: GWAS methods so far focus on relatively common genetic variants in regions of DNA that code for proteins.”
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Sloppily worded statement: “We will start reconstructing a detailed family tree that links all living humans, discovering many surprises about mis-attributed paternity and covert mating between classes, castes, regions and ethnicities.”
Comments on the second statement: It doesn’t take a scientist to see some of the unscientific thinking in this sentence. The use of “We” is vague as it is all the way through the article. The reference to “humans” should read “human beings” to be accurate. The claim that “we” will be discovering many surprises" is an unknown. The claim of “mid-attributed” (sic) paternity makes an assumption. The use of “covert mating” makes assumptions. “Classes” are a social construct and change. “Castes” are a social construct. And the world “ethnicities” has a very elastic meaning.
Why would all of these scientists wait to release all of their papers at one time? Why have they been meeting in secret? Who made the announcement that the information would be released in 2010?
Same old same old.
Thanks for taking the time, Kimstu.
You mean like the one we already have? Any attempt to claim that the problems of black people in America are due to genetics founders on the fact that there’s been interbreeding between blacks and whites and so on for centuries.
I would be surprised if intelligence, behavior and so on didn’t have a heavily genetic component. But I see no reason to assume that those genetically determined qualities will conveniently just happen to match “racial” classifications made up by preindustrial bigots. If there are genetic lines that tend towards greater or lesser intelligence or whatever, I expect that they will be identified by terms like “inheritors of the #153-A-12 gene complex” and not “black people”.
Pretty much…but given our insistence on self-classifying by racial categories (for the purpose of affirmative action, say, or for the purpose of “proving” discrimination), what will happen is that the prevalence of “#153-A-12 gene complex” (and its phenotypic result) will be shown to vary by racial category, because even though the category is broad and reflects a good deal of mixing with other gene pools, the mixing has not been extensive enough to homogenize racial categories out of existence entirely. The fact that some mixing has occurred so far does not mean that races have no biologic basis at all.
Maybe so; there’s no way to tell for certain from our present vantage point. But basing such predictions on the results of only a few decades’ efforts at social reform seems highly dubious to me.
In particular, it ignores significant changes in outcomes that have already occurred. For example, following up your focus on participation in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines, it turns out that since the early 1980’s, blacks have more than doubled their share of science and engineering occupations, going from 2.6% of US scientists and engineers being black to 6.9%.
Did American blacks undergo some major genetic cognitive change in the past 25 years that enabled this increase? That doesn’t sound very likely on the face of it. But if not, then don’t we have to conclude that the increase resulted from changes in environment and culture (what you call “nurturing”)? And in that case, what justification do we have for insisting that further changes in environment and culture can’t produce further improvements in black STEM participation?
True, at 6.9% blacks are still significantly underrepresented in science and engineering, since blacks make up about 13% of the US population total. But they’re certainly a lot less underrepresented now than they were at 2.6%. Do we have any logical justification for believing that US blacks innately can’t increase their STEM participation to 7.5%? 9.1%? 10%? 11%? Why would that justification not apply equally well to the (now disproved) position that black STEM participation couldn’t surpass, say, 6%?
Where is the cutoff beyond which you believe that genetic differences will innately block any further improvement, and why do you put the cutoff line there and not elsewhere?
No problem, it’s what we’re here for. Taking longer than we thought, though, eh? 
But they never have had any biological basis. It’s only an accident of history that “black people” is called a race and, say, “people with green eyes” or “people from southern Germany” are not. Race is an arbitrary way to classify people, as well as very broad, very vague, and prone to change. And again, you are presuming that whatever differences will be found will be prevalent according to “race”; and that those differences will just happen to adhere to those racial stereotypes you appear to like so much.
It is kind of amusing to imagine the reaction from people like you if there really turned out to be genetic tendencies by race, but they didn’t fit the stereotypes; if black people turned out to be genetically smarter on average for example.
You may think the Chief Pendant is full o shit, and only time will tell one way or another when the facts finally come in, but I don’t ever recall him claiming “white westerners” (or something like that) being the BEST when it comes to mental performance in a modern/scientific world. I am pretty sure he has given that title to other “races”.
So, don’t try to hang that white supremacist stuff on HIM at least.
As it so happens, this article just appeared today in my Sunday newspaper: “GENOME MAP HAS YET TO HELP MEDICINE” “After 10 years of effort, geneticists are almost back to square one in knowing where to look for the roots of disease”. by Nicholas Wade, NY Times.