Does Race exist?

The question is what to do with research showing different disease rates between African-American and Caucasians. How to interpret it without using the concept of race?
Just discard the results as irrelevant or invent politically correct term to replace race?

The section dealing with why using race is a problem,
“People advocate for the use of these categories in research as a way for us to separate people and identify the genetic variations that are more frequent in those groups,” said Shawneequa Callier, a professor at George Washington University who studies issues around genetics research. “The problem is when you try to translate that to care, because you can’t look at someone and know their genetics.”

If you use race as a basis for treatment rather than genetics the result is going to be some people receiving incorrect treatment.
 
If you use race as a basis for treatment rather than genetics the result is going to be some people receiving incorrect treatment.
That's true.
But we apparently don't have enough research based on genetics rather than race, because DNA analysis is more expensive than visual dividing people into few subgroups.
So, the alternative is not to use statistics at all, discard that research. I believe it may result into even more people receiving incorrect treatment.

The problems they state is lack of precise definition of race, inconsistency between different articles and negative connotations about the term. All of them can be addressed.
 
"Nevertheless, without using prior information about the origins of individuals, we identified six main genetic clusters, five of which correspond to major geographic regions, and subclusters that often correspond to individual populations."
https://rosenberglab.stanford.edu/papers/popstruct.pdf

They found 6 groups because they set K = 6. They can set K to whatever they want and it'll produce a result. Thats how the thing works! It splits off the outgroup. Watch it go from K = 2 to K = 6. At K = 2 it identifies the dividing line at about the Himalayas. At K = 3 the Sinai appears. K = 4 the Bering strait. K=5 is the Pacific Ocean. At this point they stop because its about to start splitting off tiny islands and isolated communities and not reveal much of use. Already at K=6 it was starting to split off odd groups such as the Kalash rather than any recognised "races". Furthermore each of those pixels on the figure is an individual and look at where they sources their ethnicities. Look how over-represented the Isle of Orkney and Basque people are!

The paper is a well constructed exercise in identifying population structure but it is a poor sample of the human race, because that is not what they intended to do, and you should not use it that way!

As they themselves said:
"Because most alleles are widespread, genetic differences among human populations derive mainly from gradations in allele frequencies rather than from distinctive “diagnostic” genotypes. Indeed, it was only in the accumulation of small allele-frequency differences across many loci that population structure was identified."

Human genetic diversity is clinal. You draw a line across a continent, graph a locus or loci, and the populations from one end to the other will go from all red to all blue by gradation (assuming no recent migrations or evolutionary pressure on the locus akin to adult lactose production).

This is why they need to analyse many hundreds and thousands of loci to produce a result. They need to sum 400 clines to generate the power to make groups appear. 400 clines to identify the blips at major geographical barriers such as the Himalayas and the Pacific Ocean.
 
They found 6 groups because they set K = 6. They can set K to whatever they want and it'll produce a result. Thats how the thing works! It splits off the outgroup. Watch it go from K = 2 to K = 6. At K = 2 it identifies the dividing line at about the Himalayas. At K = 3 the Sinai appears. K = 4 the Bering strait. K=5 is the Pacific Ocean. At this point they stop because its about to start splitting off tiny islands and isolated communities and not reveal much of use. Already at K=6 it was starting to split off odd groups such as the Kalash rather than any recognised "races". Furthermore each of those pixels on the figure is an individual and look at where they sources their ethnicities. Look how over-represented the Isle of Orkney and Basque people are!

The paper is a well constructed exercise in identifying population structure but it is a poor sample of the human race, because that is not what they intended to do, and you should not use it that way!

As they themselves said:
"Because most alleles are widespread, genetic differences among human populations derive mainly from gradations in allele frequencies rather than from distinctive “diagnostic” genotypes. Indeed, it was only in the accumulation of small allele-frequency differences across many loci that population structure was identified."

Human genetic diversity is clinal. You draw a line across a continent, graph a locus or loci, and the populations from one end to the other will go from all red to all blue by gradation (assuming no recent migrations or evolutionary pressure on the locus akin to adult lactose production).

This is why they need to analyse many hundreds and thousands of loci to produce a result. They need to sum 400 clines to generate the power to make groups appear. 400 clines to identify the blips at major geographical barriers such as the Himalayas and the Pacific Ocean.

The Kalash are argued to be distinct from the general population of Afganistan, and at least the Kalash themselves claim that (their tradition is that) they are descended from Alexander the Great's soldiers/other groups brought during that expedition.
At any rate there were greek kingdoms in central Asia (up to India) even after the rest of the greek world was conquered by Rome or Parthians.
 
They found 6 groups because they set K = 6. They can set K to whatever they want and it'll produce a result. Thats how the thing works!
Indeed. They probably used k-means clustering or something similar.

The paper is a well constructed exercise in identifying population structure but it is a poor sample of the human race, because that is not what they intended to do, and you should not use it that way!
:dunno: I'm showing example of DNA clustering by geographic locations.
 
The Kalash are argued to be distinct from the general population of Afganistan, and at least the Kalash themselves claim that (their tradition is that) they are descended from Alexander the Great's soldiers/other groups brought during that expedition.
At any rate there were greek kingdoms in central Asia (up to India) even after the rest of the greek world was conquered by Rome or Parthians.
Yeah, no disrespect to the Kalash. I'm meaning that when the model splits them you're starting to get outgroups that don't tell you much of use. K=10 would have had several Pacific islands as outgroups and a single Basque man whos family have not come down from the Pyrenees in 7 generations. You'd have to increase your number of DNA samples and loci to begin revealing things of interest to anthropologists. Probably by a lot.
 
By your own words you believe that you can.
Yes, my position is consistent and apparently you are not trying to understand it. Instead, making me prove obvious things, like existence of DNA clusters based on locations and phenotypical traits and when I do you claim it's not "useful".
 
Paradox forums are probably the most fascist ones a computer game can have :D
Re Domen, though, i like him. He didn't have bad intentions, nor was he fascist. He just loved dna lists... (and Poland).

I like his character he was so funny, but dang his over nationalism sometime can get into my nerve
 
Yes, my position is consistent and apparently you are not trying to understand it. Instead, making me prove obvious things, like existence of DNA clusters based on locations and phenotypical traits and when I do you claim it's not "useful".

The clusters are not based on phenotypical traits. The clusters in that paper are do not align with the races (atacu). Those are the two massive gaps that you are trying to wallpaper over with some weak posting.
 
The clusters are not based on phenotypical traits.
It's the other way around.
Clusters in phenotypical traits are based on underlying DNA clusters. Because phenotypical features are defined by genes.
If you are able to distinguish between white and black by analysis of DNA features, you can divide them into two clusters using these features.

The clusters in that paper are do not align with the races (atacu).
They show that several variants of clustering correlate with distribution of different races on Earth.
 
It's the other way around.
Clusters in phenotypical traits are based on underlying DNA clusters. Because phenotypical features are defined by genes.
If you are able to distinguish between white and black by analysis of DNA features, you can divide them into two clusters using these features.
1.You are guessing this. You do not know this. Who has done work on clusters related to racial phenotypic traits?
2. It would be stupid either way because you are failing to cluster people by a good sample of the genome.

Seriously, think about it. They needed 400 loci to generate enough power to detect the Bering strait. If you try to make a model with a handful of melanin related loci then it would just fail to resolve any meaningful groups!

They show that several variants of clustering correlate with distribution of different races on Earth.
No they don't. Race realists do not treat the Kalash as the 6th race or the Pacific Islands as the 5th.
 
For the record, that Rosenberg 2002 paper uses loci from the Human Genome Diversity Cell Line Panel (HGDP), which doesn't include melanin-related loci. All the loci are from the Y chromosome or mtDNA because those track male and female lineage, respectively and aren't recombinant. Pigmentation is determined somewhere on chromosome 16. Also, most of the HGDP loci were non-coding, so not many of those loci directly affect phenotypes. Though they could definitely influence gene expression indirectly through, e.g., interactions with transcription factors.
 
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1.You are guessing this. You do not know this.
I know this. If you can find a distance metric to classify variables in two categories, you can use this metric to clusterize them as well.

No they don't. Race realists do not treat the Kalash as the 6th race or the Pacific Islands as the 5th.
You've just demonstrated that you don't know what correlation means.
 
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