I have not managed to keep up with this thread, but I did find an interesting
paper on it. One way of looking at the human lineage, based only on one feature (100 Alu insertion polymorphisms):
Using that same locus, along with a few others (60 STR polymorphisms and 30 restriction site polymorphisms) the inheritance pattern looks simple:
However if you do the same thing with a different locus (polymorphisms in the 14.4-kb gene AGT) you get a much more complicated picture:
For one, I'm curious if the articles I mentioned earlier were consistent with what you say you've seen. Two, this is interesting, but we're mostly all aware that any particular locus won't usually follow a clean pattern of ancestral geographic distribution. Using many loci provides more clear geographic distributions. Also, from the abstract:
These clusters are also correlated with some traditional concepts of race, but the correlations are imperfect because genetic variation tends to be distributed in a continuous, overlapping fashion among populations. Therefore, ancestry, or even race, may in some cases prove useful in the biomedical setting, but direct assessment of disease-related genetic variation will ultimately yield more accurate and beneficial information.
It's increasingly seeming like no one is really disputing this, no? This doesn't seem to be particularly controversial within genetics and it seems to be pretty similar to Reich's view. It only seems to become controversial outside of genetics.
If this is a correct summary of Reich's perspective on this then he is a scientific racist, there isn't much more to say.
I said: "This isn't really refuting the central claim that meaningful genetic differences exist between, say, ethnic English and Native Americans." Then you said: "No one is actually disputing that claim. What we are disputing is concluding from those genetic differences that therefore English and Native Americans are members of different "races."" Then I explain he
isn't defining races or saying anyone is a member of a different race. Apparently this is a subtle but important point. He's saying meaningful genetic variation exists based on geographic distribution of their ancestry. And the genetic implications of this fact are reflected at the level granularity of most people's racial self-identifications.
I am trying to be clear. This is not the same thing as positing a biological definition of race, that populations are discrete, that race isn't a social construct, that most alleles cannot be found in every population, or that finer levels of granularity wouldn't be more appropriate in some contexts.
I suggest reading
this for an overview of the problems with that NYT piece. Specifically addressing the sickle-cell mutation:
Thank you, this was interesting.
With respect to sickle cell anemia: for one, this isn't actually an example he uses in the NYT column, though he does mention it in the book and it's a well-known example, so I guess it's fair game. Reich is well aware that the HbS variant is an adaptation to malaria that has arisen independently in multiple populations. He even points out it has arisen independently just within sub-Saharan Africa. Everyone knows that any particular variant will likely be found in multiple human populations. But this is missing the point: he isn't starting from variants and shoehorning them into racial categories. He's starting with people's identifications and saying they provide meaningful information with respect to a number of medically relevant traits. If he says "self-identified African Americans are more likely to have the HbS variant", that doesn't mean he's also saying saying "no Arabs have the HbS variant." Plus, as we aggregate more loci, we get more geographic correlations.
Also, yes, HbS is somewhat prevalent on the Arabian Peninsula and India. But the frequency actually is
quite a lot higher in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Moreover, a single loci typically doesn't provide enough information for clustering algorithms. In the case of HbS, one loci actually might be sufficient for decent clusters. But that's not the really the point. There is more of geographic correlation as you use more loci because loci variations within a population are correlated.
I'm expecting a rebuttal of basically this claim from the paper Samson just posted: "ancestry, or even race, may in some cases prove useful in the biomedical setting." This is very similar to Reich's view. Wringing your hands and expressing petty and trivial objections is not sufficient.
This misrepresents the many scientists and scholars who have demonstrated the scientific flaws of considering “race” a biological category. Their robust body of scholarship recognizes the existence of geographically based genetic variation in our species, but shows that such variation is not consistent with biological definitions of race. Nor does that variation map precisely onto ever changing socially defined racial groups.
This is a misunderstanding. Reich is not creating a biological definition of race or mapping people into biological races. This is what everyone seems to be misunderstanding. He is saying that self-reported racial identifications do correlate somewhat well with genetically distinguishable populations. If we redefined our racial landscape to be based on Yankees vs Redsox support, Reich's position would not be the same.
Everyone seems to be in agreement there are correlations between self-identification and genetically identifiable populations and that when many loci are analyzed, meaningful correlations emerge. These people are claiming the correlations are somewhat less important than what Reich is saying. But even Reich isn't saying the correlations are super important, just that they do exist and we should be able to acknowledge that without creating an uproar.
Human beings are 99.5% genetically identical. Of course, because the human genome has 3 billion base pairs, that means any given individual may differ from another at 15 million loci (.5% of 3 billion). Given random variation, you could genotype all Red Sox fans and all Yankees fans and find that one group has a statistically significant higher frequency of a number of particular genetic variants than the other group — perhaps even the same sort of variation that Reich found for the prostate cancer–related genes he studied. This does not mean that Red Sox fans and Yankees fans are genetically distinct races (though many might try to tell you they are).
The insinuation is that Reich and others are p-hacking, whether they realize it or not. He is not. The fact this is even included in the article suggests they are grasping at straws and have diminished levels of statistical maturity. This paragraph is not profound, interesting, or relevant.
If they think he is p-hacking, they should comb through the actual
paper (373 citations) in question and raise their objections there.
Precisely because the problems of race are complex, scientists need to engage these issues with greater care and sophistication. Geneticists should work in collaboration with their social science and humanities colleagues to make certain that their biomedical discoveries make a positive difference in health care, including the care of those studied.
This is not to say that geneticists such as Reich should never use categories in their research; indeed, their work would be largely impossible without them. However, they must be careful to understand the social and historical legacies that shape the formation of these categories, and constrain their utility... if sampling practices and historical contexts are not considered; if little attention is given to how genes, environments, and social conditions interact; and if we ignore the ways that sociocultural categories and practices shape the genetic patterns themselves.
They are lecturing Reich on things he already does and says in abundance.
Overall, I don't think this was a very good rebuttal. Some of the points were reasonable, many others were based on misunderstandings or truisms that change nothing about the discussion. The collection of signatories do not seem to be uniformly impressive. Many (most?) are not biologists or geneticists. A lot appear to be post docs. By and large, they are the humanities crowd Reich was arguing against to begin with.