Talk:Race and genetics/Archive 6

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Good new sources for this article, including a book by a geneticist

It's time to freshen up the sources for this article to update them with current research. And Wikipedia's reliable sources content guideline reminds us to prefer secondary sources to primary sources for our summaries of the current research. I have a very readable book by a geneticist to recommend to all of you who volunteer to edit Wkipedia: Fairbanks, Daniel J. (7 April 2015). Everyone Is African: How Science Explodes the Myth of Race. Prometheus Books. ISBN 978-1-63388-019-1. Retrieved 20 July 2015. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |laydate= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help) Basically, this whole professionally edited and published book by Professor Fairbanks is a discussion of subtopics closely related to this article's topic, and I have found by reading the book cover-to-cover that it is a good guide to the earlier literature on this article's topic. You should be able to find this book in a library near you (as I did), and it's a good enough book to be worth buying if you are deeply interested in this article's topic. Enjoy; see you on the wiki. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 23:55, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

"Everyone Is African: How Science Explodes the Myth of Race

Scientifically, there are more differences within each race than between races. And that’s because race is an illusion, a social construct, and has little to no basis in scientific reality."

*facepalm* "Scientifically" there are more differences within chimps and humans than between them. What amateur agenda pushing prole fodder. Zhang500 23:39, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

I don't find this comment helpful, or even entirely comprehendible. Do you claim that "Scientifically there are more differences within chimps and humans than between them" is a valid assumption? If yes, can you support it with reliable sources? If no, can you explain what you try to illustrate with the analogy? Please be careful with your comments about Daniel J. Fairbanks, WP:BLP applies. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 10:01, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

"If yes, can you support it with reliable sources?"

Sure.[1] Tortoise Handler (talk) 04:20, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm not a biologist, but that paper does not seem to support your claim. First, chimpanzees do indeed stand out in the analysis, just not strongly. And secondly, the whole point of the paper is to criticise the measure F_ST as unsuitable to measure these differences, because it is based on certain underlying assumptions that may be wrong. The full text is available here. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 05:55, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

Now that the sock puppet distraction has been identified by Wikipedia administrators as an attempt to evade a block, I thought we should return to the issue of identifying useful new sources for editing all sections of this article. I'm amazed how many good sources have been neglected for updating this article's text. Of course your suggestions of current reliable sources suitable for medical topics such as genetics are welcome too.

• King, Nicelma J.; Murray, Carolyn B. (2015). "Race: Ethnicity and Health". In Wright, James D. (ed.). International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second ed.). Elsevier. pp. 812–819. doi:10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.14036-X. ISBN 978-0-08-097087-5. Retrieved 10 April 2015. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Unknown parameter |laydate= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysource= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help) – via ScienceDirect (Subscription may be required or content may be available in libraries.) This very recent encyclopedia article makes the important point that medical researchers are taking care to distinguish social correlates of race with causal effects on health outcomes from the much weaker and rarer genetic correlates of race with causal effects on health outcomes. That's a topic many other authors are careful to explore, for example Duana Fullwiley and Rick Kittles, M.D.

• • Pickrell, Joseph K.; Reich, David (September 2014). "Toward a new history and geography of human genes informed by ancient DNA". Trends in Genetics. 30 (9): 377–389. doi:10.1016/j.tig.2014.07.007. PMC 4163019. PMID 25168683. Retrieved 16 September 2014. – via ScienceDirect (Subscription may be required or content may be available in libraries.) This featured review article answers where some of the similarity among widely scattered human populations comes from--it comes from early migration events that are demonstrated by ancient DNA samples. Human beings have been moving back and forth across the earth and exchanging genes with their fellow human beings for a long time, and now ancient DNA samples specific to one place at one time can help trace ancient migration.

• Jablonski, Nina G. (10 January 2014). Living Color: The Biological and Social Meaning of Skin Color. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-28386-2. JSTOR 10.1525/j.ctt1pn64b. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |laydate= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help) This book is currently the definitive popular book on the evolution of human skin and the biological pathways that lead to varying skin color among differing geographic populations of human beings. The bibliography of this book cites all the major primary research studies and review articles on the topic of the evolution on human skin and genetic influences on skin color differences. Jablonski makes the important point that the genetics of human characteristics that are taken as signs of race is now a now a hot topic of research.

Years later, as a graduate student and then a professor in biological anthropology, I realized just how deeply color anxiety permeated my own academic discipline. Physical, or biological, anthropology is committed to the study of human evolution and human variation, and yet differences in skin color—one of the most obvious and variable of human traits—were mostly only described and not explained. In late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century anthropological treatises, explanations of differences in skin color were often given in the context of 'definitions' of races. And to some anthropologists of the time, some races were superior to others. The racist tenor of anthropological and scientific writing on human skin color was so repellent to later scholars that after the Second World War, research on the evolution of skin pigmentation or the evolution of races was avoided, as were questions about the origin of skin color variation and its meaning to our biology and health. So, too, scholars skirted around questions of the origin of skin-color discrimination in different parts of the world. Until the last decade, these questions were seen as too divisive and too difficult to explain. [new paragraph] As a graduate teaching assistant, I hobbled through the first classes I taught on human variation and 'race' and wished that someone would do research or engage in discussions that would yield deeper insight into these issues. I never imagined that one of those people would be me. Fortunately, I am not alone in my interests. There are probably hundreds of experts from the fields of anthropology, genetics, sociology, medicine, and many other disciplines who study skin color and its many kinds of meaning. We live in an Enlightenment of color. (page 2)

• Tattersall, Ian; DeSalle, Rob (1 September 2011). Race?: Debunking a Scientific Myth. Texas A&M University Anthropology series number fifteen. Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 978-1-60344-425-5. Retrieved 17 November 2013 – via Project MUSE. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |laydate= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |subscription= ignored (|url-access= suggested) (help) Tattersall and DeSalle's book needs to be used much more in updating this article. They are both experts on the article topic and discuss most of this article's subtopics in great detail in their book.

• Stanford, Craig; Allen, John S.; Antón, Susan C. (2013). Biological Anthropology (Third ed.). Pearson. ISBN 978-0-205-15068-7. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |laydate= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help) Stanford's textbook is a standard textbook on biological study of humankind.

• Harrison, Guy P. (2010). Race and Reality: What Everyone Should Know about Our Biological Diversity. Jonathan Marks (Foreword). Amherst (NY): Prometheus Books. ISBN 978-1-59102-767-6. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |laydate= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help) Guy Harrison's book has arguably now been superseded by the 2015 book by Fairbanks (a geneticist) from the same publisher, a publisher that publishes many books on scientific and rational skepticism, but this 2010 book is also a good survey of the scientific literature and addresses many common misconceptions about the topic of this article.

• Whitmarsh, Ian; Jones, David S., eds. (2010). What's the Use of Race?: Modern Governance and the Biology of Difference. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-51424-8. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |laydate= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help) This book is cited in the Wikipedia article, but the citations look like they are next to article text that has been altered by other editors (who weren't looking at the sources) after the citations were put in the article. It's very important to check cited passages of this article, which has been very controversial and subject to many sock-puppet edits, to see if the cited sources actually support the article text as it now is. I have the full text of this book, and I will use it and most of the other sources mentioned in this talk page section (which I also have at hand) to check the article text to see if it really matches what the cited sources say. I am sure (because I am familiar with these and other sources on the article topic) that in many cases, today, the article text is not supported by the cited sources. We have be careful about such issues by the core Wikipedia policy of verifiability. In particular, one article that makes up that book deserves a much closer look as article edits proceed here.
  • Kaufman, Jay S.; Cooper, Richard S. (2010). "Racial and Ethnic Identity in Medical Evaluations and Treatments". In Whitmarsh, Ian; Jones, David S. (eds.). What's the Use of Race?: Modern Governance and the Biology of Difference. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-51424-8.

• Larsen, Clark Spencer, ed. (22 February 2010). A Companion to Biological Anthropology. John Wiley & Sons. doi:10.1002/9781444320039. ISBN 978-1-4051-8900-2. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |laydate= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help) This book is a collection of articles by many different scholars on the genetic and biological study of human beings, ancient or modern.

• Park, Michael Alan (2010). Biological Anthropology (Sixth ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 978-0-07-814000-6. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |laydate= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help) Park's textbook (which is now available in a seventh edition published in 2012) is another standard textbook on the biological study of human beings.

• Cavalli-Sforza, Luigi Luca (September 2007). "Human Evolution and Its Relevance for Genetic Epidemiology". Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics. 8. Annual Reviews: 1–15. doi:10.1146/annurev.genom.8.080706.092403. ISBN 978-0-8243-3708-7. ISSN 1527-8204. PMID 17408354. Retrieved 23 November 2013. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |laydate= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help) This Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics article by Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, an eminent scholar of human genetics, is of first importance for updating this article.

Feel free to suggest other good sources. Any university library will have many books and articles about the topic of this Wikipedia article available. I look forward to collaboration with other editors to improve this article, especially to check absolutely every cited reference for accuracy of citation. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (Watch my talk, How I edit) 23:30, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

RFC

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Until July 27, the article had a paragraph describing the shortcomings of FST as a measure of genetic distance, but the paragraph was removed recently. The paragraph's sources were:

• Long, J.C. & Kittles, R.A. (2009). "Human genetic diversity and the nonexistence of biological races". Human Biology 81 (5/6): 777–798.
• Mountain, J.L. & Risch, N (2004). "Assessing genetic contributions to phenotypic differences among 'racial' and 'ethnic' groups". Nature Genetics 36 (11 Suppl): S48 – S53.
• Pearse, D. E., & Crandall, K. A. "Beyond FST: analysis of population genetic data for conservation". Conservation Genetics 5(5): 585–602.

The editors removing this material haven't replied to my inquiries about why it's being removed, so it hasn't been possible to resolve the disagreement on the talk page. I'm not sure what the correct protocol is in this situation, but apparently the pre-existing version of the article cannot be restored unless there's a consensus for it. Should the shortcomings of FST (as applied to human populations) be covered in this article? 192.253.251.101 (talk) 12:30, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

To answer the question, I have read more recent publications on the same topic. It happens that Long and Kittles 2009 is a very, very, very good source, but it was not well summarized in that paragraph. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 23:56, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

Can you explain why you removed all three sources? That's what I've been asking you for the past two days. 192.253.251.94 (talk) 00:33, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

I think editors who actually read rather than cherry-pick Long and Kittles 2009 and the other, newer sources (which I have at hand near my keyboard as I type this) can come up with a better paragraph about the issue, that better represents what the current sources actually say, in due time. Do you have any current sources to suggest? -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 00:46, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Can you please answer my question? If you think the Long and Kittles source can be better summarized, you're welcome to modify the paragraph to make it better. But you haven't tried to do that, you've just removed that source along with the other two. Why are you removing all three sources? 192.253.251.94 (talk) 01:10, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Weiji, your behavior here is pretty evasive. Too evasive, given how contentious and controversial the subject matter is, all edits and the rationale behind them should be made transparent to all editors, if only to avoid unnecessary edit wars and flaming. The information in the paragraph vis-a-vis FST was not worth being removed in my opinion, so why has it been? I'm not challenging the removal as it were, just the rationale behind it, or rather, pointing out that there isn't a rationale at all, it would seem. Wajajad (talk) 02:27, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Responding to the RFC. Looking back through the edit history, the only reason given for the removal of the paragraph appears to be that, while it's not inaccurate, there might be better/more recent sources for it. Which is certainly grounds for improving the paragraph, but isn't a valid reason for removing it, absent any existing consensus on this Talk page. The sources provided look reliable enough, but if they can be improved on, then great - do that, but don't delete in the meantime. Now, it might be the case that the issues mentioned in the paragraph have since been shown to be wholly wrong, and now regarded as no more than a minority fringe belief given undue prominence in the article, but I haven't seen any evidence to that effect. Until and unless that comes, I'd be inclined to restore and improve, rather than delete. Anaxial (talk) 06:25, 31 July 2015 (UTC

The most recent person to remove the paragraph apparently thinks that I'm a sock puppet, so now the article has been locked so that only registered users can edit it. If you agree the material shouldn't be removed, would you be willing to restore it (and improve it, if it needs to be improved)? Now that I can no longer edit the article, the only way it will be restored is if one of the people commenting from the RFC takes the initiative to restore it. 192.253.251.33 (talk) 06:48, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

I've reverted the removals. I think it'd be much better that instead of removing it like this, there ought to be some manner of consensus amongst the editors. Preferably while an improvement to the paragraph is being worked out, the paragraph itself can be allowed to stay instead of removed without explanation.Wajajad (talk) 20:30, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

It's been removed again, this time by Volunteer Marek. I've reverted it, and would prefer the matter to be discussed here before the same action is taken again.Wajajad (talk) 08:44, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

With you, me and User:Anaxial all arguing the paragraph should be included, and WeijiBaikeBianji not offering a specific rationale for removing it, I think on this talk page there is now a consensus to include it. Until that consensus changes, it shouldn't be removed anymore. 192.253.251.38 (talk) 11:34, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

You are mistaken. There is no such consensus. By contrast, please offer a positive rationale based on citation of current, secondary sources for that paragraph reading as it does in the context of the article. I don't think any of you can, because the paragraph misrepresents the sources in the usual way of so many past edits to this article. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 12:49, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Can you please stop evading the question? I've asked you at least four times why you and the others are removing all three of these sources, and every time you've either ignored me or changed the subject. Now you're trying to turn it around and say I have to come up with a rationale for adding them back, even though the paragraph had been in the article for years, and you still haven't explained specifically what you think is wrong with it. As Anaxial and I both said before, if you think these sources can be better summarized or there are better sources available, you're welcome to rewrite the paragraph to make it better. If you could do that, none of us would be objecting. Why can't you do that? 192.253.251.101 (talk) 13:20, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Go away sock. — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 14:24, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Weiji, in your reverts you claim these are all primary sources. Mountain & Risch is not a primary source. It is a review of existing scientific research published within a prestigious scientific journal and thus a secondary source as defined in WP:MEDRS. Unless there are more recent reviews of similar caliber clearly refuting the claims about F_ST made in the review, then I don't think it should be excluded. Really, it shouldn't be excluded even then, but simply have the refutation posted after it since even refuted research is of value in this article provided it is noted as refuted. Should there be no secondary source of similar quality clearly refuting it, then it is even more important that it not be excluded.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 17:52, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

How to discuss edits on controversial pages. I edited (by deleting) a paragraph of this article, recognizing that it did not fairly summarize the cited sources, with the edit comment "We can find more up-to-date (and secondary) sources from the same authors." To date, I have not seen any editor who objected to that edit (it is hard to count editors here, because it is not clear whether the I.P. editors are distinct individuals or not) propose any newer or more on-topic sources on this talk page, even though this is an active area of research and teaching with more up-to-date sources, and indeed I have not even seen any editor here who objected to the edit refer to the specific content of any of those three cited sources. Let me begin here by citing those sources in full, with links that may lead many of you to the full text of the articles (which I have obtained and checked).

• Pearse, Devon E.; Crandall, Keith A. "Beyond F_ST: analysis of population genetic data for conservation". Conservation Genetics. 5 (5): 585–602. doi:10.1007/s10592-003-1863-4. ISSN 1566-0621. Retrieved 5 August 2015. The Pearse and Crandall journal article from 2004 is, as its title makes clear, mostly about conservation biology, and it doesn't refer in article text to the topic of this Wikipedia article (race and genetics) at all. It is a good article current to 2004 about how F_ST statistics from field studies have been used by conservationists to guide efforts to protect wild animals and plants. Conservation of the population is not a current issue in human genetics. Amazingly, there have been more recent articles about human genetics published as chapters in books about biodiversity and conservation biology, and I will cite one below. The full text of Pearse and Crandall's abstract for their article says,

Both the ability to generate DNA data and the variety of analytical methods for conservation genetics are expanding at an ever-increasing pace. Analytical approaches are now possible that were unthinkable even five years ago due to limitations in computational power or the availability of DNA data, and this has vastly expanded the accuracy and types of information that may be gained from population genetic data. Here we provide a guide to recently developed methods for population genetic analysis, including identification of population structure, quantification of gene flow, and inference of demographic history. We cover both allele-frequency and sequence-based approaches, with a special focus on methods relevant to conservation genetic applications. Although classical population genetic approaches such as F_ST (and its derivatives) have carried the field thus far, newer, more powerful, methods can infer much more from the data, rely on fewer assumptions, and are appropriate for conservation genetic management when precise estimates are needed.

• Mountain, Joanna L; Risch, Neil (2004). "Assessing genetic contributions to phenotypic differences among 'racial' and 'ethnic' groups". Nature Genetics. 36 (11s): S48–S53. doi:10.1038/ng1456. ISSN 1061-4036. PMID 15508003. Retrieved 5 August 2015. The Mountain and Risch article is an article I have known about for a long time, and I accessed it online again today to confirm that it is easy to find online. Both authors have written other writings about the topic of this Wikipedia article since their 2004 paper was published. I thought the Wikipedia article paragraph that I edited put undue weight on just one aspect of the author's conclusions. If all of us read the article and the subsequent literature (some of which I will cite below), we can discuss this cordially and come up with a better article here on Wikipedia. The full text of Mountain's and Risch's abstract for their article says,

Descriptions of human genetic variation given thirty years ago have held up well, considering the substantial accrual of DNA sequence data in the interim. Most importantly, estimates of between-group genetic variation have remained relatively low. Despite the low average level of between-group variation, clusters recently inferred from multilocus genetic data coincide closely with groups defined by self-identified race or continental ancestry. This correspondence implies that genetic factors might contribute to unexplained between-group phenotypic variation. Current understanding of the contribution of genes to variation in most complex traits is limited, however. Under these circumstances, assumptions about genetic contributions to group differences are unfounded. In the absence of detailed understanding, 'racial' and 'ethnic' categories will remain useful in biomedical research. Further, we suggest approaches and guidelines for assessing the contribution of genetic factors to between-group phenotypic differences, including studies of candidate genes and analyses of recently admixed populations.

• Long, Jeffrey C. (2009). "Update to Long and Kittles's "Human Genetic Diversity and the Nonexistence of Biological Races" (2003): Fixation on an Index". Human Biology. 81 (5–6): 799–803. doi:10.3378/027.081.0622. ISSN 0018-7143. Retrieved 27 July 2015 – via Project MUSE. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |subscription= ignored (|url-access= suggested) (help) The Long 2009 update to the Long and Kittles 2003 paper of course squarely addresses the article topic of this Wikipedia article with its title, "Human Genetic Diversity and the Nonexistence of Biological Races." I was aware of this paper too before rereading this Wikipedia article and beginning a process of editing. There are still newer publications that cite Long 2009, some of which I will cite below. The short text of the Long 2009 update to the original Long and Kittles 2003 paper does not include an abstract, but its summary about the topic of this Wikipedia article says,

F_ST and Race Richard Lewontin's dismissal of race may not have led to the wide popularity of F_ST in population biology, but it did galvanize anthropology. Lewontin confronted race by trying to show that classical racial groupings accounted for too little of the total diversity to be of any value. In retrospect, it is odd that Lewontin felt that 15% of variation among groups is small and even odder that others have concurred. Sewall Wright, the inventor of F_ST, believed the opposite. To Wright, F_ST = 0.05 or even less indicates considerable differences, and F_ST = 0.15 reflects moderately great differences (Wright 1951, 1978). Low values of F_ST reflect large gene frequency differences in replicate populations (Figure 2). In other words, these seemingly small values of F_ST permit allele frequencies to drift widely among populations. Unfortunately, Lewontin did not contest the larger issue, which is whether or not races are a good way to portray the pattern of gene frequency differences between populations. [diagrams omitted--you can look them up--begin new paragraph of quoted text] Now, with more genetic data and more populations sampled, we are able to revisit the race problem with greater accuracy. Recently, my colleagues and I have tested the usefulness of race as a way to describe genetic differences among populations by contrasting the results of racial classification with those from generalized hierarchical models (Long et al. 2009). Race fails! Figure 3 diagrams the contrast for a data set consisting of complete DNA sequences for 64 autosomal loci (38,000 bp total). Four resequenced individuals represent each population. A summary of the major problems with using race are as follows. First, imposing the classically defined race structure on populations causes us to estimate less diversity for the species as a whole than does allowing all populations to link back to a common base population in an unrestricted hierarchy. Second, using the race pattern causes us to estimate excess diversity within non-sub-Saharan African populations, but it estimates a deficit of diversity within sub-Saharan African populations. Third, the supposition of races forces all continental populations to diverge equally from a single ancestral node, whereas an unrestricted hierarchy places the basal split within Africa. Fourth, in the classical race framework, European and Asian populations diverge from African populations independently, but the unrestricted hierarchy shows that European and East Asian populations link together before either links to sub-Saharan Africans.

I'll give all of you time to read and digest those older sources before posting links to newer sources, which in some cases specifically comment on some of these earlier papers. I invite Wikipedians in general who are watching this talk page to read the various sources cited by this article, and to search for newer reliable secondary sources that site and comment on those, while reading and rereading the Wikipedia article to which this talk page is attached. I think there has been some drift from what the sources say as the article has been editing over the years, apparently often by editors who didn't have sources at hand as they edited the article (and often by I.P. editors whenever this article isn't semiprotected). Let's check the sources carefully, and let's find newer and better sources in general for this article, which is on an active topic of current research that is blessed by many good current review articles and textbook and handbook chapters. Let's check what the article says and fix it together collaboratively. I look forward to the comments of other editors here, and I am already gathering additional sources to add to this talk page section to bring the previous sources up to date, as implied by my earlier edit summary. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 18:00, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

I hope you have all had time to read the full text of the sources originally cited in the paragraph under discussion here. I mentioned in my original edit comment that there are newer sources on the same issue, and I will list some of those here, in reverse chronological order (newest sources first). I'm sure there are some other newer sources that fit the Wikipedia content guideline on reliable sources for medical articles, and I would be glad to hear your suggestions of those. Long and Kittles have each written several newer primary research articles (and I think a few articles that can fairly be characterized as review articles) in which they reemphasize their point that biology and genetics do not support "race" categories as those are used in government-funded research.

• Fairbanks, Daniel J. (7 April 2015). Everyone Is African: How Science Explodes the Myth of Race. Prometheus Books. ISBN 978-1-63388-019-1. Retrieved 20 July 2015. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |laydate= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help) This book-length discussion of current genetics research by a human genetics researcher covers all the subtopics of this Wikipedia article in detail and with great readability. This book is widely available in public libraries and academic libraries and cites many useful secondary sources that can be used directly to improve many articles on Wikipedia. There are specific subtopics mentioned in this book (not just the subtopic of the paragraph we are discussing here) that show a big mismatch between the current state of this Wikipedia article and the current professional literature on human genetics. I hope several editors will give this book and its sources a careful look as we work together to improve this article.
• Barbujani, Guido (2015). "Race: Genetic Aspects". In Wright, James D. (ed.). International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second ed.). Elsevier. pp. 825–832. doi:10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.82004-8. ISBN 978-0-08-097087-5. Retrieved 10 April 2015. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Unknown parameter |laydate= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysource= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help) – via ScienceDirect (Subscription may be required or content may be available in libraries.) This very recent encyclopedia article by geneticist Guido Barbujani is, of course, about the same topic as this Wikipedia article. Barbujani cites the previous literature, including the article by Risch cited in the paragraph under discussion, and discusses the use of F_ST statistics in analyzing human genetic diversity. The article is a good survey of the current research literature and of which issues have achieved scientific consensus and which are still subject to disagreement. This encyclopedia article leads to secondary sources that will be good for checking this entire Wikipedia article, not just the one paragraph discussed in this talk page section.
• Pickrell, Joseph K.; Reich, David (September 2014). "Toward a new history and geography of human genes informed by ancient DNA". Trends in Genetics. 30 (9): 377–389. doi:10.1016/j.tig.2014.07.007. PMC 4163019. PMID 25168683. Retrieved 16 September 2014. – via ScienceDirect (Subscription may be required or content may be available in libraries.) This featured review article by human geneticists is one of two recent review articles to show from ancient DNA evidence that there has been considerable admixture of human populations across continents since the movement of Homo sapiens out of Africa. The full text of the authors' abstract says,

Genetic information contains a record of the history of our species, and technological advances have transformed our ability to access this record. Many studies have used genome-wide data from populations today to learn about the peopling of the globe and subsequent adaptation to local conditions. Implicit in this research is the assumption that the geographic locations of people today are informative about the geographic locations of their ancestors in the distant past. However, it is now clear that long-range migration, admixture, and population replacement subsequent to the initial out-of-Africa expansion have altered the genetic structure of most of the world’s human populations. In light of this we argue that it is time to critically reevaluate current models of the peopling of the globe, as well as the importance of natural selection in determining the geographic distribution of phenotypes. We specifically highlight the transformative potential of ancient DNA. By accessing the genetic make-up of populations living at archaeologically known times and places, ancient DNA makes it possible to directly track migrations and responses to natural selection.

• Coop, Graham; Eisen, Michael; Nielsen, Rasmus; Przeworski, Molly; Rosenberg, Noah (8 August 2014). "Letter to the Editor of the New York Times Book Review (Letter from Population Geneticists)". Retrieved 25 September 2014. Rick Kittles, Jeffrey Long, Joanna Mountain, and Neil Risch (all authors cited by the section of this Wikipedia article now under discussion) joined more than 100 other human genetics researchers in writing a letter to the New York Times indicating their support for an unfavorable review of Nicholas Wade's book A Troublesome Inheritance and indicating their disagreement with the book's claims. Their letter says,

To the Editor: As scientists dedicated to studying genetic variation, we thank David Dobbs for his review of Nicholas Wade’s A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History (July 13), and for his description of Wade’s misappropriation of research from our field to support arguments about differences among human societies. As discussed by Dobbs and many others, Wade juxtaposes an incomplete and inaccurate account of our research on human genetic differences with speculation that recent natural selection has led to worldwide differences in I.Q. test results, political institutions and economic development. We reject Wade’s implication that our findings substantiate his guesswork. They do not. We are in full agreement that there is no support from the field of population genetics for Wade’s conjectures.

• Tattersall, Ian; DeSalle, Rob (1 September 2011). Race?: Debunking a Scientific Myth. Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 978-1-60344-425-5. Retrieved 17 November 2013 – via Project MUSE. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |laydate= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |subscription= ignored (|url-access= suggested) (help) This book by physical anthropologist Ian Tattersall and geneticist Rob DeSalle of the American Museum of Natural History explains the latest scientific evidence on human races. The book has detailed discussions of F_ST statistics and their interpretation (the topic of the article section I edited here recently) in several sections of the book, and cites the earlier major papers on the topic. The full text of this book is available through Project MUSE, as noted here, and this book is widely available in academic libraries. One section in the book that discusses the exact issue covered by the Wikipedia article section we are discussing here says,

The structures of relatedness suggested by the figures above are also interesting because they allow us to address Lewontin’s famous observation (of much greater within- population than between- population variability among humans) more succinctly and to make it clearer whether, as has been charged, this is a “fallacy” rather than a real observation. To us, clarifying this problem is very important since we consider Lewontin’s original observation, and the failure to reject it experimentally in the last four decades, as one of the strongest arguments against the biological existence of “race.” For it turns out that Lewontin’s observation is a fallacy only if one has a previously defined concept of “difference” between genomes. [new paragraph] The generally accepted way of defining populations is to use a “genetic distance” metric, as in figure 6. However, as Witherspoon and colleagues argue, and the figure shows, a great deal of genetic similarity between individuals belonging to different clusters is obscured by this approach (compare the resolution of the tree on the left with the lack of resolution in the one on the right). This happens because when you use “multi- locus” clustering methods like those used to create the figure, the clusters are based on population- level similarity and not on individual similarity. The method of clustering then leads to the classification of individuals on the basis of their similarity to the typical gene allelic makeup for any of the populations being examined. Lewontin made his statement about using any single randomly chosen locus, and in this sense his statement is not a fallacy. As Witherspoon and colleagues point out, “The fact that, given enough genetic data, individuals can be correctly assigned to their populations of origin is compatible with the observation that most human genetic variation is found within populations, not between them. It is also compatible with our finding that, even when the most distinct populations are considered and hundreds of loci are used, individuals are frequently more similar to members of other populations than to members of their own population.” Lewontin’s original statement thus remains the single most relevant observation ever made about human populations at the genetic level, and it dramatically underlines the lack of biological underpinnings for the concept of race. (pages 141–142)

• Barbujani, Guido; Colonna, Vincenza (15 September 2011). "Chapter 6: Genetic Basis of Human Biodiversity: An Update". In Zachos, Frank E.; Habel, Jan Christian (eds.). Biodiversity Hotspots: Distribution and Protection of Conservation Priority Areas. Springer. pp. 97–119. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-20992-5_6. ISBN 978-3-642-20992-5. Retrieved 23 November 2013. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |laydate= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysource= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help) As promised earlier, I am following up on the Pearse-Crandall paper on conservation biology from 2004 with a more recent handbook chapter on biodiversity specifically focused on Homo sapiens by geneticists Guido Barbujani and Vincenz Colonna. The editors who selected this chapter for wide-ranging professional handbook on all aspects of biodiversity included information about human beings to put animal conservation in biological context. The authors' abstract of their book chapter says,

The massive efforts to study the human genome in detail have produced extraordinary amounts of genetic data. Although we still fail to understand the molecular bases of most complex traits, including many common diseases, we now have a clearer idea of the degree of genetic resemblance between humans and other primate species. We also know that humans are genetically very close to each other, indeed more than any other primates, that most of our genetic diversity is accounted for by individual differences within populations, and that only a small fraction of the species’ genetic variance falls between populations and geographic groups thereof.

• Ramachandran, Sohini; Tang, Hua; Gutenkunst, Ryan N.; Bustamante, Carlos D. (2010). "Chapter 20: Genetics and Genomics of Human Population Structure". In Speicher, Michael R.; Antonarakis, Stylianos E.; Motulsky, Arno G. (eds.). Vogel and Motulsky's Human Genetics: Problems and Approaches (PDF). Heidelberg: Springer Scientific. pp. 589–615. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-37654-5. ISBN 978-3-540-37653-8. Retrieved 29 October 2013. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |laydate= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help) This textbook chapter by several well known genetics researchers from an authoritative textbook brings up to date to 2010 the scientific findings on human genetic diversity. The full text of this chapter is available online, courtesy of one of the co-authors. A section of the chapter that discusses the subtopic of this Wikipedia article's recently edited section says,

Most studies of human population genetics begin by citing a seminal 1972 paper by Richard Lewontin bearing the title of this subsection [29]. Given the central role this work has played in our field, we will begin by discussing it briefly and return to its conclusions throughout the chapter. In this paper, Lewontin summarized patterns of variation across 17 polymorphic human loci (including classical blood groups such as ABO and M/N as well as enzymes which exhibit electrophoretic variation) genotyped in individuals across classically defined 'races' (Caucasian, African, Mongoloid, South Asian Aborigines, Amerinds, Oceanians, Australian Aborigines [29] ). A key conclusion of the paper is that 85.4% of the total genetic variation observed occurred within each group. That is, he reported that the vast majority of genetic differences are found within populations rather than between them. In this paper and his book The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change [30], Lewontin concluded that genetic variation, therefore, provided no basis for human racial classifications. ... His finding has been reproduced in study after study up through the present: two random individuals from any one group (which could be a continent or even a local population) are almost as different as any two random individuals from the entire world (see proportion of variation within populations in Table 20.1 and [20]).

• Koenig, Barbara A.; Lee, Sandra Soo-jin; Richardson, Sarah S., eds. (2008). Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age. New Brunswick (NJ): Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-4324-6. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |laydate= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help) This book includes a chapter by Richard Lewontin and Marcus Feldman updating the views of Lewontin discussed in the Wikipedia article section under discussion. I am astounded that this book, which is widely available in academic libraries and is the definitive source for Lewontin's more recent views, has not yet been used as a source for this Wikipedia article. The authors say,

Finally, it must be borne in mind that the taxonomic problem cannot be inverted. That is, while clustering methods are capable of assigning an individual to a geographic population with a high degree of certainty, given that individual's genotype, it is not possible to predict accurately the genotype of an individual given his or her geographical origin. Thus, knowing an individual's ancestry only slightly improves the ability to predict his or her genotype. The more polymorphic the markers, the more difficult this is. (page 93)

• Lee, Sandra; Mountain, Joanna; Koenig, Barbara; Altman, Russ; Brown, Melissa; Camarillo, Albert; Cavalli-Sforza, Luca; Cho, Mildred; Eberhardt, Jennifer; Feldman, Marcus; Ford, Richard; Greely, Henry; King, Roy; Markus, Hazel; Satz, Debra; Snipp, Matthew; Steele, Claude; Underhill, Peter (2008). "The ethics of characterizing difference: guiding principles on using racial categories in human genetics" (PDF). Genome Biology. 9 (7): 404. doi:10.1186/gb-2008-9-7-404. ISSN 1465-6906. PMC 2530857. Archived from the original on 2008. Retrieved 21 September 2014. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |archivedate= (help); Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |displayauthors= ignored (|display-authors= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link) Joanna Mountain (a researcher cited earlier in this Wikipedia article) joined seventeen other human genetics researchers in issuing a joint statement in the journal Genome Biology cautioning fellow researchers and other writers on the topic about how to write about human population groups in light of current scientific findings. Their joint statement says, in part,

We recognize that racial and ethnic categories are created and maintained within sociopolitical contexts and have shifted in meaning over time Human genetic variation within continents is, for the most part, geographically continuous and clinal, particularly in regions of the world that have not received many immigrants in recent centuries [18]. Genetic data cannot reveal an individual’s full geographic ancestry precisely, although emerging research has been used to identify geographic ancestry at the continental and subcontinental levels [3,19]. Genetic clusters, however, are far from being equivalent to sociopolitical racial or ethnic categories. (page 404.2)

Enjoy your reading. Let's calmly collaborate to bring this article up-to-date with current sources, as I suggested in my first edit comment when editing the paragraph under discussion. In another talk page section, I'll suggest some new sources more relevant to other sections of this Wikipedia article (or relevant to the article as a whole) besides those mentioned here about the views of the previously cited researchers and the latest findings about genetic diversity between and among human populations. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (Watch my talk, How I edit) 22:39, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

While those sources all seem very useful for the article overall, I am not seeing any real response to the topic of this discussion. The only part that seems relevant here is the article by Guido, but you haven't pointed out what they said about the Risch article. Does it actually discuss what Mountain and Risch said about F_ST or does it merely discuss the article in some way and also talk about F_ST at some point?--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 17:15, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

New AE request involving editors here

See WP:AE#WeijiBaikeBianji brought by Wajajad. It's actually brought against 4 editors, including TheRedPenOfDoom, ArtifexMayhem and Volunteer Marek. Doug Weller (talk) 10:39, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

yes. It seems like the discussion here evaded the issue and went into content argumentation. The discussion really needs to surround the action of editing-by-deleting(as opposed to discussing and improving...) the content in question. Like: what are the guidelines that are applicable to deleting a paragraph "because it and its sources could be better/updated". When is it acceptable to delete otherwise acceptable and accurate content because it could be improved but not replace it with the improved version? the editor clearly does not address or justify the action of deleting the content. Instead they seem bent on providing more information and sources that might go toward some editor creating an improved paragraph on the subject, but not maintaining the existing content or even bothering to take the initiative to actually produce the imaginary better version of the content. 71.239.89.177 (talk) 11:00, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Request for Improved context/Subject of this page

Is this page about human evolutionary genetics of ethnic groups? If so, the matters of "race" seem to be strongly over-represented on the page and should be fixed. My very best wishes (talk) 01:45, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Because the connection between nearly all the disciplines of science and the concept of race including an ever diminishing pseudo formal relationships with genetics, are controversial and tenuous at best It seems to me the article could use a historic section that accounts and distinguishes the concept of "race" from scientific movements. I say this because the term and concept was not founded by scientific movements but rather commercial ones. There is a large enough culture of misconception toward the authoritative legitimacy of the concepts of race and meanwhile a similar level of cultural reliance on the networks and movements of science to warrant providing a historic context for the term race as it relates to science, and to make the distinctions between the term/ideas of "race" and scientifically acknowledged fields. I'm not suggesting that scientist have not examined the validity of the concept but its also well known and discussed that the term and even its social political influence predates any such interest from scientific practitioners and communities anywhere. I did find a variety of articles on the context I'm suggesting available on the web, but I'm in no position to vet them as sources and create such a topic at this time. SO I suppose its a good time to vet the suggestion as a potential improvement of the article. Alternatively since it seems primarily a topic on race as it relates o the specific discipline of genetics, the scope of the distinguishing context could best be limited to the historic relevance to genetics and evolution. Many might see it as an unnecessary section given that the article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_race_concepts does clarify the history of the term and leaves no room for doubt the the term was NOT spawned through scientific research or discourse. I would disagree with that conclusion because race as a concept is widely believed to be taken for granted as an authoritative reality. It is easy for me to imagine that typical persons and future readers having little or no extensive historical knowledge of the subjects and/or not having yet accessed the above article could be left believing that the concept of race may have had some origin in early scientific classification systems, since it is not addressed/referenced as a distinct concept with origins separate from anthropology,genetics/biology, or any other acknowledged scientific discipline. The section could/should however note any related scientific disciplines that have studied or been inspired by the concept of race and how they have done so. Meanwhile it should be noted in this article that concept of "race" did not even begin as a PSEUDOSCIENCE, but as a mercantile social convention. Its my understanding that even the embarrassing eugenics movement that led to radicalization of the race concept to become a widespread and influential pseudo-scientific convention was not founded at all by any scientist but rather the brother of one.SoNetMedia's Alfred O. Mega (talk) 12:12, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Any improvement in this direction would be welcome. In the end it might result in a move, with "Race and genetics" being a redirect to a historical section. Even in the 1980s, anthro. students were already being taught that "race" is a social construct, so it's weird that 30-odd years later, after this view has solidified across multiple disciplines, that WP's coverage of both ethnicity and human genetics is still largely dominated by racialist thinking, which is a socio-political topic. This is, not to put too fine a point on it, doing a disservice not just to our direct readers and to science, but to the human race, in an era of increased white-nationalist populism and "I saw it on teh interwebs so it must be true" reactionary pseudo-thinking. One side matter to address is cleanup of all the relevant bios and other small articles (e.g. on old hypotheses, on purported races, etc.). I keep running into references to philosophers of the 18th century and their crackpot ideas about "the fairest and most perfect of races" kind of stuff as "early science", and "scientific theories of early anthropology", and so forth. It's practically propaganda. It's even coming from two different directions: 1) attempts to legitimize current racism as long-pedigreed "science", and 2) attempts to paint modern social-scientific anthropology and its even more hard-science offshoots as "fruit of the poison tree" of Renaissance to Early Modern proto-anthropology and then eugenics. Both the far right and the far left are playing this game from different angles and with different agendas, and our content is suffering twice over for it.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:24, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

A related RM and RfD

FYI

 – Pointers to relevant discussions elsewhere.

Please see:

• Talk:Race and crime#Requested move 6 September 2017
• Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2017 September 6#Racial differences in crime

 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:25, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

How not to edit the lead

In this diff, an IP editor made the following change:

Because the patterns of variation of human genetic traits are can be both abrupt and clinal, with a gradual change in trait frequency between population clusters, it is possible to statistically correlate clusters of physical traits with individual geographic ancestry.

As a result, we've had a hybrid sentence that contains a somewhat useful opening clause linked with a conclusion that has nothing to do with it. Please don't change half of a sentence you don't fully understand. I'll be fixing it today.--Carwil (talk) 12:54, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

But stuff like "Patterns of variation of human genetic traits are generally clinal, with more abrupt shifts at places where steady gene flow is interrupted" has to have all the relevant technical terms linked to explanatory articles, or it's meaningless gibberish to any reader who doesn't have a degree in the field.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:27, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Lead changes.

An IP editor objects to the bolded part of the given paragraph: Genetic analysis enables scientists to estimate the geographic ancestry of a person by using ancestry-informative markers, and by inference the probable racial category into which they will be classified in a given society. In that way there is a distinct statistical correlation between gene frequencies and racial categories. However, because all populations are genetically diverse, and because there is a complex relation between ancestry, genetic makeup and phenotype, and because racial categories are based on subjective evaluations of the traits, there are no specific genes that can be used to determine a person's race. Their objection is based on two sources further down that describe the accuracy of genetic analysis. However, genetic analysis is already covered in the preceding sentence; and it doesn't rely on a specific gene. The sentence in question summarizes the 'genetic-distance increase' section and the first paragraph of the 'self-identification' section. In the context of the preceding paragraph, it's obviously not asserting that you are unable to determine someone's geographic ancestry from their genes, which is what the referenced citations show you can accomplish. --Aquillion (talk) 20:37, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

I am new to editing Wikipedia, so please point out any errors I make in terms of etiquette during this process. I would be statisfied if "specific genes" were replaced with "a specific gene" in the bolded sentence. Both of the studies cited involve analyzing a set of specific genes---a set of 326 genetic markers in the first study and a set of 650,000 genetic markers in the second---to determine self-identified race. This contradicts the claim that "specific genes" cannot be used to determine race. However, it does not contradict the claim that "a specific gene" cannot be used to determine race.

To be clear, a Genetic marker is "a gene or DNA sequence," and I do not believe that is the topic of dispute. ---IP editor — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:240:8100:D8B2:3602:86FF:FE40:6AFA (talk) 01:29, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

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Rosenberg 2002 cited for adverse drug reactions…

Currently Rosenberg et al 2002 is the only citation accompanying this claim: "Information about a person's population of origin may aid in diagnosis, and adverse drug responses may vary by group." Yet the claim appears essentially as a speculative discussion point in a paper about genetically inactive microsatellite markers, and not about medicine at all. I've just added a cited claim that population origin information can inhibit diagnosis of people whose genotypes are rarer within their population group. Will remove this claim in a few days unless a better source emerges.--Carwil (talk) 18:59, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

LSE project

We are intending to improve this page as part of the LSE project, Genes, Brains and Society, during February and March 2019. J.birch2 (talk) 20:43, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

Some of the recent edits are from editors on this project. However, in my opinion, these recent edits are not ready and have been moved out of the sandbox page prematurely. I will give the editors a bit of time to sort them out before acting on this. J.birch2 (talk) 20:43, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

I'm moving some of the unfinished new material to the Talk page, below, for the time being.J.birch2 (talk) 13:46, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Undid recent tagbomb

I understand this article is especially likely to attract some dubious claims but recent good faith edits weren't helpful. Generally, a cn at the end of a paragraph means the whole paragraph is sus. This helps readability.

I scrapped a bunch of cn tags and changed Genetic Variation's template to the more appropriate one. I kept all the dates their original which might mean Genetic Variation deserves deletion if it's really been sitting there since 2013; I know nothing about this subject so I'm not sure how necessary citations are for that paragraph. I'll leave that decision to the more knowledgeable. Cheers! --182.239.191.250 (talk) 12:55, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

Citations would be difficult to find for the most contentious assertions, this essay is the citation when they are repeated elsewhere (other articles, facebook, reddit, infowars and so on). — cygnis insignis 07:48, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

We do need to add some sort of citations to the genetic variation section. Saying "just read this other article" is not sufficient - citations must be placed on the page where they're used. If it's cited there, we can (and should) copy over the necessary citations to here. --Aquillion (talk) 18:55, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

Structure

It would be nice if this excellent article had a section on conclusions or the current state of research. The sections on research methods do discuss these but in an unstructured manner or in a manner consistent with the individual discussions of methodology. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dena.walemy (talk • contribs) 16:05, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

Genetic-distance increase

Genetic distances generally increase continually with geographic distance, which makes a dividing line arbitrary.

This paper from HUGO finds clusters explain patterns of variation better than clines.

Overall about 16.2% of the variation in the genetic distances (FST) could be attributed to pre-historical divergence alone, whereas only 5.2% of the variation in genetic distances could be attributed to IBD. In other words, spatial patterns in genetic distances are much better explained by differences between groups of populations than by similarity among adjacent local populations within these groups.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/40685652_Mapping_Human_Genetic_Diversity_in_Asia Redundant Farmhand (talk) 09:03, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

Genuine question m. Is there a reason why ancient papers on genetics are used in this wiki entry? Most papers are from the dawn of time why?

Questioning "genetically identical"

humans are NOT 99.9% genetically identical. That was the first finding of Venter's Human Genome Project in 2001. He teste again 3 years later and foud it was "7x as great" and as little as 99% the same. Wikpedia's other article on 'Human Genetic Variation' therefore has it much more correct as an "average of 99.5%" similar. No excuse for the lack of knowledge that exists on this page. This is THEED most common boner in human genetic articles. (comment by 2601:581:4300:5b20:e80d:db79:3858:9fa8 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) added to article instead of talk page; removed from article and moved to talk page) Schazjmd (talk) 14:03, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Archaic admixture and differences to racial groups and DNA

I recently added some text relating to the difference in DNA pertaining to racial groups - relating to archaic admixture. As it has been removed, I am opening up a talk section to discuss it.The sources clearly discuss racial groupings, referring to Europeans, Africans, and Asians (and Melanesians within the Asian groupings)....and their difference in DNA that resulted from humans interbreeding with non homo sapiens hominids in the period when they all existed. Asian and Europeans have Neanderthal DNA and Africans do not (or have a lot less), while Denisovan DNA is present in Asian people, but not Europeans or Africans. The research states that some Melanesians have up to 6% Denisovan DNA.

It is relevant to the article, but was removed. This is relatively recent research (last 10 or twenty years), but it seems to be accepted generally, and Wikipedia has substantive articles on it including archaic admixture, Interbreeding between archaic and modern humans and Denisovan. This is clearly relevant to this article, it's not particularly controversial, is supported by mainstream science and good quality RS, so I see no reason for it to be deleted from the article - thanks Deathlibrarian (talk) 11:33, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

@Deathlibrarian:. The issue is not the reliability of the sources, but rather, as explained in my summary, that the sources do not discuss archaic admixture in various populations as relating to the concept of race, nor do they state that archaic admixture is what defines the various population historically classed as races. That is what makes the additions seem to be WP:OR. (Also, most inter-population genetic variation derives from local adaptations/mutations rather than simply archaic admixture, which also makes the addition a bit misleading). Skllagyook (talk) 12:16, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for getting back to me Skllagyook, but I'm not quite sure how you can say the RS doesn't discuss racial groups, when as far as I can see, that is central to the article content. "Like all present-day people whose ancestry isn’t solely African, these early Eurasians carried Neanderthal DNA" - or "non-Africans can have between 1.5 to 2.1 per cent of their genome that originated from Neanderthal ancestry" isn't this discussion of racial groups? Deathlibrarian (talk) 12:20, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

These sources do not talk about racial groupings. This is a creative misreading of their content based on the erroneous assumption that the concept of "populations" in modern human genetics can be equated with the generally abandoned concept of human "races" in an essentialist biological sense. This is WP:OR and also WP:PROFRINGE. –Austronesier (talk) 12:24, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

I don't understand - the articles clearly do talk about racial groups - how can you say the terms "Africans", "Europeans" and "Asians" in the context of ancient populations aren't racial groupings? The articles state clearly these different racial groupings have differing DNA. The articles discuss the populations of Eurasia (ie the racial groups tied geographically to the region) interbreeding with Neanderthals. Neanderthals were not in present in Africa, therefore, Africans (as a racial group) have inherited no (or very little) Neanderthal DNA. Similarly, Denisovans were not present in Europe or Africa, so they are not present in the DNA of Europeans or Africans. This all seems pretty obvious, and I am at a loss as to why anyone would think this is WP:fringe.Deathlibrarian (talk) 12:42, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Please present us one citation from one of these sources which explicitly says that "Africans", "Europeans" and "Asians" are meant to be understood as "racial groups". Do you find any mention of the abandoned term "race"? The ingression of Neanderthal/Denisovan DNA in modern OOA populations is good science, but the presentation of these facts in a racial framework is WP:PROFRINGE, as it suggests that biological human races are a meaningful category in modern anthropology. But they aren't.

If you personally choose to read "Asians" etc. to refer to "racial groups", that's ok as being your own interpretation, but not acceptable when citing these sources for building encyclopedic content. An analogy: there are natural phenomena that still defy a scientific explanation. Religious people will be inclined to considers these phenomena miracles or "supranatural". Such beliefs are legitimate as personal choice; but in WP, we will refer to them as currently unexplained natural phenomena, not as miracles. –Austronesier (talk) 13:03, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Can you explain to me why "Asians" "Africans" or Europeans.... wouldn't be referring to them as racial groups? Because in this context, it's discussing them intermingling with Neanderthals 50,000 years ago, when the populations were homogenous (so not a national grouping, a racial grouping). Let me explain it to you with my analogy. I'm a white European guy, so my racial grouping is European... so I have, according go these articles, some Neanderthal DNA. Because my ancestors interbred with Neanderthals in Europe some 50,000 years ago. Say, I go out with a girl from Kenya, she is (black) African by racial grouping. According to these articles, she has no(or little) Neanderthal DNA, because historically, there were no Neanderthals ever present in Africa.So we have two different racial groups, one with Neanderthal DNA, one without. Correct? Deathlibrarian (talk) 14:09, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Correct within your chosen framework of racial groupings. But racial groupings are just a crude and arbitrary folk taxonomy based on visible phenotype without inherent scientific merit. This folk taxonomy is still very much alive for many people (especially in countries that have long history of segregational practice) and still very relevant to understand the consequences of the persistent application of this folk taxonomy in social interaction. But it is totally irrelevant for the discussion of the genetic history of humans post-OOA. Scientists who work in this field certainly do not contexualize their findings within that obsolete framework, which is why I have asked for citations from the sources discussed here that actually talk about "race". To be fair, rhetorically; obviously, there is no word about "race" to be found there. –Austronesier (talk) 14:44, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure what standard you are applying here, I also don't know what "arbitrary folk taxonomy" or "humans post-OOA" are but by a standard dictionary definition, and every day usage, the average person would understand "Asians" "Africans" or "Europeans" (in the context of comparing them to each other, and interacting with neanderthals 50k years ago) as racial groups...and in the sense they are used in the articles.I think we may have debated this enough here, perhaps we should see if others have input, or otherwise leave it a while and seek outside input/RFC.Deathlibrarian (talk) 15:55, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

@Deathlibrarian:I concur with the points made by User:Austronesier here. I should also point out that, according to the genetic research, there was a single admixture event with Neanderthals in the Middke East soon after the OOA migration that affected the common ancestors of all non-Africans (Europeans, East Asians, Native Americans, Australian Aboriginals, Melanesians, etc.). They did not each intermix with Neanderthaks separately (in a way that made a surviving genetic impact). (Not to mention that some groups of southeast Asian "Negritos" have Denisovan admixture while others do not.) This further illustrates that the presence of archaic DNA does not define or particularly correspond to "races" as traditionally understood. Skllagyook (talk) 16:37, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

@Deathlibrarian: I agree that we each have made our points clear, so let's wait for more input here from other editors before actively seeking wider community input by means of an RfC or going to one the relevant WikiProjects or Noticeboards. My last comment on the subject for the moment is based on the Arbitration ruling in the header of this talk page:

Correct use of sources: [...] All interpretive claims, analyses, or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary source, rather than to original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors.

My contention is that your interpretation of the geography-based terms "Asians", "Africans" or "Europeans" as "racial groupings" is an interpretative claim and thus WP:OR since there is no direct mention of "race" and "racial groupings" in the sources; I understand that you argue that this is not an interpretation, but just applying a "standard dictionary definition", and therefore not WP:OR.

PS: what I meant by "arbitrary folk taxonomy": 1. "taxonomy": categorizing humans into racial groupings in a biological context is taxonomy; 2. "folk": this categorization is still popular in certain parts of the world, but widely rejected by modern anthropology (see Race (human categorization)); 3. "arbitrary": in spite of obvious phenotypic differences between people from different parts of the world, these differences form a continuum; any cut-off point for the sake of discrete categorization is arbitrary. –Austronesier (talk) 17:55, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

I think it would be good to come to a compromise position where this information is included, rather than it completely being blocked, as its clearly relevant (and probably of interest to the readers). Would you guys be happy about some sort of compromise about the wording? Just saves all the fuss of a RFC. Deathlibrarian (talk) 04:01, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

I'd like to suggest adding some compromise wording, for instance: "Studies indicate that different groups mentioned in the articles; that is "Asians", "Africans" or "Europeans", do have different DNA because of their ancient ancestors, ie Archaic admixture. Asian and Europeans for instance, have Neanderthal DNA and Africans do not (or have a lot less), while Denisovan DNA is present in Asian people, but not Europeans or Africans. The research states that some Melanesians have up to 6% Denisovan DNA." - I have removed the term race or racial grouping, and just used the terms used in the sources. I hope this is a good compromise, please let me know if you have an issue with it. Deathlibrarian (talk) 10:04, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

Ok, I will leave it a few days, and if no one has any issues will update with this comment as a compromise. Thanks all. Deathlibrarian (talk) 00:17, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

Your proposal doesn't seem to address the main issues raised by myself and User:Austronesier. The topic of this page is "Race and genetics", and for reasons explained above, your proposal's relevance is unclear (neither the sources you want to use, nor your proposed wording explicitly concerns the concept of "race" (which is the topic of this article). (Also, as explained in my last reply, all of the various diverse non-African groups, or so-called "races", have/share Neanderthal admixture, not only Europeans and Asians, and Denisovan ancestry can be strongly discrepanct even between groups historically defined as of the same "race", like southeast Asian "Negritos"). And again, phrasing such as "do have different dna because of their different ancestors (aside from sounding unecyclopedic) misleadingly suggests that the main genetic differentiators of modern human populations (ethni-racial and continental groups) are different kinds/amounts of archaic dna (when in fact, much of the difference/divergence, such as it is, is due to divergences/splits and regional adaptations). Skllagyook (talk) 00:46, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for responding. Trying to keep my response simple, I guess the issue here is, in everyday English usage, the terms "Asians", "Africans" or "Europeans" as mentioned in the article, would be interpreted as racial groupings. So the average person, reading those sources, would interpret them as discussing race. While we perhaps disagree on the detail, it would seem that we at least agree that the articles say that African racial groups have little/no Neanderthal DNA, Non Africans do, and some racial groups in Asia have Denisovian DNA and others don't. Would you at least agree to a compromise where a simple statement about this could be included? I'm happy to leave it at that if we could include something reflecting this at least. Deathlibrarian (talk) 02:57, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

Please re-read the earlier replies. Those groups may be understood as "racial groups" by the average person. But that is not the perspective of modern science, and the topic of this page relates to the concept of race, which your proposed sources and addition do not explicitly concern. Thus adding the proposed addition here would be WP:OR for the reasons explained previously. Differential archaic admixture in modern populations is already mentioned in several relevant articles here on Wikipedia. Skllagyook (talk) 03:06, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

From my perspective, it's obvious we fundamentally disagree here. As already mentioned above, I would suggest what may be the view of the average wikipedia editor and the average person (and using standard dictionary definitions) the sources *do* explicitly concern race groupings. So no... that is not WP:OR to interpret them in that way. The sources are mainstream and all RS, and the concept of archaic admixture is accepted and featured elsewhere in Wikipedia.In any case, thanks for your input. I just thought we may be able to come up with some compromise which would head off a RFC, but I can see at this point the discussion has been going on since mid April and not heading anywhere, it's probably best to get some other comments involved. I'm happy to set up the RFC to get more input. Cheers. Deathlibrarian (talk) 03:17, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

@Deathlibrarian: Sorry I haven't chimed in yet, but I haven't been very active here in past few days. Your compromise is a good step towards a more faithful representation of the sources (although it doesn't fully capture the complexity of Denisovan admixture). But since it does not make explicit reference to the concept of human races, it actually diminishes the relevance for inclusion in this page which is explicitly about the relation between genetics and the anthropological/sociological concept of human races.

I think it is a pity that the very interesting topic of archaic admixture is "hidden" in a specialized page that not many will come across if not specifically looking for it, so linking to it on diverse pages is in principle a good idea (as e.g. in early human migrations); but it should have a strong link to the subject of the article where this topic is intended to be included, which I can't see for this page without doing OR; this is again the crucial point of disagreement between us.

That said, what about trying to get comments in the relevant WP Project talk pages first before proceeding to an RfC? At least WT:ETHNIC is quite active (unlike WT:HGH, which looks pretty dead). Cheers! –Austronesier (talk) 06:56, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for that Austronesier - as you say, we have a fundamental disagreement, and it doesn't look like a compromise is forthcoming (unfortunately), we have given it a good try at talking it out. I normally go to RFC if it can't be worked out on the talk page, just brings in a good body of editors in my opinion.Deathlibrarian (talk) 09:03, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

References

Wiki Education assignment: Introduction to Policy Analysis - Summer Session22

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 1 August 2022 and 4 September 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Sunsh1n3d011 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Sunsh1n3d011 (talk) 07:03, 13 August 2022 (UTC)