Talk:Population groups in biomedicine

The sterile semantic debate
from race --Rikurzhen 18:06, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

A 1985 survey (Lieberman et al. 1992) asked 1,200 scientists how many disagree with the following proposition: "There are biological races in the species Homo sapiens." The responses were:
 * biologists 16%
 * developmental psychologists 36%
 * physical anthropologists 41%
 * cultural anthropologists 53%

The figure for physical anthropologists at PhD granting departments was slightly higher, rising from 41% to 42%, with 50% agreeing.


 * Why is the above posted here? This article does not intend to address how many people believed in biological "races" in 1985 (nearly two decades before the human genome was decoded). It is at best an irrelevant semantic point. The article addresses different ways of classifying humans into groups for the purposes of biomedicine. Whether any given researcher chooses to call his/her set of groups: populations, groups, clusters, clines, breeds, varieties, races, or subspecies is of no interest other than to the extent that measurement ambiguity impedes others' understanding of findings. Other Wikipedia articles discuss at great length the sterile semantic debate of "is race real?" This article is only about how researchers classify humans into groups for the purposes of biomedicine, nothing more. Some researchers ask subjects their group self-identity, others measure ancestry-informative markers in DNA, others simply eyeball the person and make up their own minds. Precisely how they classify people into groups is of interest here. Whether they call their groups "races" is not of interest here. -- Frank W Sweet 18:57, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

The point of relavance is the differences which exist between disciplines, such that using anthropology an example to prove that biomedical researchers do not like "race" doesn't work. The aim was not to have this material included in the article, but rather taken into consideration in its writing. --Rikurzhen 20:09, 29 April 2006 (UTC)


 * No problem. Consider it done. -- Frank W Sweet 21:07, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Merge and redirect race in biomedicine here?
The article Race in biomedicine has a "merge"-tag, but I see no clear-cut discussion on whether to merge or not. Do they actually cover the same subject? If so, they should no doubt be merged. If I understand correctly, this article is a newer version. Would it be good to simply redirect Race in biomedicine here, or should info from that article be transferred into this one first? // Habj 07:32, 22 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Partially support this, except I think the terminal should be "Race in medicine". "Bio" is a distraction, as is "Biological groups" because there are many other ways to divide populations (age, socioeconomy, etc.) and the article covers none of them. Lfstevens (talk) 02:56, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Detectable Black, White, Amering ancestry
"Two thirds of White Americans have no detectable African ancestry at all "

Which alles or genes are being referred to here when speaking of detectable African or European ancestry? What segment of what chromosome?

Or is it referring to phenotypes such as hair texture and nose shape?

Jrajul 21:51, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Good article with a few rather large problems
One paragraph is unclear: It is a historical irony of biomedical population studies that the one nation that enjoys the greatest funding (and consequently the most intense study) is also the one nation where the ethnic self-identity of its two largest endogamous groups correlates strongly with actual genetic admixture.←→ Everywhere on earth it is legitimate to ask of a population study, "Is this a study of public health differences between voluntary ethnic self-identity groups or is this a study of differences associated with Euro-African genetic admixture?"

What is the intended connection between the parts before and after the symbol ←→ that I have added?P0M

Another problem with this article is that in the long table of diseases and the groups greatly and little affected by them some diseases are mentioned twice. Not only do they get double mention, but a group regarded as infrequently suffering the disease in one place is marked as frequently suffering it in the other place.P0M

A third place is that the article uses vocabulary that only a health professional or someone with a similar background would understand. Technical vocabulary is sometimes necessary, but for the sake of the average well-informed reader the vocabulary should be explained or at least linked. I've added a few links, but some go to strange places, e.g., penetrant, and others do not find an article. P0M 06:29, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Copy-edits and other issues

 * 1) Feedback welcome.
 * 2) The article seems schizophrenic, with "race is useful" and "race is bogus" thrusts commingled arbitrarily. I didn't extend my brief to straightening that out. Lfstevens (talk) 02:53, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

When will these American racists cut the crap?
1. Easily more than 50% of the US is mixed. Self Identification is a joke.

2. Even those who could claim 100% European ancestry, are usually a mix of multiple European and non-European "white subraces". So it is about time these racist propagandists cut the crap about this kind of propaganda that is all over Wiki. Is this a Ku Klux Clan controlled project? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.125.185.140 (talk) 16:18, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

translation
Please, I'm working on a translation into Portuguese and need to make sure

What is U.N.? in U.N. ethnic group ? our ONU ?

--Costa Paulo Pedro P. R. 10:46, 23 November 2010 (UTC) costapppr@gmail.com —Preceding unsigned comment added by CostaPPPR (talk • contribs) 10:46, 23 November 2010 (UTC)