Talk:Race (human categorization)/Archive 32

Refer to other views?
I think we should refer to views like Razib Khan's (gene expression blog) or Steve Hsu (infoproc.blogspot.com) and not only ideologically determined Lewontinians, what do you think? Because other wise it will just be one sided. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.29.26.112 (talk) 12:31, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
 * http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2013/05/why-race-as-a-biological-construct-matters/#more-21046

Take a look at this arcticle — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.29.26.112 (talk) 12:37, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Lieberman 1985 Survey
I don't object with including the figure that 67% of biologists accept biological races. I just don't understand why other information has to be removed for the sake of inclusion of this figure. The poll format in the section "Other fields" completely differs now to the section above it. The outline should be similar to the section "U.S. anthropology". Which included both the disagreed figure and the agreed figure right below it. The "Other fields" section should be using the same outline. Is there any reason why it shouldn't when the data is coming from the exact same source?

The line "while only 50% of physical anthropologists did so." is redundant. The previous section already stated that 50% of physical anthropologists agreed. There's no need to repeat this information in the following section. Physical anthropologists would not be a "other field". Just like it'd be unnecessary and redundant to insert the exact same biologists agreed figure in the "U.S. anthropology" section.

Also why was the developmental psychologist figure removed? BlackHades (talk) 21:08, 2 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm off to bed, but what in the world does

In the 1985 poll (Lieberman et al. 1992) the results for biologists and developmental psychologists were:

biologists 16% developmental psychologists 36%

mean? How is the reader supposed to understand that, especially when the next bit says 67% of biologists accept biological races? BlackHades, since you replaced it you must have read it, so please give the context to that figure. If you didn't actually read it yourself you should not have replaced it. Dougweller (talk) 22:13, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
 * The explanation and questioning of the 1985 Lieberman poll is in the preceding paragraph. This has been the consensus text of this article for years now. You could add more information to make it helpful to the reader if you feel it requires more explanation. What I object to is the complete removal of information with no basis. I can understand adding the 67% figure but no one has given a reason why other information MUST be removed.


 * Not every biologist gave a position. Some declined to answer or chose neither. The format that I edited to is the identical format that already exists under "US Anthropologists". BlackHades (talk) 23:20, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Regarding the most recent edit by Maunus, this version seems satisfactory. Although I am somewhat puzzled why this version doesn't contain the 67% figure when the editing war appeared to be over this figure. I went ahead and fixed some grammar errors that were in the latest version. BlackHades (talk) 00:10, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
 * It's ok now, it was the formatting that confused me, sorry about that. Dougweller (talk) 15:59, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Next time be more careful, Dougweller, because your impulsive actions and my justified reverts of it caused me to get blocked for a week, so thanks for that. And I don't see how this latest version seems "satisfactory," when it is exactly the same as it was minus the consistency in formatting. What's the reason to change the formatting?--Kobayashi245 (talk) 14:59, 11 November 2013 (UTC)


 * So we can cherrypick statistics from Lieberman et al. but not include the quote that they selected to show how one of the most used biology textbooks refer to race? We should "avoid quotes in heated disputes"? That wasn't what you were saying when we were discussing Dawkins...User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 00:41, 4 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I have good news. I just came across Ann Morning's (2011) "The Nature of Race: How scientists think and teach about human difference" which inclues new surveys of American academics and textbooks. From a cursory overview it seems that Kobayashi and Blackhades will be happy with the results, because it suggests that biologists continue to have relatively more essentialists and less constructionist views of race at least in private and in high school textbooks (although with somewhat lower figures than in the 1985 survey). It also suggests that social scientists think that the constructionist view of race is widely accepted, while in fact that is not the case, so there is a source that says that we social scientists tend to overestimate our own views as consensus, whereas biologists do not consider their own views to be a consensus view. I will start incorporating material from this book when I have time.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 01:09, 4 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Biologists generally have neither an essentialist view of race, nor a constructionist one, assuming that by constructionist you mean not grounded in patterns of variation. The biological view of human race is much the same as in any species, such as canids (wolves/dingoes/coyotes), that is it captures recent patterns of selection for multiple genes in a fuzzy but identifiable way. There is nothing 'essentialist' about it and I hope that you are misreading 'Ann Morning', although since Ann Morning is a sociologist it seems more likely Ann Morning is misreading biology, perhaps intentionally. 125.143.16.158 (talk) 06:03, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Nonsense, Morning is quite capable of understanding what her biologist informants say (and your implication that sociologists are necessarily scientifically illiterate is itself essentialist). But you are right that mainstream biologist views as represented in the literature are not essentialist - neither Dawkins nor Edwards views are for example essentialist (although Edwards can perhaps be said to have that tendency). What Morning notes is that when asked about their private views of race many biologists do give essentialist explanations arguing that certain genes or gene configurations can be said to define racial groupings.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 21:47, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
 * A pattern of multiple correlated genes isn't 'essentialist'. The term hearkens to the notion of the Platonic ideal that some single quality defines groups. It's one of the standard strawman arguments against human races ('no gene for race', 'racial essence'), and as such its ambiguity and polemic sense is not helpful here. Perhaps if you reference Morning's definition of 'essentialist' and that she demonstrates biologists fit the description in their view of human race we may have something to go with. Individuals of a race do not carry an 'essence' (neither do coyotes), they exhibit similar genetic patterns. 27.1.214.45 (talk) 02:51, 11 November 2013 (UTC)


 * BTW I didn't imply all sociologists were necessarily scientifically illiterate so please do not slander me.
 * A: "X implies increased probability of Y."
 * B: "You think all X is Y."
 * It seems some people have nothing to say without resorting to this kind of childish strawman. 27.1.214.45 (talk) 03:20, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Broad Scientific Status
I included the following to the lead which was reverted by Maunus:


 * "There is no broad consensus among scientists whether there are biological races or if races are a purely social construct."

Based on the following secondary sources:

“The empirical data that have been gathered on the topic, however, do seem to largely rule out one scenario: that scientists across the spectrum have reached a consensus that race is a purely social construct without biological underpinning.” Morning, Ann. The nature of race: How scientists think and teach about human difference. University of California Pr, 2011.

"It would appear that two conclusions strongly emerge from research on the status of the race concept in biological anthropology: there is still no consensus on the race concept and there are significant national/regional differences in anthropologists’ attitudes towards ‘race’...Research shows that there is as yet no consensus on the status of the concept among biological anthropologists." Štrkalj, Goran. "The status of the race concept in contemporary biological anthropology: A review." Anthropologist 9.1 (2007): 73-78.

Race, once the central concept in physical anthropology worldwide, now varies in the degree of support it receives in different regions." Lieberman, L, et al. (2004). The race concept in six regions: variation without consensus. Collegium antropologicum, 28(2), 907-921.

Maunus, if you want to include a more nuance summary of Morning that's fine. I wouldn't object to that but there was no reason to get rid of a line that every meta analysis on the perception of race by the science community clearly states. You've also previously agreed that there was no broad scientific consensus across disciplines in regards to race so I don't understand your issue with the text. There's nothing inaccurate about the text itself. The status of the overall scientific community exists in the lead of just about every wikipedia article on a controversial scientific topic. (e.g. global warming, evolution, genetically modified food, etc) This article should not be an exemption. There is absolutely no reason why this article should be any different. BlackHades (talk) 22:41, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree. Maunus, please change the sentence to reflect this. "Even though there is a broad scientific agreement that essentialist conceptualizations of race are untenable, scientists continue to conceptualize race in widely differing ways, some of which have essentialist implications. Views of race that see racial groups as defined genetically are still common in the biological sciences although controversial, whereas the social constructionist view is dominant in the social sciences" is way too loaded of a sentence, when it can be simplified tremendously.--Kobayashi245 (talk) 15:18, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

The current lead is extremely problematic. I would encourage editors here to read the current lead from beginning to end. It's an utter mess. It comes off as trying way too hard to convince the reader that race is a purely social instruct by repeating the exact same talking points over and over unnecessarily. Biological essentialism is obsolete in one paragraph and for some reason it must be repeated that it is untenable in the very next paragraph. I also don't understand why the lead is currently implying that only the scientists that believe race is a purely social construct are the only ones that accept that all humans belong to the same species and subspecies. When in actuality, this would be universally accepted.

This lead needs to be blown up and recreated. It should include the history of the term, the status of the overall scientific community, the differing positions that exists in the scientific community, the variations in definition, and the current uses of the classification by the scientific community. All of which actually exists in the main body. But the current lead instead of summarizing the main body like it should as stated by WP:LEAD, is rather written like an opinion piece as if the title of the opinion piece is "Why you should accept race is a social construct". BlackHades (talk) 05:45, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
 * That doesn't surprise me and I don't think it can be helped. Even if we got to change it, it is only a matter of time before it gets "blown up" again. The best we can do is insert some neutrality and scientific reality into a hodgepodge of race and reality denial, so that it is not entirely one-sided and pseudo-scientific.

George W. Gill: "This bias seems to stem largely from socio-political motivation and not science at all. For the time being at least, the people in "race denial" are in "reality denial" as well. Their motivation (a positive one) is that they have come to believe that the race concept is socially dangerous. In other words, they have convinced themselves that race promotes racism. Therefore, they have pushed the politically correct agenda that human races are not biologically real, no matter what the evidence.

Consequently, at the beginning of the 21st century, even as a majority of biological anthropologists favor the reality of the race perspective, not one introductory textbook of physical anthropology even presents that perspective as a possibility. In a case as flagrant as this, we are not dealing with science but rather with blatant, politically motivated censorship."

I'm happy with the little crumbs, as long as they get the point across. Achieving perfect neutrality on an English article on Race is simply impossible. As the surveys show, race denial is incredibly high in America (jab at Maunus: entirely due to political correctness - it's got nothing to do with science, whereas China is accused of being "politically incorrect" for their acceptance of race, and if as you claim this is due to Chinese nationalism, the reverse is true for America: it is due to political socialism), and the article will make this clear, whether you like it or not. There is no escape from their bias on Wikipedia.--Kobayashi245 (talk) 10:33, 12 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Accusations of bias from someone who calls political correctness political socialism is pretty funny although also pretty discouraging from an editor. And a huge quote from Gill is not appropriate. Dougweller (talk) 15:36, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Political correctness stems from political socialism so I have no idea what your problem with my statement is. And I'm not suggesting including the quote of Gill into the article, but it is appropriate in the talk, to describe the current situation.--Kobayashi245 (talk) 23:52, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
 * So now, per this edit, we have an article that infers the acceptance of race by Chinese anthropologists is based on science and the western rejection of the concept is based on political correctness. The sources used to support the current version actually show the opposite to be true (see, for example, Racial discourse in China: continuities and permutations). I question the value of using surveys as evidence of scientific understanding, especially when the authors of the surveys use them to illustrate a lack scientific understanding. — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 01:37, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
 * And someone who so greatly misrepresents the phrase "political correctness" probably has problems in other fields. As ArtifexMayhem has pointed out. In any case its use here by Kobayashi245 is simply an ad hominem attack. Dougweller (talk) 10:17, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Absolutely, Doug. Drmies (talk) 18:49, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Sigh. The discussion on my suggestions for improvement seems to be getting derailed. I would like to get feedback from other editors on improving the lead as a whole. Regardless of anyone's personal position on the subject matter, I think we would all agree the current lead reads terribly. It's excessively repetitive and WP:LEAD should be summarizing the main body and it doesn't appear as though it's doing so in its current state. If there are no objections, I would like to at least add the "broad scientific status" text to the lead. BlackHades (talk) 10:41, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
 * No, we have an article that infers the Chinese accept the race concept because of their nationalism (and yes, science and lack of political correctness) as per Maunus' edit: which comes directly from the paper (actually, no, the paper makes no mention of "nationalism," it says race is a "factor for social cohesion [in China]," so I'll make the necessary edit) to which I included the contradictory position in America, which also comes directly from the paper, and the paper states this is because race is a "very sensitive and politically charged issue [in America]" and that "the racial approach is not a politically correct one in the USA. Anthropologists might therefore not feel at ease (to say the least) should they employ this approach, as they might be branded as racists." Also, made up WP:OR nonsense about the authors using the survey to "illustrate a lack of scientific understanding." Trying to argue that there isn't race denial in America because of political correctness is pathetic. The lack of this political correctness (which comes from political socialism - no misrepresentation at all, Dougweller) in China is precisely the reason why they do not object to the race concept there. I've read "Racial discourse in China: continuities and permutations" and it makes no such claim, so nice try. The sources that we do have (Štrkalj), suggest this comes down to political correctness in America and lack of it in China. Now, if you want to include a counter-argument, you need to find a scientific paper that addresses this particular survey by Štrkalj that says "no, Štrkalj's suggestion is incorrect, the opposite is true!" Since you don't have one, that's too bad. And Dougweller, "political correctness" is an insult to science and reality in itself; it's impossible to use the term in a positive manner.


 * BlackHades, regarding your edit to "widely accepted," my source states: "while scientists in China fully supported race as a concept and integrated race into their research" and Štrkalj states: "we found that all of the articles used the race concept and none of them questioned its value." How is "widely accepted" more accurate than "fully supported"? If you really think so, then okay, no problem.--Kobayashi245 (talk) 11:21, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
 * You're right the secondary source does say "fully supported". But the changes were meant to help resolve the editor dispute at hand. BlackHades (talk) 12:33, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Okay, thanks. So do you still feel "widely accepted" would be preferable? I won't argue if you do.--Kobayashi245 (talk) 13:12, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
 * "Political correctness" as usually used in a US context is a political label used by the right to dismiss ideas they don't like. And it usually does a nice job of obfuscating issues. Dougweller (talk) 21:20, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
 * It is definitely doing a nice job of obfuscating things here. The claim seems to be that the all of the current science showing race lacks biological support is actually based on mere political correctness and refuted because "scientists in China fully supported race as a concept and integrated race into their research". This is not an accurate parsing of the sources. Wang, Štrkalj and Sun (2003) suggest Dikotter 1992 for why race seems to be accepted as "natural" by Chinese anthropologists, "...in China, where race seems to be accepted as "natural" by all generations of anthropologists. There are probably many reasons for these differences, but some of the main ones are to be found in the different historical, social, and political contexts in which science is practiced (for China, see Dikotter 1992).", and Dikotter makes it very clear that the acceptance of the race concept in China is not based on actual science (see The dissemination of racial theories from Dikotter 2005, Race in China, which is based on his 1992 work). — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 22:45, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
 * There is no "current science showing race lacks biological support," that's just your wishful thinking. There are several geneticists and papers which demonstrate the biological significance of race, papers and methodologies which have not been refuted by the Lewontian ignoramuses, because they are irrefutable. The ignoring of those studies and excuses of "ancestry/populations aren't races!" is the result of political correctness, nothing else, and you pretending this is not so is quite hilarious. It comes down to playing semantics, nothing else, really. And I find it hilarious how you quote from the paper that literally states the differences are to be found in the "different [...] social, and political contexts," and then pretend like the political correctness of the United States has nothing to do with it, when Štrkalj himself says so in his 2007 paper. Quite the double standard. And a historian is not the authority on anthropology/biology to make such ridiculous claims as "modern Chinese anthropologists use the race concept because they are unscientific!" Nor do I believe he made such a statement, because if he did, he'd be a fool, and I'm not going to read all of that hogwash, so please, provide a direct quote from his writings where he makes such a claim.


 * Dougweller, "political correctness" is a tool used by the left to silence the opposition for ideas they don't like, and yes, it's used as a label by the right to, quite simply, call a spade a spade.--Kobayashi245 (talk) 00:35, 14 November 2013 (UTC)


 * We rely on mainstream sources for articles, not the opinions of editors. Please provide sources that show the "several geneticists and papers which demonstrate the biological significance of race, papers and methodologies which have not been refuted by the Lewontian ignoramuses, because they are irrefutable" are the mainstream view. — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 01:46, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

They are listed in the other talk here (and they're not all of them): "looked at the right way, genetic data show that races clearly do exist" and even in its article itself it says: "the misclassification probability becomes close to zero if enough loci are studied" and "When they analysed three geographically distinct populations (European, African and East Asian) and measured genetic similarity over many thousands of loci, the answer to their question was "never"." It's basically Lewontian pseudo-scientists who conclude races are biologically meaningless when they use insufficient loci. I already made the jigsaw puzzle analogy somewhere: you don't see the whole picture when you only have one puzzle (Lewontians), but when you put many puzzles together, you can see the picture (actual scientists). Since that is an irrefutable fact, Lewontian scientists are forced to play the semantics game to try to tone down the significance of that: "populations do not equal races!" (we have one of the actual scientists from one of the studies affirm that ancestry/populations=races). Quite funny if you ask me. I'm just glad such madness hasn't reached Russia or China. And again, please provide a direct quote from that historian where he states Chinese anthropologists of today are unscientific.--Kobayashi245 (talk) 09:33, 14 November 2013 (UTC)


 * There is a textbook chapter by multiple authors, including a co-author of one of the primary research papers often relied on (too much) as a source for articles on this topic, contrary to WP:RS, that ought to be looked at in connection with further edits of this article. It is




 * and the full text of the article is available at the URL linked in this citation. There is also more current scholarly literature in reliable secondary sources cited in the Anthropology and Human Biology Citations source list that I share with all Wikipedians that will help clarify the issues here. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 15:40, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Sources from a biological perspective
Wikipedia has a lot of interesting articles based on the ongoing research in human molecular genetics that helps trace the lineage of people living in various places on the earth. I've been reading university textbooks on human genetics "for fun" since the 1980s, and for even longer I've been visiting my state flagship university's vast BioMedical Library to look up topics on human medicine and health care policy. On the hypothesis that better sources build better articles as all of us here collaborate to build an encyclopedia, I thought I would suggest some sources for improving articles on human genetic history and related articles. The Wikipedia guidelines on reliable sources in medicine provide a helpful framework for evaluating sources.

The guidelines on reliable sources for medicine remind editors that "it is vital that the biomedical information in all types of articles be based on reliable, third-party, published sources and accurately reflect current medical knowledge."

"Ideal sources for such content includes literature reviews or systematic reviews published in reputable medical journals, academic and professional books written by experts in the relevant field and from a respected publisher, and medical guidelines or position statements from nationally or internationally recognised expert bodies."

The guidelines, consistent with the general Wikipedia guidelines on reliable sources, remind us that all "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources" (emphasis in original). They helpfully define a primary source in medicine as one in which the authors directly participated in the research or documented their personal experiences. By contrast, a secondary source summarizes one or more primary or secondary sources, usually to provide an overview of the current understanding of a medical topic. The general Wikipedia guidelines let us know that "Articles should rely on secondary sources whenever possible. For example, a review article, monograph, or textbook is better than a primary research paper. When relying on primary sources, extreme caution is advised: Wikipedians should never interpret the content of primary sources for themselves."

On the topic of what recent human population genetics research says about classification of human populations, a widely cited primary research article is a 1972 article by Richard Lewontin, which I have seen cited in many of the review articles, monographs, and textbooks I have read over the years.



As Wikipedians, we can evaluate where the findings in Lewontin's article fit in the current understanding of the topic of human genetic variation by reading current reliable secondary sources in medicine.

Some Wikipedia articles give weighty emphasis to a commentary essay published years after Lewontin published his primary research article on human diversity, when Lewontin's primary research results had been replicated in many other studies and his bottom line conclusion that "about 85% of the total genetical variation is due to individual differences within populations and only 15% to differences between populations or ethnic groups" had been taken up by many textbooks on genetics and medicine. In 2003, A. W. F. Edwards wrote a commentary essay in the journal BioEssays



in which Edwards proposes a statistical model for classifying individuals into groupings based on haplotype data. Edwards wrote, "There is nothing wrong with Lewontin’s statistical analysis of variation, only with the belief that it is relevant to classification," pointing to his own work with Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, the author of the book



which I read soon after it was published in 1994. In general, Edwards cites a lot of publications from his collaboration with Cavalli-Sforza, and mentions that collaboration prominently in his subsequent review article



in which he describes their method for tracing ancestry with genes. Edwards even shows a photograph of Cavalli-Sforza with him in 1963 in his 2009 article, emphasizing their scholarly friendship.

So I wanted to look up Cavalli-Sforza's current views as well while I traced citations of the Lewontin 1972 article and the Edwards 2003 article in subsequent secondary sources. Through searches with Google, Google Scholar, and Google Books, both from my home office computer and from a university library computer, I found a number of books and articles that cite both the Lewontin paper and the Edwards paper. Through a specialized set of wide-reaching keyword searches (for example, "Lewontin Edwards") on the university library's vast database subscriptions, I was able to obtain the full text of many of those articles and of whole books that discuss what current science says about grouping individuals of species Homo sapiens into race groups. I also found more up to date discussions by Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza of the Human Genome Diversity Project.

Listed here are sources that have the following characteristics: (1) they cite both previous articles by Lewontin and the 2003 article by Edwards, discussing the underlying factual disagreement between those authors, (2) they are Wikipedia reliable sources for medicine (in particular, they are secondary sources such as review articles or textbooks rather than primary research articles), and (3) they are available to me in full text through book-buying, library lending, author sharing of full text on the Internet, or a university library database. They are arranged in approximate chronological order, so that you can see how the newer sources cite and evaluate the previous sources as genetics research continues. The sources listed here are not exhaustive, but they are varied and authoritative, and they cite most of the dozens of primary research articles on the topic, analyzing and summarizing the current scientific consensus.



This first book (Koenig, Lee, and Richardson 2008) is useful because it includes a chapter co-authored by Richard Lewontin in which he updates his views.



The Whitmarsh and Jones (2010) source has several very useful chapters on medical genetics.





Like Whitmarsh and Jones (2010), the Krimsky and Sloan (2011) source has several useful chapters on medical genetics.





The book chapter by Barbujani and Colonna (2011) above is especially useful for various Wikipedia articles as a contrast between biodiversity in other animals and biodiversity in Homo sapiens.





By the way, the Barbujani, Ghirotto, and Tassi (2013) article has a very interesting discussion of SNP typing overlaps across the entire individual genome among some of the first human beings to have their entire individual genomes sequenced, with an especially interesting Venn diagram that would be a good graphic to add to this article.



An author who is intimately familiar with Edwards's statistical approach, because he has been a collaborator in fieldwork and co-author on primary research articles with Edwards, is Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza. Cavalli-Sforza is a medical doctor who was a student of Ronald Fisher in statistics, who has devoted most of his career to genetic research. In an invited review article for the 2007 Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics, Cavalli-Sforza joins issue directly with the underlying factual disagreement among previous authors, but cites different previous publications.



"GENETIC VARIATION BETWEEN AND WITHIN POPULATIONS, AND THE RACE PROBLEM

In the early 1980s, Lewontin (11) showed that when genetic variation for protein markers is estimated by comparing two or more random individuals from the same populations, or two or more individuals from the whole world, the former is 85% as large as the latter. This means that the variation between populations is the residual 15%, and hence relatively trivial. Later research carried out on a limited number of populations and mostly, though not only, on protein markers has confirmed this analysis. The Rosenberg et al. data actually bring down Lewontin’s estimate to 5%, or even less. Therefore, the variation between populations is even smaller than the original 15%, and we also know that the exact value depends on the choice of populations and markers. But the between-population variation, even if it is very small is certainly enough to reconstruct the genetic history of populations—that is their evolution—but is it enough for distinguishing races in some useful way? The comparison with other mammals shows that humans are almost at the lower extreme of the scale of between-population variation. Even so, subtle statistical methods let us assign individuals to the populations of origin, even distinguishing populations from the same continent, if we use enough genetic markers. But is this enough for distinguishing races? Darwin already had an answer. He gave two reasons for doubting the usefulness of races: (1) most characters show a clear geographic continuity, and (2) taxonomists generated a great variety of race classifications. Darwin lists the numbers of races estimated by his contemporaries, which varied from 2 to 63 races.

Rosenberg et al. (16 and later work) analyzed the relative statistical power of the most efficient subdivisions of the data with a number of clusters varying from 2 to 6, and showed that five clusters have a reasonable statistical power. Note that this result is certainly influenced by the populations chosen for the analysis. The five clusters are not very different from those of a few partitions that had already existed in the literature for some time, and the clusters are: (a) a sub-Saharan African cluster, (b) North Africa–Europe plus a part of western Asia that is approximately bounded eastward by the central Asian desert and mountains, (c) the eastern rest of Asia, (d ) Oceania, and (e) the Americas. But what good is this partition? The Ramachandran et al. (15) analysis of the same data provides a very close prediction of the genetic differences between the same populations by the simplest geographic tool: the geographic distance between the two populations, and two populations from the same continent are on average geographically closer than two from different ones. However, the Rosenberg et al. analysis (16) adds the important conclusion that the standard classification into classical continents must be modified to replace continental boundaries with the real geographic barriers: major oceans, or deserts like the Sahara, or other deserts and major mountains like those of central Asia. These barriers have certainly decreased, but they have not entirely suppressed genetic exchanges across them. Thus, the Rosenberg et al. analysis confirms a pattern of variation based on pseudocontinents that does not eliminate the basic geographic continuity of genetic variation. In fact, the extension by Ramachandran et al. of the original Rosenberg et al. analysis showed that populations that are geographically close have an overwhelming genetic similarity, well beyond that suggested by continental or pseudocontinental partitions."

A year later Cavalli-Sforza joined seventeen other genetics researchers as co-authors of a review article, published as an "open letter" to other scholars, on using racial categories in human genetics.



Other current review articles related to human population structure include



I invite my fellow Wikipedians to dig into the most current medically reliable sources to see how the new molecular genetic understanding of the human population is influencing biological approaches to human classification. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 20:03, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Source dumping
The extensive source dumping occurring on the talk page right now is not in any way constructive. While I understand that everyone wants to share everything they have, it just creates more noise. If someone has specific content that they think is not properly represented, the best way to introduce it is to find 2-3 of the highest quality, most independent, tertiary sources, so that the proper context and weight can be evaluated. Asking other editors to review dozens of technical articles published in scientific journals is not going to work. aprock (talk) 04:52, 16 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Moreover, using primary sources is wrong for sourcing any Wikipedia article, as explained in the reliable sources guideline. Using old sources is also highly inappropriate for this article in light of how much new research is being done in the underlying sciences related to the article topic. We know a primary source is a good description of the external world of reality (or not) if and only if it is taken up by major, thoughtfully edited secondary sources. I've given everyone plenty of time to look up what the actual textbooks and review articles referred to by professional researchers on this topic say. Any responsible editor should feel free to edit article text, consistent with Wikipedia core policies including reliable sourcing, without further ado on the talk page. I remind everyone looking on that this article is under active arbitration remedies after years of edit warring, so any uninvolved administrator may impose sanctions on sight. Best wishes to all of you for a thoughtful, collaborative editing environment. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 05:03, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Source, reviewed by Salon
Don't have time to do anything with this currently but perhaps another editor will: Killer Chihuahua 15:10, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
 * http://www.salon.com/2013/12/15/dreadful_deceit_race_is_a_myth/
 * Doesn't strike me as a very relevant source. The argument is commonplace and present in the article.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 17:36, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
 * ...and another editor did have time to check it out. Thanks! Would have done when I got back but am grateful you were able to spare the time to do it! Killer Chihuahua 21:36, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Reminder of active ArbCom sanctions
The notice that has long been posted on this article talk page reminds us, "The article Race (human classification), along with other articles relating to the area of conflict (namely, the intersection of race/ethnicity and human abilities and behaviour, broadly construed) is currently subject to active arbitration remedies, described in a 2010 Arbitration Committee case." The notice links to the case. I ask uninvolved administrators who happen to surf by to keep an eye on the talk page discussion here and whether or not it is aimed at building an encyclopedia based on  Wikipedia core content policies. The article topic here is very contentious, and a related article that was the main article that triggered the ArbCom case is one of the ten most edit-warred articles on all of English Wikipedia. Precisely because the topic of this article is contentious, it is the subject of ongoing research around the world, and new books on the general topic of this article are published every week in English from countries all over the English-speaking world. There is no excuse not to develop article text here in light of reliable sources for medical topics, many of which have already been suggested on this article talk page. I hope that the role of adminstrators looking on will be to promote the Wikimedia Foundation goals of improving content quality and increasing participation by editors who have the tools and inclination to continually improve content quality. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 17:08, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the recent improvements in the article.
I see some other editors are working hard at looking up and citing reliable sources to improve this article. I'm looking on at the recent edits, and they appear to be more in accord with the sources (and thus more in accord with core Wikipedia policies) than many of the previous versions of this article have been. Keep up the good work. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 01:06, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * There are a few issues I have with the changes Maunus made. No source is directly cited for this change to the material and it is a bit more argumentative than documentative such as repeated use of the word "fact" when describing the view of races as social constructs. Similarly, this change has some editorializing. All of it seems a bit too muddled for the reader to grasp what is being suggested. I believe it would be better to lead with a statement such as "While no current consensus exists on the exact utility of racial categories in understanding human genetic variation, it is widely held that racial groupings are primarily social constructs with no clear biological separation between them." We would then elaborate on what that means and could probably do it without using as many words as are currently used.-- The Devil's Advocate tlk.  cntrb. 04:50, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Do you have any recommendations for current, reliable sources on this topic? Everything I saw in the block of constructively edited article text that Maunus recently added to the article reads just like the topic sentences in the major textbooks and review articles on the topic here. Is there anything in particular in what was reverted that you think is plainly contradictory to reliable sources on this topic? -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 01:09, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree which is why I reverted, per my reasons stated below under the "Sourcing for the "Complications and various definitions of the concept" section. BlackHades (talk) 05:00, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Go ahead. I don't have too much time to spend on this. BUt I think it is clear from my edits where I think we should be going. My edit is basicaly my summary of how I see th field and the litarature. And I believe it should all be possible to substantiate with high quality sources - I just dont have time to do so right now.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 01:01, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
 * It should be understood that if someone else who has sources at hand, as I do, restores that article text, that shouldn't be objectionable under any Wikipedia policy. The ideal for a featured article is to have every last factual statement backed up by a specific source, and I am striving toward that ideal in the article IQ classification that I expanded earlier this year. But Wikipedia began with people just inserting into articles things that they thought they knew and remembered correctly, and from observation of his edits over the years, I am quite sure that Maunus knows this topic and remembers it as correctly as any editor who has worked on these articles in the last several years. It's not to the good of the project to keep reverting article text that fairly represents the best sources that fit Wikipedia policy. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 01:09, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, restoring a challenged edit without additional sources is not possible, unsourced text can be removed by anyone. But my guess is that it would have taken someone with sources about a half hour to source it instead of reverting it if they had so wanted. They could have also simply changed the passages where the text becomes argumentative. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 01:14, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

To lay out my concerns: "There is a wide consensus that the racial categories that are common in everyday usage are socially constructed, and that racial groups cannot be biologically defined. Nonetheless, it is clear (editorializing) that racial categories correlate with biological traits (e.g. phenotype) to some degree, and that certain genetic markers have varying frequencies among human populations, some of which correspond more or less to traditional racial groupings. For this reason there is no current consensus about whether racial categories can be considered to have significance for understanding human genetic variation. (bolded statements are confusing to read together as they seemingly contradict each other, statements should be presented together in a cohesive manner)"

"The statement that races are social constructs, which is widely accepted by scholars (unnecessary and argumentative), describes the fact (argumentative editorializing) that race membership is primarily a social rather than biological fact (argumentative editorializing). People may be classified differently depending on social and cultural conventions, and depending on which social and or biological markers are considered to be most important in a specific social and historical context. A person who could be classified as "black" under the American one-drop rule, might be classified as "colored" in Apartheid South Africa, or as branco (white) in Brazil, or as White in Uganda or the contemporary United States. (where do these comparisons come from exactly? Are they necessary?) Being a social construct does not mean that race isn't real, nor that racial categorization does not affect the lives of people - and it also does not exclude the possibility that the social construction reflect some underlying biological reality (whole sentence seems like defensive editorializing). But it does mean (editorializing) that biological criteria are not in themselves sufficient to establish racial categories, but that social evaluations always underlie schemes of racial categorization. A minority of scholars reject the notion that race is primarily a social construction entirely, and argue that human biological variation is structured into well defined racial groupings. A more common view is that socially constructed racial groupings are also biologically meaningful because they correlate meaningfully with genetic variation, even though no racial grouping can be biologically (incomplete?)."

My issue is with how this is worded more than any question of accuracy.-- The Devil's Advocate tlk. cntrb. 01:48, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree that some of what you call editorializing is that, but not all of it. Some of it is just summarizing the literature - for example that race membership is primarily a social fact. I cannot imagine any geneticist who would disagree with this - it simply means that the social consequences of being classified into a specific racial groups are much greater than any possible biological effects of racial group membership on an individual's life. I don't even think racially profiling doctors would disagree with this - I even think a lot of admitted racists would agree with it.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 22:15, 21 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree it's more about wording. For example, the lead currently writes:
 * "Views of race that see racial groups as defined genetically are still common in the biological sciences although controversial"
 * While Maunus's recent paragraph writes:
 * "There is a wide consensus that the racial categories that are common in everyday usage are socially constructed, and that racial groups cannot be biologically defined."


 * We as editors might understand what Maunus was trying to say but this would be extremely confusing for the reader as they are seemingly contradictory. The wording is somewhat off. The issues regarding unnecessary argumentative text as highlighted by The Devil's Advocate was also problematic and a symptom of what happens when doing editor synthesis rather than basing content directly from high quality review sources. In the coming days, I will put together a paragraph using high quality review sources that should largely mention the points that Maunus was trying to get across. BlackHades (talk) 02:54, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The reader would have to be very dense to see those two sentences as contradictory I think. You also both seem to misunderstand what synthesis is and what a summary of the literature is. SYnthesis is when you use sources to arrive at or imply a conclusion that is not present in either of the sources. Summarizing a wide range of sources in a way that does not use specific wordings or phrasings from any of them, but summarizes their main points using original language is what wikipedia editing is about. I am doing the latter. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 22:15, 21 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Translated into English, you have a layman's impression of the issue without having consulted any sources. To be sure, most readers of Wikipedia read Wikipedia precisely because they have no better sources at hand. So it is always constructive to give a layman's impression, as you have here, about how article text reads to someone unfamiliar with the subject. Note, however, that this does not serve as a rationale for deleting text Maunus wrote that is fully consistent with current reliable sources. I will dig into the diff to find the text from Maunus's keyboard, and edit it off-line so that I can add the sources that have already been suggested on the article talk page, sources that in several instances are readily available via the World Wide Web to Wikipedians all over the world. This is just basic editorial volunteer work for those of us who are here to build an encyclopedia. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 16:58, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I find it highly ironic that you constantly tout about using high quality sources then complain about removal of a paragraph where not a single reference, let alone high quality ones, were ever used. Instead, now you are indicating preference for editor synthesis over high quality sources. The rationale for deleting the text was wikipedia policy. Per WP:NOR and WP:BURDEN. Nothing more and nothing less. BlackHades (talk) 20:28, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't see the irony. If something is written that can easily be sourced then the more useful action is of course to add the source, not to remove the information. That is easier for someone to do who has access to the high quality sources, than for someone who is currently in a part of the world where the only available sources are the pdf's on their harddrive[me].User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 21:58, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

genetic and biological basis of race
Current wiki says that race has no biological or genetic basis - which is nonsense when we can see features differentiated as Mongoloid, Caucasoid, Negroid, Dravidians and Sinhalese among others. I lack the background to correct this but someone should.

miklos@sympatico.ca (talk) 17:43, 12 December 2013 (UTC)Miklos Legrady, December 12, 2013 legrady@sympatico.ca


 * What genes are you talking about? These days genes have names. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 20:34, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Miklos, you bring up a good point. This appears to be a recent change by StephanieKIP. Current reliable sources describes the scientific field as without consensus in regards to the concept of biological races. The sentence also conflicts with the rest of the body of the article which highlights support for biological races among certain fields of science. I will fix the problematic sentence but really it looks like the entire section of "Complications and various definitions of the concept" needs to be rewritten. It's more pushing a specific point of view rather than accurately and fairly publishing all significant views that exist in reliable sources as required by WP:NPOV. I will do what I can to help fix the section but I encourage other editors for assistance as well. BlackHades (talk) 04:01, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The statement in the article is well sourced, and actually seems to take more cognizance of recent editor discussions on the talk page of this article and related articles than a great many of the other article edits. What is the problem here? -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 04:21, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * That the section conflicts with many very high level secondary sources? Including all the sources I provided you. Even the sources that argue that race is a completely social construct, they will still mention the fact that there is no consensus in the scientific fields. Should we still pretend that race has consensus in the scientific field? When all the high level review sources clearly states it does not? BlackHades (talk) 04:36, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Simply put, it's inappropriate to cherry pick sources with only a specific viewpoint in order to give the false illusion of consensus on a topic that remains highly controversial and disputed in the scientific fields. Per WP:NPOV,  all significant views in reliable sources must be fairly represented. The paragraph in question was a complete WP:NPOV violation. If the sources I've already provided you wasn't enough, I can provide more. Although I don't feel that should be necessary because even your very own list of sources that you posted recently, repeatedly stated that the biological race concept remains highly controversial and disputed in the scientific fields. Even the ones that argued in support of the purely social construct position. BlackHades (talk) 05:09, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, per WP:WEIGHT and WP:RS we will "fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources [by] authors who are regarded as authoritative in relation to the subject." I.e., if the preponderance of high quality reliable sources find biological races do not exist then that is what we will report. These two policies will also determine to what extent we will cover minority viewpoints. — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 05:55, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * In the field of biology, the minority viewpoint would be that race has no biological component or significance. The majority viewpoint is that there are biological races and/or race has biological significance. This is confirmed by surveys done on biologists. Especially in the 21st century after the "Human Genome Project" caused a resurgence of the race concept as highlighted by several sources. The purely social construct position remains the majority, although not consensus, position in the social sciences. BlackHades (talk) 07:46, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Do we at least all agree that there is no consensus among scientists whether there are or are not biological races? We need to first come to agreement on this question before we get into the discussion of what the appropriate weight for each viewpoint is. BlackHades (talk) 06:35, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I do not agree. — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 07:03, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I also do not agree. I dont know any mainstream scientists who believe races are primarily biological categories (or maybe they do but they don´t publish that claim in which case it is irrelevant). Some believe that they also hae a biological component, or that they correlate with certain biological markers. That is not the same as saying that they have a biological basis. A correct statement would be to say that "there is no consensus on the degree to which biological markers correlate with socially constructe races".User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 14:11, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I was never trying to say scientists believe races are "primarily biological categories". "Primarily biological categories" is not the same as simply acknowledging there are biological races or saying race has biological significance. There is a culture factor in race and I was never disputing that. But a significant part of the scientific field do see race as having a biological component or having biological significance. There is a lack of consensus on this particular matter. Do you agree? If so, this should certainly be reflected in the article. BlackHades (talk) 06:29, 14 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I also do not agree. But, while I think the current text is broadly reflective of academic consensus, I think the current wording may be a little inexact. If I group people according to their physical appearance, what I am doing undoubtedly has a biological basis, regardless of what groupings I make use of. That doesn't become less true just because I call my categories "races". What we might say is that my categories lack scientific relevance or significance from the perspective of biology. There may be still better and more exact ways of putting it than that, but I think it is important for the text to be precise. Formerip (talk) 14:51, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * That is not correct FormerIP, because similar appearance can and is often caused by different underlying biological characters. And what is judged as similar is based on a subjective, socio-culturally based judgment. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:29, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, that can be true some of the time, although many of our judgements about physical characteristics are, of course, not really subjective at all. But it is mistaken, in any event, to think that statements about biology that are subjective, reflective of social meaning, questionable, badly-expressed, inexact etc cease to be statements about biology. They may, on the other hand, be statements which are unhelpful, invalid or meaningless from a particular scientific perspective. In each case, it is better to be specific if you want to be understood clearly. Formerip (talk) 17:15, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * There is no such thing as an objective judgment unless you are god. As I argue below describing something that is biological does not mean that the description itself has a biological basis.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 19:50, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * @FormerIP, I think you need to find a source for this. Dawkin's The Ancestor's Tale spends quite a bit of time discussing perception and biological characteristics and how objective evaluations of racial characteristics like skin color only correlate with our concept of race.  If you can't measure something objectively, how can you say it's "not really subjective at all"? aprock (talk) 17:19, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * What are you suggesting I get a source for? If I measure my index finger and tell you how long it is, that's "not really subjective", unless you want to argue from the standpoint that objectivity is impossible in principle (in which case, you presumably think Wikipedia should include statements such as "Genetics has no biological basis" and "Biology has no biological basis"). If I tell you something like "I have lovely brown eyes", that's a bit more subjective. But it would be an error to think that, because it is subjective it has no basis in biology. Clearly, a statement about the colour of my eyes is one that has at least some basis in biology and it would be incorrect to suggest otherwise. Formerip (talk) 23:27, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
 * , could you offer your thoughts on my recent change attempt?
 * There is no consensus among scientists on whether race has biological significance or if race is a purely social construct. Scientists continue to often treat racial and ethnic labels as biological categories. Proponents of such classification argue that race and genetics are strongly associated. Others argue that genetic differences between groups are biologically meaningless or that genetic differences between groups do not exist.
 * Here's the excerpt from the sources used for the edit:
 * "Many naturalists, including Blumenbach, struggled with the biological meanings of racial categories in some of the same ways that we do today. He acknowledged that morphological variation varied widely within each race and often overlapped with variation observed in other races, that boundaries between races were not discrete and that races could not be defined solely by geographical boundaries between continents or otherwise. But scientists have continued to often treat groups identified by commonly used racial and ethnic labels as biological categories. Proponents of such classification argue that race and genetic differences are strongly associated, justifying the use of race as a proxy for POPULATION STRUCTURE in the design of experiments and medical application. Specifically, they contend that individuals who are assigned to the same racial category share more of their recent ancestry and therefore are more similar genetically to each other than individuals from different racial categories, and that the accuracy of race as a proxy for ancestry is good enough to be useful as a research variable. But others argue that race is neither a meaningful concept nor a useful heuristic device, and even that genetic differences between groups are biologically meaningless or that genetic differences among human populations do not exist. Many people prefer to use ‘ethnic group,’ frequently defined as a group that has shared religious, social, linguistic and cultural heritage/identity, instead of race, but the two terms suffer from the same conceptual and heuristic problems and questions." Bamshad, M., Wooding, S., Salisbury, B. A., & Stephens, J. C. (2004). Deconstructing the relationship between genetics and race. Nature Reviews Genetics, 5(8), 598-609.
 * In the absence of empirical data that can offer a definitive statement regarding racial conceptualization among today’s scientists, a wide range of scholarly opinions flourish. Some observers believe that scientists have overwhelmingly rejected a biological concept of race, while others are persuaded that scientists have largely retained such essentialist views. The empirical data that have been gathered on the topic, however, do seem to largely rule out one scenario: that scientists across the spectrum have reached a consensus that race is a purely social construct without biological underpinning. Surveys, interviews, content analyses, and ethnographies have not pointed to cross- disciplinary rejection of the biological vision of race. Instead, the empirical question outstanding seems to be whether the academy is divided when it comes to thinking about the nature of race, or whether scientists are fairly unified in their essentialist, biological conceptualization of race. Morning, Ann. The nature of race: How scientists think and teach about human difference. pg 47. University of California Pr, 2011.
 * Do you have any suggestions for improvement of my edit? Thanks. BlackHades (talk) 21:41, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Neither of those sources support the idea that there is any meaningful debate concerning the facts: there is no biological or genetic support for the concept of "race" within the human species. When the vast majority of reliable sources written by experts in the appropriate fields support a particular conclusion then that is what we will report. However, I do agree with, the current phrasing "is not really very informative or nuanced." — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 00:04, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * @BlackHades. My point is really about language, rather than science, albeit there's an overlap. FWIW, though, I think your proposal is technically accurate, but fails to get to the heart of the issue (don't panic, though, because it is not worse than the current version in this respect). You give the impression of a clear and more-or-less equal split between "race is biologically significant" and "race is purely a social construct". What the article ought to capture is that there is consensus, at the very least, that race is largely a social construct, and that whatever debate may exist is marginal in its ramifications.
 * @ArtifaxMayhem. I don't understand what your basis is for poo-pooing BlackHades' sources. It seems to me you are wrong to suppose that we report "what the vast majority of reliable sources written by experts say". That's not Wikipeida policy. We should write so as to reflect all significant views that we are aware of. The extracts present above do not appear obviously insignificant. How to incorporate them might require thought, but we don't exclude points of view just because it means we will have to express something more complex than a monolithic here's-how-it-is. Formerip (talk) 00:48, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * We give weight to views "in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources." Regardless, I was not "poo-pooing" the two sources provided. I did say that neither of them "support the idea that there is any meaningful debate concerning the facts: there is no biological or genetic support for the concept of "race" within the human species." — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 04:30, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * "Some observers believe that scientists have overwhelmingly rejected a biological concept of race, while others are persuaded that scientists have largely retained such essentialist views."
 * This is not support that there is meaningful debate? BlackHades (talk) 04:11, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * No, it's not. What some observers believe is hardly indicative of very much at all.  As Dawkins said in the source you championed, Lewontin's view is described as orthodoxy. aprock (talk) 01:14, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
 * You might want to try reading what Ann Morning actually wrote. Out of 3 possible scenarios:
 * 1. Scientists are fairly unified that race is a purely social construct without biological underpinning.
 * 2. Scientists are divided when it comes to thinking about the nature of race.
 * 3. Scientists are fairly unified in their essentialist, biological conceptualization of race.


 * The scenario that Ann Morning completely dismisses as having no support is the first scenario "scientists are fairly unified that race is a purely social construct without biological underpinning." She makes it clear that the first scenario has zero support but that there is support for both scenario two and scenario three.


 * The empirical data that have been gathered on the topic, however, do seem to largely rule out one scenario: that scientists across the spectrum have reached a consensus that race is a purely social construct without biological underpinning. Surveys, interviews, content analyses, and ethnographies have not pointed to cross-disciplinary rejection of the biological vision of race. Instead, the empirical question outstanding seems to be whether the academy is divided when it comes to thinking about the nature of race, or whether scientists are fairly unified in their essentialist, biological conceptualization of race. The survey studies fielded by Lieberman and colleagues suggest the former (as do many observers— see for example Braun 2006; Gissis 2008; Goodman 1997; Olson 2001; Wadman 2004), while the ethnographic and small interview studies described above that point to the traditional race notions embedded in scientists’ research and analysis could be taken on the whole to suggest the latter. Morning, Ann. The nature of race: How scientists think and teach about human difference. pg 47. University of California Pr, 2011.


 * You also continue to misrepresent Dawkins. Dawkins was referring to Lewontin's argument that most genetic variation is within group not between them. This is what has near universal orthodoxy and this is what Dawkins was referring to. Even if by some odd reason you felt that Dawkins was actually stating that the "virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance" position had near universal orthodoxy, you should have immediately been able to recognize such assertion is not only just wrong, but absurdly wrong. A full 13 years after the publication of Lewontin's paper, only 16% of biologists stated that biological races do not exist. You consider 16% equivalent to "near universal orthodoxy"?


 * Not to mention the fact that the assertion that "race is biologically significant" or "race is not biologically meaningless" is repeatedly mentioned by a wide variety of scientists in the highly authoritative "Nature Genetics". You actually think a position that goes against the universal orthodoxy of the scientific field is capable of passing the intense scrutiny of the peer review process by "Nature" repeatedly? Which over 90% of submitted papers can't even do? Seriously? Can you name a single example of any position in any field of science that goes against the universal orthodoxy of the scientific field that's actually capable of passing the peer review process of "Nature" repeatedly? You're essentially trying to argue that the highly authoritative peer review journal "Nature" is publishing fringe views. BlackHades (talk) 07:22, 21 December 2013 (UTC)


 * You've been told several times to present one or two high quality tertiary sources which demonstrate that your interpretation of sources is the mainstream view. The fact that you keep having to turn to academic papers, which you have a poor track record of comprehending, only dilutes your argument.  If the view that you keep trumpeting is in fact the mainstream view, then it should be easy to find a source which contradicts Dawkins characterization that Lewontin's view is orthodoxy.  aprock (talk) 08:10, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
 * You're kidding me right? I just did. Do I have to copy and paste Ann Morning again as well? Once again Dawkins is correct but you continue to misrepresent him. If your assertion was correct, it should be very easy to find a reliable source that states the "virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance" argument has overwhelming consensus in biology. Can you provide such a source? You keep trying to assert the majority (but not consensus) view in biology is actually fringe, while trying to claim a significant minority view in biology, coincidentally your preferred view, has universal orthodoxy.


 * Your argument that it is universal orthodoxy also appears to conflict with other editors:


 * "I just came across Ann Morning's (2011) "The Nature of Race: How scientists think and teach about human difference" which inclues new surveys of American academics and textbooks. From a cursory overview it seems that Kobayashi and Blackhades will be happy with the results, because it suggests that biologists continue to have relatively more essentialists and less constructionist views of race at least in private and in high school textbooks (although with somewhat lower figures than in the 1985 survey). It also suggests that social scientists think that the constructionist view of race is widely accepted, while in fact that is not the case, so there is a source that says that we social scientists tend to overestimate our own views as consensus, whereas biologists do not consider their own views to be a consensus view."--Maunus


 * Maunus and I might have disagreements on just exactly how prevalent the argument that race has some biological significance is and how prevalent the argument that race has virtually no genetic significance is in the scientific fields, but I don't think either of us are constantly making the claim that there is "near universal orthodoxy" that race is "virtually of no genetic significance" like you constantly are. We both agreed that there is ongoing discussion and no consensus. BlackHades (talk) 23:02, 21 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I do think the current wording is too strong, and we need to find a better one. While the statement "race doesnt have a biological basis" is indeed extremely frequent in the literature it is not really very informative or nuanced. What I take it to mean on most occasions of usage is that the categories are not natural categories, but that the biological variation could be divided in many other ways. I.e. biology does not force any particular racial categorization unto us, we have to make those categories using our socio-cultural reality. In the same sense "Zebra" or "fish" are also do not have a biological basis, because they are not single taxonomical categories in nature - the categories zebra and fish are in fact culturally constructed. But what others seem to take the statement to mean is that what we are categorizing is not a biological phenomenon. That is of course not the same, and this second meaning is clearly false. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:36, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The statement "race has biological significance" or "race is not biologically meaningless" is extremely frequent in the literature as well. Hence my point that there is a lack of consensus in the scientific field regarding the biological significance of race. This is important to mention and should be reflected in the article. Yes there is a cultural factor in classification but that doesn't necessarily equate to race being biologically meaningless. The perception that race has biological significance is prevalent in the scientific fields. BlackHades (talk) 07:12, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * In some scientific fields, mostly the applied ones such as medicine and forensics. It is not the prevalent view in genetics, nor biological anthropology for example. But yes I agree that there is no consensus as to the degree to which biology correlates meaningfully with socially constructed races. There is a pretty strong consensus however that our racial categories are cultural and not natural, and that we could construct other schemes of racial categorization that would be equally biologically meaningful. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 16:12, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * It is a widely accepted view in genetics. It wouldn't be repeatedly mentioned that "race has biological significance" or "race is not biologically meaningless" in the highly authoritative "Nature Genetics" if it wasn't. There also wouldn't be sources that consistently mention that there has been a resurgence of the race concept due to the genetic research from the "Human Genome Project" if it wasn't.


 * But back to the current content dispute. This issue is identical to the issue brought up before with another problematic sentence. That it is:
 * "..written in a way that suggests that the evidence is all on the side of those who claim there is no such thing as race"--
 * Large parts of this article actually has this problem. Including this one. You seemed to agree that the "race has no biological or genetic basis" line should be changed. I did use a very high quality authoritative source for the change, which you reverted. Could you explain in more detail what you felt the problem with my edit was? Was any part of my edit factually inaccurate? What would you write as a replacement for the line in question? BlackHades (talk) 22:28, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Sources that highlight the lack of consensus and the disagreement among scientists in regards to biological races and biological significance
“The empirical data that have been gathered on the topic, however, do seem to largely rule out one scenario: that scientists across the spectrum have reached a consensus that race is a purely social construct without biological underpinning.” Morning, Ann. The nature of race: How scientists think and teach about human difference. University of California Pr, 2011.

"It would appear that two conclusions strongly emerge from research on the status of the race concept in biological anthropology: there is still no consensus on the race concept and there are significant national/regional differences in anthropologists’ attitudes towards ‘race’...Research shows that there is as yet no consensus on the status of the concept among biological anthropologists." Štrkalj, Goran. "The status of the race concept in contemporary biological anthropology: A review." Anthropologist 9.1 (2007): 73-78.

Race, once the central concept in physical anthropology worldwide, now varies in the degree of support it receives in different regions." Lieberman, L, et al. (2004). The race concept in six regions: variation without consensus. Collegium antropologicum, 28(2), 907-921.

“Biomedical scientists are divided in their opinions about race. Some characterize it as “biologically meaningless” or “not based on scientific evidence”, whereas others advocate the use of race in making decisions about medical treatment or the design of research studies.” Jorde, L. B., & Wooding, S. P. (2004). Genetic variation, classification and 'race'. Nature genetics, 36, S28-S33.

“Some have argued that the sequencing of the human genome and related research have provided evidence that the notion of race is biologically meaningless and therefore useless. Others, however, have made the opposite argument, namely that recent studies show that genetic clusters correspond closely with groups defined by self-identified race or ethnicity or by continental ancestry.” Mountain, J. L., & Risch, N. (2004). Assessing genetic contributions to phenotypic differences among 'racial' and 'ethnic' groups. Nature Genetics, 36, S48-S53.

“Some commentators have argued that these patterns of variation provide a biological justification for the use of traditional racial categories. They argue that the continental clusterings correspond roughly with the division of human beings into sub-Saharan Africans; Europeans, western Asians, and northern Africans; eastern Asians; Polynesians and other inhabitants of Oceania; and Native Americans. Other observers disagree, saying that the same data undercut traditional notions of racial groups. They point out, for example, that major populations considered races or subgroups within races do not necessarily form their own clusters.” Race, E. (2005). The use of racial, ethnic, and ancestral categories in human genetics research. American Journal of Human Genetics, 77(4), 519.

“..scientists have continued to often treat groups identified by commonly used racial and ethnic labels as biological categories. Proponents of such classification argue that race and genetic differences are strongly associated, justifying the use of race as a proxy for POPULATION STRUCTURE in the design of experiments and medical application. Specifically, they contend that individuals who are assigned to the same racial category share more of their recent ancestry and therefore are more similar genetically to each other than individuals from different racial categories, and that the accuracy of race as a proxy for ancestry is good enough to be useful as a research variable. But others argue that race is neither a meaningful concept nor a useful heuristic device and even that genetic differences between groups are biologically meaningless or that genetic differences among human populations do not exist.” Bamshad, M., Wooding, S., Salisbury, B. A., & Stephens, J. C. (2004). Deconstructing the relationship between genetics and race. Nature Reviews Genetics, 5(8), 598-609. BlackHades (talk) 21:31, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * This isn't constructive. If you have a high quality reliable tertiary source that supports the content please present that.  By presenting countless sources that you've personally found, it appears that you are doing WP:SYNTHESIS.  Better to stick with one or two sources which are performing the synthesis themselves.  The one tertiary source you've championed before (Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale) contradicts the claims you seem to be making. aprock (talk) 17:14, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * How is it synthesis when several sources are saying the exact same thing? That's not what synthesis is. The list of sources was meant to refute the constant claims by some editors that there is somehow a scientific consensus that there are no biological races and/or race has no biological significance. This is more wishful thinking than actual scientific reality. There is too many high quality review sources that will conflict and contradict such an assertion. Some of the sources even explicitly write the phrase "no consensus". The list of sources was also meant to give a better balance of sources to the ones already provided by WeijiBaikeBianji. For some reason you didn't accuse him of synthesis for his long list of sources but accuse me of it.


 * In regards to the recent article edit change, I did stick to one or two sources. My recent edit, which was reverted by Maunus, was using:


 * Bamshad, M., Wooding, S., Salisbury, B. A., & Stephens, J. C. (2004). Deconstructing the relationship between genetics and race. Nature Reviews Genetics, 5(8), 598-609.


 * This is as high quality of a review source as it gets. There isn't a more authoritative source than this. BlackHades (talk) 21:31, 14 December 2013 (UTC)


 * You appear to be confusing yourself quite throughly. I suspect this is because you are trying to summarize a large number of sources which require expertise which you don't have.  Instead of digging through source after source struggling to come up with your own interpretation of consensus, allow me to suggest you find a sufficiently high level source, and use it instead of trying to synthesize sources yourself. aprock (talk) 04:47, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
 * You are extremely confused. Reread my statement to you again. I'll copy and paste it again. Write a response that demonstrates that you understood what I wrote as it appears you're responding without reading or comprehending my response to you.
 * "In regards to the recent article edit change, I did stick to one or two sources. My recent edit, which was reverted by Maunus, was using:


 * Bamshad, M., Wooding, S., Salisbury, B. A., & Stephens, J. C. (2004). Deconstructing the relationship between genetics and race. Nature Reviews Genetics, 5(8), 598-609.


 * This is as high quality of a review source as it gets. There isn't a more authoritative source than this." BlackHades (talk) 20:05, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

No clue what you're talking about BlackHades. I responded to a comment of yours that presented seven sources, not two. You are likewise source dumping below as well. If the two sources you suggest are the sort of high quality reliable sources that can serve as a basis for the article, please collapse all the other source dumps, and focus on those two sources. aprock (talk) 05:47, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Sources that state that race is biologically meaningful or has biological significance.
<blockquote class="toccolours" style="background:PowderBlue; float:none; margin-left:1em; display:table;">“Two arguments against racial categorization as defined above are firstly that race has no biological basis, and secondly that there are racial differences but they are merely cosmetic, reflecting superficial characteristics such as skin color and facial features that involve a very small number of genetic loci that were selected historically; these superficial differences do not reflect any additional genetic distinctiveness. A response to the first of these points depends on the definition of 'biological'. If biological is defined as genetic then, as detailed above, a decade or more of population genetics research has documented genetic, and therefore biological, differentiation among the races. This conclusion was most recently reinforced by the analysis of Wilson et al. If biological is defined by susceptibility to, and natural history of, a chronic disease, then again numerous studies over past decades have documented biological differences among the races. In this context, it is difficult to imagine that such differences are not meaningful. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive of a definition of 'biological' that does not lead to racial differentiation, except perhaps one as extreme as speciation.” Risch, N., Burchard, E., Ziv, E., & Tang, H. (2002). Categorization of humans in biomedical research: genes, race and disease. Genome Biol, 3(7), 1-12.

<blockquote class="toccolours" style="background:PowderBlue; float:none; margin-left:1em; display:table;">“Current controversies in the field of genetics are provoking a reassessment of claims that race is socially constructed. Drawing upon Bruno Latour's model of how to analyse scientific controversy, this article argues that race is ‘gaining in reality’ in such a way that renders claims about its social construction tenuous and uncertain. Such claims can be seen as failing in two key regards. The first relates to changes in the way genetics is practised and promoted, which are undermining the stability of fundamental assertions that there is ‘no biological basis for race’ or that ‘race does not exist’.“ Hartigan Jr, J. (2008). Is race still socially constructed? The recent controversy over race and medical genetics. Science as Culture, 17(2), 163-193.

<blockquote class="toccolours" style="background:PowderBlue; float:none; margin-left:1em; display:table;">“It is not true that ‘‘racial classification is. . . of virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance’’. Edwards, A. W. (2003). Human genetic diversity: Lewontin's fallacy. BioEssays,25(8), 798-801.

<blockquote class="toccolours" style="background:PowderBlue; float:none; margin-left:1em; display:table;">“However small the racial partition of the total variation may be, if such racial characteristics as there are are highly correlated with other racial characteristics, they are by definition informative, and therefore of taxonomic significance.” Dawkins, R. (2005). The ancestor's tale: a pilgrimage to the dawn of evolution. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

<blockquote class="toccolours" style="background:PowderBlue; float:none; margin-left:1em; display:table;">“Because traditional concepts of race are in turn correlated with geography, it is inaccurate to state that race is “biologically meaningless”. Jorde, L. B., & Wooding, S. P. (2004). Genetic variation, classification and 'race'. Nature genetics, 36, S28-S33.

<blockquote class="toccolours" style="background:PowderBlue; float:none; margin-left:1em; display:table;">“As those ancestral origins in many cases have a correlation, albeit often imprecise, with self-identified race or ethnicity, it is not strictly true that race or ethnicity has no biological connection.” Collins, F. S. (2004). What we do and don't know about 'race', 'ethnicity', genetics and health at the dawn of the genome era. Nature genetics, 36, S13-S15.

<blockquote class="toccolours" style="background:PowderBlue; float:none; margin-left:1em; display:table;">“Hamilton's analysis immediately falsifies the widely-circulated argument by geneticist Richard Lewontin that the race concept should be abandoned as of no scientific value since 'only' 10-15 percent of genetic diversity exists between populations while 85-90 percent exists within populations. However, as we saw in Chapter 3, a 12.5 percent genetic variance between two populations implies within-population kinship equivalent to that found between grandparent and grandchild or between aunt and nephew. Lewontin's genetic estimate is not only compatible with the existence of high ethnic kinship, it is a rough measure of it.” Salter, F. (2003). On genetic interests. Family, Ethny and Humanity in an Age of Mass Migration. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main ua. pg. 92 BlackHades (talk) 21:31, 14 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Here you are misrepresenting Hartigan's position which is basically the same as Marks'. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 00:26, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Sources that show the resurgence of the race concept and growing interest in genetic differences between races in the post “Human Genome Project” era
<blockquote class="toccolours" style="background:PowderBlue; float:none; margin-left:1em; display:table;">"although the simplistic biological understanding of race and ethnicity associated with the eugenics movement may be dead, the far more subtle presumption that racial and ethnic distinctions nonetheless capture “some” meaningful biological differences is alive and flourishing..It was hoped by some that the sequencing of the human genome would undermine the view that racial and ethnic classifications have biological significance..Ironically, the sequencing of the human genome has instead renewed and strengthened interest in biological differences between racial and ethnic populations, as genetic variants associated with disease susceptibility (Collins and McKusick 2001), environmental response (Olden and Guthrie 2001), and drug metabolism (Nebert and Menon 2001) are identified, and frequencies of these variants in different populations are reported." Foster, Morris W., and Richard R. Sharp. "Race, ethnicity, and genomics: social classifications as proxies of biological heterogeneity." Genome Research 12.6 (2002): 844-850.

<blockquote class="toccolours" style="background:PowderBlue; float:none; margin-left:1em; display:table;">"The study of genomics has resulted in a dizzying back-and-forth stance on race - ﬁrst denial of any racial difference at the level of DNA, to later focusing attention on these differences...This renewed interest in the biology of race is surprising given that representatives of an array of natural and social sciences, including leading geneticists, once whole-heartedly denounced prior racial biomedicine." Bliss, Catherine. "Racial taxonomy in genomics." Social Science & Medicine 73.7 (2011): 1019-1027.

<blockquote class="toccolours" style="background:PowderBlue; float:none; margin-left:1em; display:table;">"These ongoing practices have found new legitimacy in recent reanalyses of human genetic variation that seem to reverse Lewontin's claims. The completion of the Human Genome Project has facilitated large-scale genomic analysis of human populations, much of which uses "ancestry" to map genetics onto traditional racial categories (see Bolnick et al. 2007; Dupré 2008; Nelson 2008). This all contributes to what Troy Duster (2005) has identified as the molecular reinscription of race." Whitmarsh, I., & Jones, D. D. S. (Eds.). (2010). What's the Use of Race?: Modern Governance and the Biology of Difference. MIT press.

<blockquote class="toccolours" style="background:PowderBlue; float:none; margin-left:1em; display:table;">“Partly due to advancements in the Human Genome Project and related technologies, the idea that race/ethnicity does have a genetic basis is enjoying a resurgence. A rise in the use of race in genetic studies has left many researchers who are committed to a social conceptualization of race at a loss regarding how to evaluate these developments.” Frank, R. (2007). What to make of it? The (Re) emergence of a biological conceptualization of race in health disparities research. Social science & medicine, 64(10), 1977-1983. BlackHades (talk) 07:12, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Sources that show the race concept has little support
<div style="text-indent: -; margin-left: ;margin-bottom:0.4em;">1. "By emphasizing the close genetic affinities between members of different groups, researchers can reduce the widespread misconception that substantial genetic differences separate groups (Wilson et al. 2001; Olson 2002; Jorde and Wooding 2004)."

<div style="text-indent: -; margin-left: ;margin-bottom:0.4em;">2. "There is broad consensus across the social and biological sciences that groups of humans typically referred to as races are not very different from one another. Two individuals from the same race could have more genetic variation between them than individuals from different races. Race is therefore not a particularly useful category to use when searching for the genetics of biological traits or even medical vulnerabilities, despite widespread assumptions."

<div style="text-indent: -; margin-left: ;margin-bottom:0.4em;">3. "Most researchers who examine genetic differences between populations take care to point out that the differences they observe reflect the geographic origins, reproductive history and migrations of these groups, not markers of some essential differences between them."

<div style="text-indent: -; margin-left: ;margin-bottom:0.4em;">4. "There has been a relatively stable cross-disciplinary consensus on the ontology of 'race', described thus by Gannett: 'The apparent consensus view among academics from diverse disciplines — the humanities, the social sciences, and the biological sciences — is that biological races do not exist, at least in humans. Biological race is a socially-constructed category". (Smart et al. 2012 at 31)

<div style="text-indent: -; margin-left: ;margin-bottom:0.4em;">5. "The widely accepted consensus among evolutionary biologists and genetic anthropologists is that biologically identifiable human races do not exist; Homo sapiens constitute a single species, and have been so since their evolution in Africa and throughout their migration around the world. Population genetics provides the best evidence for this conclusion: The genetic variation within a socially recognized human population is greater than the genetic variation between population groups. (Lee, Mountain & Koenig 2001)

<div style="text-indent: -; margin-left: ;margin-bottom:0.4em;">6. "Debates about race and ethnicity have changed in one important respect—today nearly all geneticists reject the idea that biological differences belie racial and ethnic distinctions. Geneticists have abandoned the search for "Indian" or "African" genes, for example, and few if any accept racial typologies."

<div style="text-indent: -; margin-left: ;margin-bottom:0.4em;">7. "In the opinion of biologists and medical professionals, race is scientifically meaningless."

<div style="text-indent: -; margin-left: ;margin-bottom:0.4em;">8. "Current genetic data also refute the notion that races are genetically distinct human populations. There are no gene variants that are present in all individuals of one population group and in no individuals of another. No sharp genetic boundaries can be drawn between human population groups. However, frequencies of genetic variants and haplotypes differ across the world."

<div style="text-indent: -; margin-left: ;margin-bottom:0.4em;">9. "Given the long history of gene flow among various groups that make up Homo sapiens, the notion that one could precisely define a subset of individuals and say that they are somehow separate from the rest of the human race is clearly not scientifically defensible. The history of the human species over the last 100,000 years is sometimes depicted as a branching tree, but this image implies that the branches are separated from one another. We are much more of a trellis than a tree; or perhaps a wisteria vine is a better metaphor." (Collins 2010 at 154)

<div style="text-indent: -; margin-left: ;margin-bottom:0.4em;">10. "Data from many sources have shown that humans are genetically homogeneous and that genetic variation tends to be shared widely among populations. Genetic variation is geographically structured, as expected from the partial isolation of human populations during much of their history. Because traditional concepts of race are in turn correlated with geography, it is inaccurate to state that race is "biologically meaningless." On the other hand, because they have been only partially isolated, human populations are seldom demarcated by precise genetic boundaries. Substantial overlap can therefore occur between populations, invalidating the concept that populations (or races) are discrete types."

<div style="text-indent: -; margin-left: ;margin-bottom:0.4em;">11. "Race remains an inflammatory issue, both socially and scientifically. Fortunately, modern human genetics can deliver the salutary message that human populations share most of their genetic variation and that there is no scientific support for the concept that human populations are discrete, nonoverlapping entities."

<div style="text-indent: -; margin-left: ;margin-bottom:0.4em;">12. "Modern human genetic variation does not structure into phylogenetic subspecies (geographical 'races'), nor do the taxa from the most common racial classifications of classical anthropology qualify as 'races'".

<div style="text-indent: -; margin-left: ;margin-bottom:0.4em;">13. "Careful analyses have demonstrated that definitions of racial and/or ethnic variables in biomedical research are inconsistent, and are based on mixtures of biological, social and economical criteria. It is unclear whether there might be practical advantages in describing humans as if they were divided into biological races, even though we know they are not, but the burden of proof is now on those who say so.


 * Note the complete quotes from (Jorde & Wooding) and (Foster & Sharp). — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 06:05, 15 December 2013 (UTC) Modified by ArtifexMayhem (talk) 00:20, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
 * We don't appear to be arguing on the same point of matter here. Your list of sources are saying most genetic differences are within group and not between groups, that races are not biologically distinct, that there are no non-overlapping human groups, that human groups do not form subspecies, etc. To all the points above, yes there is scientific consensus. I was never trying to refute any of the points above. I actually agree with nearly all of your sources.


 * It's also important to note that when some scientists are saying "biological races do not exist" they're often referring to the definition that race equals subspecies or that race equals genetic distinction, in which case, yes biological races would not exist. But the great conflict within science is the great ambiguity of the term "race". The argument that there is some biological significance in race, that race is not biologically meaningless, and that race is not a purely social construct does have quite a bit of support. This is actually the majority view in biology. It is also a minority but significant view in the social sciences.


 * To the points above that have scientific consensus, these points are important and certainly should be mentioned in the article, but what should also be mentioned is the lack of scientific consensus regarding the level of significance regarding biological differences between races. The current phrasing that "race has no biological or genetic basis" is completely misleading. It gives the impression that all scientists reject any biological or genetic significance of race which would be absolutely not true. BlackHades (talk) 21:25, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
 * No, in genetics there is ongoing discussion. It is by no means widely accepted, but there is also no current consensus. In biological anthropology it is widely accepted that it doesn't and there is no ongoing discussion. You keep misrepresenting or misunderstanding the status and the sources.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 00:39, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I never said there was a consensus in genetics. I said the argument that race has some biological significance is the majority view in biology. Surveys done on the scientific field will support this. Also the fact that the statement "race has biological significant" or "race is not biologically meaningless" is repeatedly mentioned in the highly authoritative "Nature Genetics", demonstrates it's a very widely held position. This is not some small insignificant journal. This is as ultra mainstream of a source as it gets. I hope you're aware how difficult the peer review process of "Nature" is and how heavily scrutinized all submitted papers are. This journal has the highest rejection rate of all peer review journals with over 90% of submitted papers rejected. It's rather silly to suggest that non-widely held views is actually going to get pass the peer review process of "Nature".


 * In regards to biological anthropology, I already presented you with two reliable review sources that strongly disagrees with you. Including:
 * <blockquote class="toccolours" style="background:PowderBlue; float:none; margin-left:1em; display:table;">"It would appear that two conclusions strongly emerge from research on the status of the race concept in biological anthropology: there is still no consensus on the race concept and there are significant national/regional differences in anthropologists’ attitudes towards ‘race’...Research shows that there is as yet no consensus on the status of the concept among biological anthropologists." Štrkalj, Goran. "The status of the race concept in contemporary biological anthropology: A review." Anthropologist 9.1 (2007): 73-78.
 * The Lieberman paper shows the same results as well. I don't see how I'm misrepresenting the sources here. I'm stating exactly what reliable sources say. Can you point to a single reliable source with a comprehensive overview of positions in physical anthropology and concludes there is consensus that physical anthropology rejects race having any biological significance? If you can't, it's clear you're the one misrepresenting the sources. BlackHades (talk) 03:40, 19 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, the same results; that anthropologists outside the western world have a different view of race, in significant part due to ideological and cultural reasons. I think presenting this information in a neutral manner is reasonable.  Your attempt to use these studies to indicate that there is meaningful debate on the issue is misuse of sources. aprock (talk) 07:53, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Sourcing for the "Complications and various definitions of the concept" section
The last two sentences of the "Complications and various definitions of the concept" section (permalink) do not seem to be supported by the source provided:

Where does Bamshad makes the claim that "racial categories correlate with biological traits" or that there is "no consensus about whether racial categories can be considered to have significance?" All I see is the suggestion that "In some cases, the accuracy of these inferences [race or ethnicity] might be adequate" but in many cases they will "lessen the predictive value of clinical inference." Am I missing something in the source that supports the text? — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 02:31, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * If it didnt correlate it wouldnt be possible to make inferences that are sometimes adequate at all. The question is how good the correlation is, and here Bamshad et al. are very clear thatthey consider it to not be good enough to be useful. IN making this argument they are of course arguing against others who do find it to be useful, hence the claim which is also easily citeable in other sources that there is no consensus about how useful or signficant the genetic cluster concept of racial categories is. This is the current race dabet that all the main recent sources are engaged in. You can get this from Marks also, and from Risch/Edwards etc. I dont know of a single contemporary source (except for some vey extreme social science sources) that would deny that there is any correlation between biological markers and racial categories. The question is whether the correlation is practically useful and/or taxonomically significant.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 00:56, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I did a really poor job of explaining my concerns. Please allow me to try again...
 * I think "biological traits" is to broad and "phenotype" is jargon that doesn't really help explain what the correlated biological traits are. E.g., Are they observed difference (skin, hair, eye color, etc)? Are more complex traits (e.g., IQ) included? Does the question of "significance" relate to more than a possible use as a proxy that may or may not be useful in medicine? I think the section should be more specific. I could be wrong. — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 22:57, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I used biological traits exactly to cover all of those traits from hair color to Mt-DNA haplotypes. IQ correlates with racial groupings but here the relevant question is whether that is rightly considered a biological trait or not. Significance relates to all possible significances, from taxonomical to applications in medicine or forensics. Sometimes one has to be general in order to not get into the complicated discussions to quickly. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 23:48, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Not getting into complicated discussions to quickly is an excellent point. I withdraw my objections. — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 00:39, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Sourcing for a different part of the "Complications and various definitions of the concept" section
Also this edit here appears to be editor synthesis. There is not a single citation for the entire paragraph. Per WP:NOR and WP:BURDEN, I have to revert this paragraph. Maunus, I hope you don't take this the wrong way because I do think there are several good points in your paragraph that should be mentioned in the article in some form, but it should be in a way consistent with wikipedia policy. BlackHades (talk) 04:45, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * It should all be pretty easily citeable for anyone who cares to do the work. I meant it to show the lines a loing which I think the article needs to move. My guess is that you have issues with the final statement that shows "race realism" as a minority viewpoint and the combined social construction+ biological significance argument as a mainstream view (the othe rmainstream view being no biological significance). What is there now however, though cited, is just gobbledegook explaining "social construction" in a way that hardly makes any sense.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 00:48, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
 * You continue to misinterpret my intent. You and I agree far more so than you think. I actually largely agreed with the points you were trying to get across but the wording was a little off. But with no cited sources, it made it impossible to fix. With no sources, I would have had to use synthesis myself to try to fix your synthesis and that's just not the correct way it should be done. I'm not sure why you continue to make inaccurate assumptions of my intent especially when I clearly wrote this to you:


 * "I agree. Race would not be a solely biological category. The conflict in the scientific field would be scientists that view race as both biological and social, and scientists that view race as an entirely social abstract."--BlackHades


 * Isn't this the same points you were trying to get across? When I have the time, I will go through high level reviews and write up a paragraph that should be largely in line with your edit. BlackHades (talk) 02:25, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Its called social construct not social abstract, but otherwise that looks to me as a reasonable statement of the debate - though a lot less informative than what I wrote. Firstly I think the real question is about the degree of biological significance, not mostly about either or. Then I think it is valid to further say that the view that race is primarily a biological category is aminority fringe view. Most geneticists acknowledge that racial categories or memberships cannot be defined biologically, but is necessarily defined socially. The question then becomes whether the genetic variables that correlate with this social classification are useful for different biological tasks such as combating disease, identifying people's remains or understanding human population history. That is where the real disagreement starts. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 22:27, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I mostly agree with your mentioned points. Race would be largely social. The disagreement in science is if it is entirely social or if it has some biological significance. The agreement in science such as that most genetic differences are within group not between them, that races are not biologically distinct, and that there are no non-overlapping human groups. These points would have scientific consensus and should be mentioned. But it should also mention the part that has no agreement and has no consensus. Such as whether race has some biological significance, whether race should be used as a factor in medicine and treatment.


 * Again, I hope you understand my removal of your paragraph was not really because I disagreed with your points. I largely agreed with them. It's that with no cited sources, it made it impossible to adjust. We would have had to go back and forth making edit alterations with no specific sources to go off of and I didn't think that would have been the appropriate route to take. I do intend to take the time to write up a paragraph using quality sources that should be roughly in line with the points you were going for. BlackHades (talk) 23:11, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I think we do largely agree. I think you should reinsert what I wrote with sources and change the wordings to something you like better. Chances are I'll like it too.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 23:27, 21 December 2013 (UTC)


 * User:ArtifexMayhem emailed me last week and asked if I might be willing to look at a few sources for him. I suspect he did so because we once worked together a couple years ago on another article and because I was an administrator that he knew. Anyway, I spent some time today reading the articles he sent (basically, it was all of the perspectives section of ) and found it quite fascinating. I would like to participate in future discussion on this talk page, but I also wanted to disclose that I did not simply stumble in unknowing that there has been a history with this article. Reading the past few archives makes it clear that discussion has been...unpleasant, but also that there hasn't been any discussion in the past week. May I ask where the sticking points are? Best, <b style="color:navy;">NW</b> ( Talk ) 01:51, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The sticking point is that the the rewrite of the section that I wrote needs to be supplied with sources, and the wordings that are claimed to be "argumentative" should be improved. BlackHades is unlikely to do this, so probably either I will have to do it myself someday when I have time, or someone else can beat me to it. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 18:43, 31 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm not convinced ' edit should have been rejected solely for lack of inline references, but I am sympathetic to the request for citations and will try to find some time to add them (I'm kinda crazed IRL right now so no promises). Once that happens I think the real "sticking" points of the edit will appear. These will most likely revolve around questions of WP:WEIGHT and our apparent need to qualify many statements with expressions of doubt (e.g., others argue that, there is no agreement, etc). Regardless, with or without the edit in question, I find the Complications and various definitions of the concept section does very little to explain the "complications" or the "various definitions" of the race concept. If there really are multiple mainstream definitions of "race" then we should provide some indication of what they are and how they compare to the other definitions. If "race" has a single mainstream definition then what is it? And what are some of the "complications" with the concept? Is it complicated because scientists have to yet settle on one of several competing theories, or is it because different fields use the term in slightly different ways, or something else? Like most of the article (including the title), the section appears to have some type of multiple personality disorder. Every time I read this article I become more and more convinced it should be nuked from orbit and written from scratch. But like I said, things are a bit crazed right now so maybe it's just me. Thanks for not running away screaming:) — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 17:31, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Rewriting it would be good, but I am myself very relcutant to undertake such an effort as writing even a single sentence here tends to prove extremely tedious. For example it seems extremely weird that there is no sections at all about the social signficance of race in different societies - from racism to segregation to social correlates of racial categories. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 18:06, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I do intend on working on the rewrite, but like others, have become extremely busy IRL. Which is why I've been absent from wikipedia completely for the past few weeks. But I should have something to present in the near future. BlackHades (talk) 20:47, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

VBRS (variant/breed/race/subspecies) ?
Its interesting experiment to replace all the occurrences of "race" word with "melanilistic colour variant" or "breed"... and thus throw away majority of the emotions coined with the word race. What the article could look like then ? Do people have melanilistic color variants like wolves (black wolf) or big cats (black panther) ? Could we distinguish groups of people based on that trait like we do with other species ? Or maybe our species has breeds like dogs horses etc ? And final question what really should be a definition of race ? That is a phenotypical or genetical concept. There could be population very diverse genetically, even to the point of different species (Animals That Seem Identical May Be Completely Different Species) or there could be a very distinctive groups within one species that have only a few difference in genes, but all those different alleles are producing different characteristics like color or adult animal size and also maybe to the point that two of these populations do not mix. Next, I know historically the race concept has been drifting with meaning and with time encompassing bigger and bigger cohorts of people. But I think this is the effects of how people knew with time what is the extent of human variation. If in our times there would be other sub-species of humans living in Africa or Indonesia like Homo erectus etc. with clearly different mental capability and other phenotypic traits but they could mix with all other people living as that must be a reality some time ago then I think we consider all variation that we have now a one race and these now extinct subspecies as another races. Or if there would be in the past a successful experiment (or accident at the very distant past like 6 thousand years ago) to kill all black or non-European descent people (Tuskegee syphilis experiment). Then the variation would diminish and people (especially if that would be a long time in the past) would coin a new 'race' boundaries that would be similar to the original concept. Likewise in maybe some isolated island on pacific there would be concept of race (before white people came in) distinguishing phenotypes that for someone who didn't grow up with the people would be identical and not "worth" of categorizing. So in my opinion race is not a social construct in its all entirety - it is just measure of known human variation. It is the same like let's say in other species. Suppose that we discover a new specimen of lets say a tree/frog/monkey in some inaccessible part of rain forest in Congo or Brazil and first we see some population and we could draw a distinction between them (and we know that these are the same species) and give to them some Latin third name like in us Homo sapiens *sapiens*. And no one sees anything wrong with that. But then as we go deeper in the forest we see individuals with more diverging features and they diverge in the same extent that our initial known population - so we change the boundaries of race/breed/variant/subspecies and call our initial population as one and then (until of course we encounter again similar situation) we proceed to divide the rest based on updated knowledge about all intra-species variability we know. And there is also in-group variability. If we see a new plant or rodent species that their individuals are very different like in melanin content or size, but they live as one population and are breeding between them, we would not call the differences a VBRS (variant/breed/race/subspecies) but if there would be a feature of the habitat like a river or mountain that these individuals cannot easily cross (even if there would be some areas of mixing) then we do our distinctions. So in case of humans there were situations all over the world where one tribe or nation consider people living on the other side of river or forest or mountain to be not "like them" a different kind of people or even not people at all. But these people living amongst themselves cannot have knowledge that there are vastly different populations on earth and in comparison to them their distinction does not hold up. The case with VBRS is to have a relatively small number of them, otherwise we run in to paradox that every individual is VBRS on itself. But now we do know the whole earth, we do now what human variability is in terms of genotype and phenotype. So now coined distinctions are not prone to the same mistakes as those in the past. But if we want an answer to question are there human races or not we must first determine to what definition of race we are answering. Are we considering phenotypes as these are now, or are we considering the human migration process, genetics, etc... Or maybe a law is the criterion like in USA when you have populations that are phenotypically different like AA/blacks together with those based on culture like Hispanics... This are a very distinct concepts that are to itself like concept of fruit based on biological features and concept of fruit that is in EU law where carrot is considered a fruit. When I read such articles of discussions about race I feel like I'm reading quarrels where there are distinct categories fruits and vegetables or all things we eat are equal and everyone who thinks different is an ignorant foodist. So people in their heads are holding very different conceptions of race and what it shouldn't be. So if they read any scientific paper where the word is used and it is not debunked in the same paragraph (but surprisingly against our species only, we are blind of dog racism or horse racism... we aren't ashamed that we ignorantly categorize these equal beings into a races, yes ?) the person who writes it, if such person is in scientific position he risks his job very much because people already know what is a race and only thing what they need is a prayer from scientific community that is pedestal to their beliefs.

And there is another question of ethics. It's like with the question: "Can we make a ham sandwich from Dalai Lama?" The answer is yes of course. It could be done with the same tools that we use to work on pigs or cows in our slaughterhouses. There is nothing in reality, in laws of physics or logic itself to make this endeavor impossible like it is impossible with let's say a perpetuum mobile of the second kind (not to say the first). There would be none of cosmic string destroying the apparatus to make meat from human flesh (Did a Time-Traveling Bird Sabotage the Collider?). But question - is it ethical to do so, may have a very different answer. So is it ethical to distinguish races of our species is different question of that if it could be coherently done. But people really want that there would be some feature of the world that would prohibit making races of human beings. But that thing would also prohibit of making such disgust to dogs and horses. pwjb (talk) 12:35, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Mainstream nature of Nicholas Wade's view on race
Nicholas Wade's view on race is a mainstream pro-race  view that should be added in for our articles on race and proponent views.174.95.171.228 (talk) 20:23, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Nicholas Wade is a journalist and author, who is reporting on other peoples research. The research he reports on regarding race and the view points associated with it is already. Wade's personal views which is what he reports in his book are essentially irrelevant, whether they are mainstream or not. If we started including popularized accounts by laymen then the page will quickly become unwieldy. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 20:56, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Nope. Not an appropriate source for this article. (I've met Wade at a conference, and I also would not characterize his personal view as mainstream, but rather as old-fashioned.) -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 02:08, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Please explain how Nicholas Wade's view is non-mainstream because the majority of experts on race like Razib Khan, James Thompson etc. think otherwise...174.95.171.228 (talk) 21:53, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
 * .Razib Khan is a graduate student who specializes in cats. Please quit going on an on about him, and read some actual academic literature on race published by academic presses. Yes his viewpoint is one of several mainstream viewpoints, because there is currently no clear consensus among scholars about how best to understand the relation between genetic clusters and the concept of race.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 21:57, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Razib Khan is known as an expert in population genetics and human biodiversity by the likes of John Hawks, Gregory Cochrane, Henry Harpending among others...174.95.171.228 (talk) 23:48, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Then I am sure he will soon publish something about that topic in a peerreiewed journal then. At that point it will make sense to continue this conversation.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 14:12, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

The "Complications and various definitions of the concept" needs to be tossed out or extensively re-written.
Primarily this section does not do what its title suggests. It seems nothing more than an opinion piece from what would be termed in the United States a left wing political slant.

"There is a wide consensus that the racial categories that are common in everyday usage are socially constructed, and that racial groups cannot be biologically defined.[17][18][19][20][21][22]" [Emphasis added]"

This statement is either false or misleading, depending on how it is read, on account of the last portion of the sentence. There is no "consensus" that human racial groups could not be biologically defined; I provide references below. Whether common groups which are called races in e.g., the U.S. can not be is a distinct matter.

I am going to rewrite this as:

"There is no consensus as to whether there are human biological races [],[],[],[],[],[],[],[]; many argue that  racial categories as used, for example, in the U.S. are socially constructed and cannot be biologically defined'''.[17][18][19][20][21][22]".

If there are any objections to this let me know.174.97.231.103 (talk) 18:27, 28 March 2014 (UTC)John

Kaszycka, K. A., Štrkalj, G., & Strzałko, J. (2009). Current views of European anthropologists on race: Influence of educational and ideological background. American Anthropologist, 111(1), 43-56. Kaszycka, K. A., & Strzałko, J. (2003). Race: Tradition and convenience, or taxonomic reality? More on the race concept in Polish anthropology Lieberman, L., Stevenson, B. W., & Reynolds, L. T. (1989). Race and anthropology: A core concept without consensus. Anthropology & education quarterly, 20(2), 67-73. Morning, A. (2011). The nature of race: How scientists think and teach about human difference. University of California Pr. Štrkalj, G. (2007). The status of the race concept in contemporary biological anthrop Strkalj, G., Ramsey, S., & Wilkinson, A. T. (2008). Anatomists’ attitudes towards the concept of race. South African Medical Journal, 94(2), 90. Wang, Q., trkalj, G., & Sun, L. (2003). On the concept of race in Chinese biological anthropology: alive and well. Current anthropology, 44(3), 403-403.

Hippofrank's edits
I will post my proposed edits here. If no one objects within 24 hours I will finalize the edits. I expect to fight an editing war on some of these issues, but I hope we can more or less agree on others.

Section: "Complications and various definitions of the concept".

Edit #1. 3/28/2014

Original: "There is a wide consensus that the racial categories that are common in everyday usage are socially constructed, and that racial groups cannot be biologically defined.[17][18][19][20][21][22]"...

''Note for edit 1: I changed this because the original was either misleading or false depending on how it was read. The original implied that there was a consensus against the existence of biological races. This is false. What is true is that many people agree that certain commonly used racial categories in the U.S. e.g., Asians do not characterize biologically scientifically defined races.'' Hippofrank (talk) 19:05, 28 March 2014 (UTC)Hippofrank

Edited Version: ''While there is no consensus as to whether there are human biological races    , it is agreed that gene frequencies vary among human populations, some of which correspond more or less to traditional racial groupings. For this reason there is no current consensus about whether traditional racial categories can be considered to have significance for understanding human genetic variation. . There is a consensus that certain commonly used racial categories as used in certain countries, for example, Asians in the U.S., are socially constructed and cannot be biologically defined. Regarding these non-biologically definable racial categories, some scholars argue that they correlate with biologically conditioned traits (e.g. phenotype) to some degree and therefore can be genetically informative.''

Edit #2. 3/28/2014 3:26 Eastern

Original: " When people define and talk about a particular conception of race, they create a social reality through which social categorization is achieved.[29] In this sense, races are said to be social constructs.[30] These constructs develop within various legal, economic, and sociopolitical contexts, and may be the effect, rather than the cause, of major social situations.[31] While race is understood to be a social construct by many, most scholars agree that race has real material effects in the lives of people through institutionalized practices of preference and discrimination."

''Note for edit 2: This statement is fairly confused, so it needs to be changed. First, the term "social construct" is ambiguous; in common parlance it can mean "not a biological entity" while in philosophical parlance it can mean "not a natural kind". For example, in the philosophy of biology species are often said to be social constructs.''

Edit #3. 3/28/2014 3:30 Eastern

Original: "[1] Socioeconomic factors, in combination with early but enduring views of race, have led to considerable suffering within disadvantaged racial groups. [2] [32] Racial discrimination often coincides with racist mindsets, whereby the individuals and ideologies of one group come to perceive the members of an outgroup as both racially defined and morally inferior.[33] [3]  As a result, racial groups possessing relatively little power often find themselves excluded or oppressed, while hegemonic individuals and institutions are charged with holding racist attitudes.[34] [4]  Racism has led to many instances of tragedy, including slavery and genocide.[35]

''Note for edit 3: This whole paragraph needs to be rewritten. The first statement above is disputed. It has not been established that views of race, per se, have caused "considerable suffering within disadvantaged racial". This, rather, is a theoretical model. The second statement is somewhere between conjectural and inflammatory; members of defined outgroups (e.g., "their family), in general, are not preferenced; this is only tantamount to seeing them as "morally inferior"; this second statement also confuses moral inferiority with trait inferiority; the third statement is circular because " groups possessing relatively little power" and "excluded or oppressed"  are typically operationalized the same way.   The fourth statement is problematic because "racism" has no one definition; there is no consensus on what it is.  One can only say "racism in some senses".''

Proposed Edited Version (for edit 2,3): Regardless of the biological status of race, many scholars believe that the act of racial categorization can have socially significant effects on the lives of people through, for example, institutionalized practices of discrimination. [31] They believe that the act of employing racial classifications has led to considerable suffering within disadvantaged racial groups. From this perspective, racial classifications reinforce tendencies to discriminate on the basis of ingroup and outgroup, tendencies which can lead to the oppressed and exclusion if the groups being discriminated against possesses relatively little power. These scholars have also argued that beliefs about the biological reality of race condition racism, understood as the belief in inherent racial superiority and inferiority.


 * Am I to take it that the proposed edits are supported by the footnotes as shown in the draft here on the talk page? Do you have the sources at hand? -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 21:10, 28 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes, let's go one sentence at a time. The first sentence clarifies that there is no consensus concerning the existence of biological races.

''While there is no consensus as to whether there are human biological races   , it is agreed that gene frequencies vary among human populations, some of which correspond more or less to traditional racial groupings ."Hippofrank (talk) 22:31, 29 March 2014 (UTC)Hippofrank

[13-17]

Kaszycka, K. A., Štrkalj, G., & Strzałko, J. (2009). Current views of European anthropologists on race: Influence of educational and ideological background. American Anthropologist, 111(1), 43-56.

Lieberman, L., Stevenson, B. W., & Reynolds, L. T. (1989). Race and anthropology: A core concept without consensus. Anthropology & education quarterly, 20(2), 67-73.

Morning, A. (2011). The nature of race: How scientists think and teach about human difference. University of California Pr.

Wang, Q., trkalj, G., & Sun, L. (2003). On the concept of race in Chinese biological anthropology: alive and well. Current anthropology, 44(3), 403-403.

Štrkalj, G. (2007). The status of the race concept in contemporary biological anthropology: A review. Anthropologist, 9(1), 73-78.

[18]

Hochman, A. (2013). Racial discrimination: How not to do it. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 44(3), 278-286.


 * This is an example of synthesis. Instead of constructing one sentence about two different topics, from different sources, allow me to suggest you start with 2-4 high quality secondary sources, summarizing what those sources say.  If you can't find some high quality secondary sources to uses as a basis, I'm sure those can be dug up. aprock (talk) 23:08, 29 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Ok. I can just use four of the first five references, since they say the same. For example Kaszycka et al. (2009) state:

"Advances in human genome research brought about an increasing number of discoveries of mutated alleles responsible for various metabolic changes, whereas the frequency of these alleles has displayed interpopulational differences. If there were differences between the “white” and “black” U.S. residents—for example, alleles of genes called PCSK9 (Cohen et al. 2006) or ApoE4 associated with LDL metabolism and indirectly the risk of heart disease—they were easy to label as “racial” differences (Burchard et al. 2003).... In that the argument proposed that knowledge of the frequency of alleles in individual distinguishable populations was of practical importance in the treatment of some diseases, it was quite correct, although this still did not make a population a race (Hoffman 2005). Thus, interpopulational diversity of the contents of the human genome discovered during the research is not an argument for the existence of races but merely for polymorphism, the range and determinants of which are worth investigating also for medical purposes (Jones 2001; Rotman 2005; Schwartz 2001)."

The idea is that it's trivially true that the populations called races differ in gene frequency. But whether these populations constitute biological races is a more complex and contentious issue. So, I will just change that to:

"There is no consensus as to whether there are biological races in the human species   .   And there is widespread consensus that many commonly used racial categories are socially constructed in the sense of not being biologically delineated      .   Nonetheless, it is generally agreed that those groups which are called races vary in gene frequencies.  Because of this, there is no current consensus as to whether these groups can be considered to have significance for understanding human genetic variation. "

These are excellent edits based on the best, mainstream sources. Go ahead.74.14.29.177 (talk) 06:10, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

If they all say the same thing, then I would suggest using the highest quality source, include page numbers, and an excerpt of the text you are paraphrasing. aprock (talk) 00:49, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
 * The above seems to be the simplest and most balanced way of stating things. The main points are:

(a) There is little agreement as to whether there are human biological races. (b) There is much agreement that some/many common racial categories are not biologically defined. (c) There is general agreement that groups called races differ in genes frequencies. (d) There is no agreement as to whether groups called races have have significance for understanding human genetic variation.

A more elaborate discussion is really needed, one which distinguishes between the various debates about race. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hippofrank (talk • contribs) 01:37, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Please pick a couple secondary sources (your excerpt above lists at least seven). Please include page numbers for each source. If you feel up to it, please consider adding an excerpt from the sources you think are the highest quality sources that you are basing your content on. aprock (talk) 04:10, 2 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes, the current mainstream secondary sources generally do a good job of digging into the data and relating the data to various issues that have been controversial over the years. I have several of the best sources at hand, as do other editors who have this article on their watchlists. Exact citations of particular sources are very helpful, as is signing comments posted to article talk pages. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 14:06, 2 April 2014 (UTC)


 * It is false that there is any consensus that "racial groups" traditionally defined vary in gene frequencies, or inversely that gene frequency clusters correspond more or less to traditional racial groupings. See e.g. this special issue of AJPA, and particularly this article Hunley, K. L., Healy, M. E., & Long, J. C. (2009). The global pattern of gene identity variation reveals a history of long‐range migrations, bottlenecks, and local mate exchange: implications for biological race. American journal of physical anthropology, 139(1), 35-46. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 18:09, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Image

PlasticSpatula5 (talk) 10:15, 4 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Survey's are not reliable source for scientific topics. aprock (talk) 11:48, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

What else do you propose? Editor:Maunus's personal opinion? PlasticSpatula5 (talk) 12:11, 4 April 2014 (UTC)


 * It is logically invalid to suppose that because this or that pattern of opinion is discovered in a survey, therefore the facts of the world are like the plurality opinion discovered in the survey. Until we know a lot more about the survey sample, and how representative it is of the population being surveyed, we don't even know if the plurality opinion reported in the survey is actually the plurality opinion of the population of interest. And we don't know whether the population that the survey purported to sample was an informed population on the issues asked about in the survey, and so on. There are already plenty of very good high-quality, reliable secondary sources about the facts that underlie the statements in the article text here, and those are what we should rely on (by Wikipedia content policy) to continue improving the article. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 14:48, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

PlasticSpatula5 (talk) 16:19, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Palaeoanthropology and Race
While the scientific consensus is human races do not exist today, it is very much the opposite for the past. The current article fails to touch upon this. At least, most palaeo-anthropologists consider there to have been human races as "morphologically distinct populations" that existed throughout the Pleistocene:

""To see true 'racial' variation in humans, one has to go to the fossil record. It is the Neandertals, the Ngandong people, the archaic East Asians, and possibly others that reflect the original regional Eurasian adaptations of humans." - Smith, F. H. [2010]. "Species, Populations, and Assimilation in Later Human Evolution". In: A Companion to Biological Anthropology. Larsen, C. S. (Ed.). Wiley-Blackwell."

""Human geographic variation obviously exists, but it is not racial. Modern paleoanthropology and genetics are among the disciplines that have shown that there is no taxonomy in the human species below the species level. They also show that the present poorly reflects the past. Neandertal morphology and genetics, and genetic evidence of other distinct groups, suggest far more population structure in the past. It is likely that for much of the Pleistocene the human species had races. But, whether or not races appeared in the past, they did not persist. With only some exceptions, much of the Pleistocene human variation did not survive the enormous population expansions and replacements of the latest Pleistocene and Holocene. Geographic variation today is not well related to the past because of the large number of recent adaptive mutations and the differential survivorship of Upper Pleistocene and Holocene populations." - Wolpoff, M. H., & Caspari, R. [2012]. "Palaeoanthropology and Race". In: A Companion to Paleoanthropology. Begun, D. R. (Ed.). John Wiley & Sons."

While living (or recent historic) populations are highly heterogeneous in morphology - 90% of cranial variation for example is found within populations, Pleistocene human variation had a reverse geographical structure where most skeletal variation was found between populations. In that sense there were once human races.

Palaeoanthropologists are not in agreement when races disappeared during the Pleistocene. Some argue there were races (or even subraces) as recent as the Upper Palaeolithic e.g. Ferembach (1986) splits (Palaeo)Europeans into: "Cromagnoids" and "Combecapelloids". FossilMad (talk) 13:21, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Good point. This could make sense to include. Although perhaps also inclusion of the fact that not all paleoanthropologoists agree with Wolpoffs theory of continuity between H. erectus regional diversity and H. sapiens regional diversity would be warranted.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:28, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Wolpoff's view is very much a minority view, but it is attested in all the standard textbooks, so it can go in with some mention from sources that cite it. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 18:16, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree. I will make some edits sometime. I think the Multiregional page can also be improved a lot. FossilMad (talk) 13:02, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I have some of the standard textbooks immediately at hand as I reply here, so, yes, please, edit with the current view in mind, and I'll check the references. All of the related articles need some top-to-bottom revisions for coherency, due weight of subtopics, and updating of references according to Wikipedia content guidelines. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 13:56, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Reliable sources for updating this article
I see there are some new (to this article under the screen names we are seeing here, but perhaps not new to Wikipedia) editors who are joining the talk page discussion here. Wikipedia has a lot of interesting articles based on the ongoing research in human molecular genetics that helps trace the lineage of people living in various places on the earth. On the hypothesis that better sources build better articles as all of us here collaborate to build an encyclopedia, I thought I would suggest some sources for improving articles on human genetic history and related articles. I've been reading university textbooks on human genetics "for fun" since the 1980s, and for even longer I've been visiting my state flagship university's vast BioMedical Library to look up topics on human medicine and health care policy. he Wikipedia guidelines on reliable sources in medicine provide a helpful framework for evaluating sources.

The guidelines on reliable sources for medicine remind editors that "it is vital that the biomedical information in all types of articles be based on reliable, third-party, published sources and accurately reflect current medical knowledge."

"Ideal sources for such content includes literature reviews or systematic reviews published in reputable medical journals, academic and professional books written by experts in the relevant field and from a respected publisher, and medical guidelines or position statements from nationally or internationally recognised expert bodies."

The guidelines, consistent with the general Wikipedia guidelines on reliable sources, remind us that all "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources" (emphasis in original). They helpfully define a primary source in medicine as one in which the authors directly participated in the research or documented their personal experiences. By contrast, a secondary source summarizes one or more primary or secondary sources, usually to provide an overview of the current understanding of a medical topic. The general Wikipedia guidelines let us know that "Articles should rely on secondary sources whenever possible. For example, a review article, monograph, or textbook is better than a primary research paper. When relying on primary sources, extreme caution is advised: Wikipedians should never interpret the content of primary sources for themselves."

On the topic of what recent human population genetics research says about classification of human populations, a widely cited primary research article is a 1972 article by Richard Lewontin, which I have seen cited in many of the review articles, monographs, and textbooks I have read over the years.



As Wikipedians, we can evaluate where the findings in Lewontin's article fit in the current understanding of the topic of human genetic variation by reading current reliable secondary sources in medicine.

Some Wikipedia articles give weighty emphasis to a commentary essay published years after Lewontin published his primary research article on human diversity, when Lewontin's primary research results had been replicated in many other studies and his bottom line conclusion that "about 85% of the total genetical variation is due to individual differences within populations and only 15% to differences between populations or ethnic groups" had been taken up by many textbooks on genetics and medicine. In 2003, A. W. F. Edwards wrote a commentary essay in the journal BioEssays



in which Edwards proposes a statistical model for classifying individuals into groupings based on haplotype data. Edwards wrote, "There is nothing wrong with Lewontin’s statistical analysis of variation, only with the belief that it is relevant to classification," pointing to his own work with Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, the author of the book



which I read soon after it was published in 1994. In general, Edwards cites a lot of publications from his collaboration with Cavalli-Sforza, and mentions that collaboration prominently in his subsequent review article



in which he describes their method for tracing ancestry with genes. Edwards even shows a photograph of Cavalli-Sforza with him in 1963 in his 2009 article, emphasizing their scholarly friendship.

So I wanted to look up Cavalli-Sforza's current views as well while I traced citations of the Lewontin 1972 article and the Edwards 2003 article in subsequent secondary sources. Through searches with Google, Google Scholar, and Google Books, both from my home office computer and from a university library computer, I found a number of books and articles that cite both the Lewontin paper and the Edwards paper. Through a specialized set of wide-reaching keyword searches (for example, "Lewontin Edwards") on the university library's vast database subscriptions, I was able to obtain the full text of many of those articles and of whole books that discuss what current science says about grouping individuals of species Homo sapiens into race groups. I also found more up to date discussions by Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza of the Human Genome Diversity Project.

Listed here are sources that have the following characteristics: (1) they cite both previous articles by Lewontin and the 2003 article by Edwards, discussing the underlying factual disagreement between those authors, (2) they are Wikipedia reliable sources for medicine (in particular, they are secondary sources such as review articles or textbooks rather than primary research articles), and (3) they are available to me in full text through book-buying, library lending, author sharing of full text on the Internet, or a university library database. They are arranged in approximate chronological order, so that you can see how the newer sources cite and evaluate the previous sources as genetics research continues. The sources listed here are not exhaustive, but they are varied and authoritative, and they cite most of the dozens of primary research articles on the topic, analyzing and summarizing the current scientific consensus.



This first book (Koenig, Lee, and Richardson 2008) is useful because it includes a chapter co-authored by Richard Lewontin in which he updates his views.



The Whitmarsh and Jones (2010) source has several very useful chapters on medical genetics.





Like Whitmarsh and Jones (2010), the Krimsky and Sloan (2011) source has several useful chapters on medical genetics.





The book chapter by Barbujani and Colonna (2011) above is especially useful for various Wikipedia articles as a contrast between biodiversity in other animals and biodiversity in Homo sapiens.



By the way, the Barbujani, Ghirotto, and Tassi (2013) article has a very interesting discussion of SNP typing overlaps across the entire individual genome among some of the first human beings to have their entire individual genomes sequenced, with an especially interesting Venn diagram that would be a good graphic to add to this article.



An author who is intimately familiar with Edwards's statistical approach, because he has been a collaborator in fieldwork and co-author on primary research articles with Edwards, is Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza. Cavalli-Sforza is a medical doctor who was a student of Ronald Fisher in statistics, who has devoted most of his career to genetic research. In an invited review article for the 2007 Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics, Cavalli-Sforza joins issue directly with the underlying factual disagreement among previous authors, but cites different previous publications.



"GENETIC VARIATION BETWEEN AND WITHIN POPULATIONS, AND THE RACE PROBLEM

In the early 1980s, Lewontin (11) showed that when genetic variation for protein markers is estimated by comparing two or more random individuals from the same populations, or two or more individuals from the whole world, the former is 85% as large as the latter. This means that the variation between populations is the residual 15%, and hence relatively trivial. Later research carried out on a limited number of populations and mostly, though not only, on protein markers has confirmed this analysis. The Rosenberg et al. data actually bring down Lewontin’s estimate to 5%, or even less. Therefore, the variation between populations is even smaller than the original 15%, and we also know that the exact value depends on the choice of populations and markers. But the between-population variation, even if it is very small is certainly enough to reconstruct the genetic history of populations—that is their evolution—but is it enough for distinguishing races in some useful way? The comparison with other mammals shows that humans are almost at the lower extreme of the scale of between-population variation. Even so, subtle statistical methods let us assign individuals to the populations of origin, even distinguishing populations from the same continent, if we use enough genetic markers. But is this enough for distinguishing races? Darwin already had an answer. He gave two reasons for doubting the usefulness of races: (1) most characters show a clear geographic continuity, and (2) taxonomists generated a great variety of race classifications. Darwin lists the numbers of races estimated by his contemporaries, which varied from 2 to 63 races.

Rosenberg et al. (16 and later work) analyzed the relative statistical power of the most efficient subdivisions of the data with a number of clusters varying from 2 to 6, and showed that five clusters have a reasonable statistical power. Note that this result is certainly influenced by the populations chosen for the analysis. The five clusters are not very different from those of a few partitions that had already existed in the literature for some time, and the clusters are: (a) a sub-Saharan African cluster, (b) North Africa–Europe plus a part of western Asia that is approximately bounded eastward by the central Asian desert and mountains, (c) the eastern rest of Asia, (d ) Oceania, and (e) the Americas. But what good is this partition? The Ramachandran et al. (15) analysis of the same data provides a very close prediction of the genetic differences between the same populations by the simplest geographic tool: the geographic distance between the two populations, and two populations from the same continent are on average geographically closer than two from different ones. However, the Rosenberg et al. analysis (16) adds the important conclusion that the standard classification into classical continents must be modified to replace continental boundaries with the real geographic barriers: major oceans, or deserts like the Sahara, or other deserts and major mountains like those of central Asia. These barriers have certainly decreased, but they have not entirely suppressed genetic exchanges across them. Thus, the Rosenberg et al. analysis confirms a pattern of variation based on pseudocontinents that does not eliminate the basic geographic continuity of genetic variation. In fact, the extension by Ramachandran et al. of the original Rosenberg et al. analysis showed that populations that are geographically close have an overwhelming genetic similarity, well beyond that suggested by continental or pseudocontinental partitions."

A year later Cavalli-Sforza joined seventeen other genetics researchers as co-authors of a review article, published as an "open letter" to other scholars, on using racial categories in human genetics.



Other current review articles related to human population structure include



I invite my fellow Wikipedians to dig into the most current medically reliable sources to see how the new molecular genetic understanding of the human population is influencing biological approaches to human classification. This article will be the better as more editors look up more of the better sources. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 14:55, 4 April 2014 (UTC)


 * There is also a much broader list of sources on many aspects of human race issues in a source list I keep in Wikipedia user space for all Wikipedians to use. Feel free to dig in and find some of the latest sources on this topic, about which there are continually new publications. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 17:47, 4 April 2014 (UTC)


 * It appears that I should mention to administrators who happen to be surfing by that this article is under discretionary sanctions from an ArbCom case (as noted in a talk page notice here) and has often been subject to edit-warring by meat puppets and sockpuppets. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 16:33, 4 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Now that there has been time for editors to check the sources and read through those that are readily available, this will be a productive time of year for updating the article from top to bottom for coherency, due weight on various subtopics, and referencing according to Wikipedia content policy. I look forward to seeing the next edits to article text along those lines and expect to edit some article sections from my own keyboard in the next few months. Let's all discuss here how to make the article better. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 15:18, 20 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Most of these sources should be available to anyone with access to a university library, so I invite editors to look on while checking the sources as new article edits proceed. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 00:04, 4 May 2014 (UTC)


 * This is an excessively biased set of sources, we should include other scholars such as Neven Sesardic, Jerry Coyne, Henry Harpending, Gregory Cochran, Nicholas Wade etc. their view is mainstream and makes no sense to omit it.74.14.73.17 (talk) 20:27, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
 * We don't push fringe sources. — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 21:07, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

The view that race is a valid taxonomy is the majority view as shown by surveys of experts. PlasticSpatula5 (talk) 03:22, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
 * You are deliberately omitting reliable mainstream sources that don't agree with your viewpoint, that is POV pushing, and so far a certain viewpoint has been incessantly pushed on this page, you have no base for calling the aforementioned sources fringe.74.14.73.17 (talk) 20:41, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
 * The editor seems to have left, deleted a personal attack above. I see a block forthcoming. Dougweller (talk) 18:12, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 12 May 2014
Spelling mistake in text

Please correct    heidelgergensis    to   heidelbergensis   (replace g with b)

Rrjmaier (talk) 05:00, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

✅ Thanks for spotting that - Arjayay (talk) 09:01, 12 May 2014 (UTC)