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	Human Genetic History (inactive)
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section clean up

I've removed several sections that do not discuss the topic of race and genetics in a meaningful or reliable manner. I did leave the race and medicine section despite the fact that this is not a discussion about race and genetics, but a discussion about genetics and medicine, where racial correlates are used as a proxy for genetics. I'm not sure that it really belongs here though, as the topic of racial/genetic correlation is discussed extensively in the text and the main article is already linked to in the sidebar. aprock (talk) 09:56, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Dawkins quote.

The Dawkin's quote is an example of quote mining, and has been taken out of context. The quote comes from the chapter "The Grasshopper's Tale" from the book "The Ancestor's Tale". From the book:

The Grasshopper's Tale is about races and species, about the difficulty in defining both, and what all this has to say about human races.

The chapter then goes on to make the case that races are not a genetically useful term.

Whatever we may think as observers of superficial appearances, the human species today is, to a geneticist, especially uniform. Taking such genetic variation as the human population does possess, we can measure the fraction that is associated with the regional groupings we call races. And it turns out to be a small percentage of the total: between 6 and 15 percent depending on how you measure it - much smaller than in many other species where races have been distinguished. Geneticists conclude, therefore, that race is not a very important aspect of a person.

And concludes with the genetic significance of superficial traits:

Inter-observer agreement suggest that racial classification is not totally uninformative, but what does it inform about? About no more than the characterisics use by the observers when they agree: things like eye shape and hair curliness - nothing more unless we are given further reasons to believe it.

The paragraph from which the out of context quote is mined starts with the observation that most human variation occurs within a race, not between races. The quote itself is used to refute the very fine point that while races are not genetically important, their taxonomic significance is non-zero. The specific statement being refuted here is that race is of 'virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance.' Dawkins is saying that while race is not genetically meaningful, it still has some taxonomic utility. aprock (talk) 10:39, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I concur. The Dawkins source is (was) being used improperly. The whole "Lewontin's Fallacy" fallacy is getting a bit old. — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 11:59, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

"But that doesn't mean that race is of ‘virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance’. This is Edwards's point, and he reasons as follows. 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."

"Not genetically meaningful" seems to be implied nowhere in Dawkins. "Superficial" != non-genetic.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Octoink (talk • contribs) 15:17, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

There was no misuse of the Dawkins quote. Octoink has provided the quote with some of the preceding comments, which clearly indicates the context of the Dawkins quote as being the question of race and genetics. Indeed, it is quite implausible to imagine anyone reading the surrounding pages of material could come away with the impression that his quote did not concern race and genetics.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 21:43, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't know where any doubt might have come from but Dawkins definitely covers race and genetics in the source. And therein lies the rub... Given the fact that Dawkins is in complete agreement with Lewontin's science, which is highly respected and not in doubt, using a single quote to "debunk" said science without any explanation as to Dawkins reasoning is not appropriate and is, by definition, cherry picking. As Dawkins says: "Some people may find the evidence of biochemical genetics unsatisfying because it seems not to square with their everyday experience. Unlike cheetahs, we don't 'look' uniform. Norwegians, Japanese and Zulus really do look rather dramatically different from one another. With the best will in the world, it is intuitively hard to believe what is in fact the truth: that they are 'really' more alike than three chimpanzees who look, to our eyes, much more similar." — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 01:06, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. Presenting Dawkins' discussion in The Ancestor's Tale as a refutation of Lewontin is cherry picking at it's worst. To the extent that Dawkins disagrees, it is to say specifically that the visible traits that we use to distinguish race are indicators can be used to predict the visible traits which we use to distinguish race. aprock (talk) 02:18, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

"R. C. Lewontin is an equally distinguished Cambridge (Mass.) geneticist, known for the strength of his political convictions and his weakness for dragging them into science at every possible opportunity."

"In short, I think Edwards is right and Lewontin, not for the first time, wrong. Lewontin did his sums right, of course: he is a brilliant mathematical geneticist. The proportion of the total variation in the human species that falls into the racial partition of variation is, indeed, low. But because the between-race variation, however low a percentage of the total variation, is correlated, it is informative in ways that could surely be demonstrated by measuring the inter-observer concordance of judgement." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Octoink (talk • contribs) 01:55, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Requested move

It has been proposed in this section that Race and genetics be renamed and moved to Human population genetics. A bot will list this discussion on the requested moves current discussions subpage within an hour of this tag being placed. The discussion may be closed 7 days after being opened, if consensus has been reached (see the closing instructions). Please base arguments on article title policy, and keep discussion succinct and civil. Please use {{subst:requested move}}. Do not use {{requested move/dated}} directly. Links: current log • target log • direct move

Race and genetics → Human population genetics – Article content is primarily about human population genetics, and not about race. The sections which discuss race are reviewed below. For the most part, the sources tend to focus on population genetics, referring to race as a correlate with clustering techniques applied to genetic data. aprock (talk) 17:00, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Visible traits, proteins, and genes studied: This section discusses race outside the rubric of genetics, and is presumably included to provide some background.

Race and population genetic structure: This section is an extended discussion of whether or not race can be predicted using genetic markers. I think this is an important topic, and one which deserves discussion in the article. However, this discussion clearly falls out of recent advances in population genetics, which in turn has necessitated a rethinking of whether classical definition of race have any valid meaning. In particular, the discussion makes it clear that insomuch as races "exist" it is to the extent that they mirror the genetics of geographically isolated humans. That is, it's the population genetics which are redefining race.

Race and medicine: only mentions genetics as a correlate of race.

Based on the actual content in the article, and the strong emphasis on population genetics, I think a page move which matches the title with the article content only makes sense. aprock (talk) 17:58, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Surely this article is about genetics as they relate to the concept of race, which is a notable topic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Octoink (talk • contribs) 14:57, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose The subject is race and genetics, which is clear from reading the material and related sources. Some more tentative language may be used on occasion by academics to avoid the political sensitivity of the term "race", but it is fundamentally the subject of race and genetics.--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 21:30, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

• Requested moves