Not dead yet –
Angela Saini’s new book explores why science’s racism issues have persisted.
John Timmer –) **************************
Mankind Quarterlythat would publish their work.Saini talks to one of the journal’s current editors, who comes across as naively mystified that science has passed him by, and that scientists no longer see the world as he still does.But, as the book progresses, it becomes clear that he’s less out of the mainstream than he thinks. In talking to younger grad students, Saini finds that they’re still adopting assumptions about race that originate from society at large. When asked about it, she finds that they have no idea how to define race biologically, but persist in the conviction that it’s real.
But if it’s not real, why are there so many heredity tests offering to tell us where we’re from?tackles those, too. They’re based on thousands of sites scattered through the genome where people often differ from the “average” human. No single site is diagnostic; I’m of European ancestry, yet the ways I differ from average are just as likely to be found in indigenous peoples to Borneo or Bolivia. Rather than a few all-or-nothing differences, genetic indications of origin are statistical. Some differences are more likely to be inherited together in some populations. Other sites may be found in 60 percent of one population, but only 38 percent of another. Differences among populations only become apparent if you look at enough places in the genome.And even then, it’s statistical, and your assigned ancestry will vary based on the statistical model and whether you happen to be an outlier. One genetic testing service correctly pegged me as a mixture of Northern and Central European. Another that promised to be more specific highlighted a map of Europe in a way that nearly surrounded (but excluded) the countries my ancestors actually came from, and incorrectly pegged me as over (percent English.)Of course, as Saini notes, the present state of population genetics is a temporary snapshot of a lot of complicated and ongoing population histories. The development of agriculture upended populations throughout Europe and Asia, and it did so again separately in Africa. Multiple populations ended up in England in prehistory, and we know of Germanic, French, and Scandinavian populations that mixed in within the historic period. As the Roman empire fell apart, the Vandals started out in Central Europe, moved across Europe to Spain, and then migrated into Africa. The migrations among Native Americans are so complicated that we’re struggling to understand them even with modern genetics.is a vital reminder of those dangers and of how science and scientists aren’t always sitting passively on society’s sidelines. And it plays an essential function by illuminating how “scientific” racism managed to persist through science’s attempt to purge some of its own worst behavior. ******************Read More************************************
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