Mailbag: The Absurdity of Race Realism
I am always happy to answer reader emails set to me via the contact form at the About page of this blog. This email comes from “Nigel”. Nigel writes that:
Speaking about denialism, what about politically correct race-deniers? These people are so wrapped up on some ideology of Boasian Cultural Marxism that they regularly try to subvert the truth.
In just this short message, consisting of nothing more than two sentences, Nigel has managed to set off my baloney detector several times. This is because phrases such as “politically correct” and “cultural Marxism” are buzzwords frequently used by extremist right-wing…thinkers, who are often anti-immigration. “Politically correct” designates their belief that they are being suppressed by the establishment and “cultural Marxism” signifies the related idea that the establishment was been taken over by leftists who ignore the truth that race realists think is plain as day. Thus, Nigel has carried out two very common denialist tactics that I described in the article Common Denialist Tactics Defined and Destroyed, namely playing the martyr card and conspiratorial thinking:
Tactic: Playing the Martyr Card.
Description: Instead of replying with solid evidence or arguments, denialists often complain that they are being persecuted by the establishment because, in their own view, they are questioning the dogmatic status quo. Comparisons with Galileo or Einstein are extremely common.
Countermeasure: Explain that criticism is not the same as persecution, that science thrive on overturning old ideas and replacing them with ideas that better fit the evidence.Tactic: Conspiratorial Thinking.
Description: In order to explain away embarrassing facts or problems, a conspiracy theory is proposed, which not only lacks evidence but is absurd on many levels.
Countermeasure: Explain that it is a bad idea to attribute things to malice that could equally well be explained by human ignorance or stupidity, that something would have leaked by now or that results would have been too unpredictable and the cost of failure too large for the risk of carrying it out to be worth it.
The question of race depends on, as do so many other questions, on definitions. When we use the term “race”, what are we talking about? In a previous entry, I discussed some of the problems with race realism. Specifically, I noted the problem that traditional racial categories are not biologically sound, but rather form groups. Pigliucci and Kaplan (2003) explains that:
Biological research on race has often been seen as motivated by or lending credence to underlying racist attitudes; in part for this reason, recently philosophers and biologists have gone through great pains to essentially deny the existence of biological human races. We argue that human races, in the biological sense of local populations adapted to particular environments, do in fact exist; such races are best understood through the common ecological concept of ecotypes. However, human ecotypic races do not in general correspond with ‘folk’ racial categories, largely because many similar ecotypes have multiple independent origins. Consequently, while human natural races exist, they have little or nothing in common with ‘folk’ races.
In other words, Pigliucci and Kaplan, rejects traditional racial categories because they are biologically invalid, but draw the trivially true conclusion that local populations of humans can be adapted to their particular environment. This, however, does not justify racial realism, which is much stronger position. They continue:
And of course, as has already been noted, insofar as folk races are supposed to pick out populations that systematically differ from each other over a wide range of genetic and phenotypic measures, biology provides no support for the existence of such populations (and indeed, provides evidence that no such populations exist).
Another instructive bit of evidence against traditional racial categories is the distribution of human genetic variation. Rosenberg et. al. (2002) studied almost 400 short tandem repeats from over 1000 individuals from around 50 populations. He showed that “within-population differences among individuals account for 93 to 95% of genetic variation; differences among major groups constitute only 3 to 5%”. Again, different local populations of humans may be adapted to the environments which in they live, but this shows that the vast majority of human genetic variation lies within populations, not between them.
Nick Matzke (2012) explains that human genetic variation is characterized by mostly continuous geographic structure, rather than discrete races. In doing so, he quotes Templeton (1998):
The genetic data are consistently and strongly informative about human races. Humans show only modest levels of differentiation among populations when compared to other large-bodied mammals, and this level of differentiation is well below the usual threshold used to identify subspecies (races) in nonhuman species. Hence, human races do not exist under the traditional concept of a subspecies as being a geographically circumscribed population showing sharp genetic differentiation. A more modem definition of race is that of a distinct evolutionary lineage within a species. The genetic evidence strongly rejects the existence of distinct evolutionary lineages within humans. The widespread representation of human “races” as branches on an intraspecific population tree is genetically indefensible and biologically misleading, even when the ancestral node is presented as being at 100,000 years ago.
Attempts to salvage the idea of human “races” as evolutionary lineages by invoking greater racial purity in the past followed by admixture events are unsuccessful and falsified by multilocus comparisons of geographical concordance and by haplotype analyses. Instead, all of the genetic evidence shows that there never was a split or separation of the “races’” or between Africans and Eurasians. Recent human evolution has been characterized by both population range expansions (with perhaps some local replacements but no global replacement within the last 100,000 years) and recurrent genetic interchange. The 100,000 years ago “divergence time” between Eurasians and Africans that is commonly found in the recent literature is really only an “effective divergence time” in sensu Nei and Roychoudhury (1974, 1982). Since no split occurred between Africans and Eurasians, it is meaningless to assign a date to an “event” that never happened. Instead, the effective divergence time measures the amount of restricted gene flow among the populations (Slatkin 1991).
Because of the extensive evidence for genetic interchange through population movements and recurrent gene flow going back at least hundreds of thousands of years ago, there is only one evolutionary lineage of humanity and there are no subspecies or races under either the traditional or phylogenetic definitions. Human evolution and population structure have been and are characterized by many locally differentiated populations coexisting at any given time, but with sufficient genetic contact to make all of humanity a single lineage sharing a common, long-term evolutionary fate.
I think I will end here, but there are a lot more to say about how race realists abuse principle component analysis and statistics in general in order to prop up their ideological crusade.
So in conclusion, the existence of “race” depends on what we are talking about. Can local populations be adapted to their environment? Yes. Do genetic variation that have medical implications exist in these populations? Yes. Are traditional racial categories based on scientific evidence? No.
I’m sorry Niles, you are on the side of the denialists this time.
References and further reading
Kaplan, J. and M. Pigliucci. (2004). On the concept of biological race and its applicability to humans. Philosophy of Science 70: 1161-1172
Matzke, N. (2012). Continuous geographic structure is real, “discrete races” aren’t. The Panda’s Thumb. Retrieved: 2012-03-04.
Templeton, A. R. (1998). Human Races: A Genetic and Evolutionary Perspective. American Anthropologist 100(3), 632-650.
Rosenberg, N. A. et al. (2002). Genetic structure of human populations. Science 298, 2381–2385.
Excellent break down, as usual, Emil.
Sadly it’s rather one sided. I would recommend Steve Hsu or Razib Khan’s posts on the topic.
Unfortunately, you are performing the well-known denialist tactic of “false balance”.
Common Denialist Tactics Defined and Destroyed:
***So in conclusion, the existence of “race” depends on what we are talking about. Can local populations be adapted to their environment? Yes. Do genetic variation that have medical implications exist in these populations? Yes. Are traditional racial categories based on scientific evidence? No.***
The traditional categories reflect historical geographic separation of groups (evolutionary history). Hence the clusters that consistently show up (Lahn & Ebenstein, “Let’s Celebrate Human Genetic Diversity” Nature 2009). As with races in other species, individuals can be allocated to these groups with a high degree of confidence with by genetic analysis or simple inspection (morphological features).
Unless you want to make an argument that humans are unique from other species in not having this within species variation, I’m not sure what the fuss is about. You can actually see the major races or population groups here.
“The tree divides the populations into five broad groups: African, East Asian, West Eurasian (European, Middle Eastern, and Central and South Asian populations), American, and Oceanic. Although the latter branch contains the MEL, PAP, and AuR groups, AuR show a shorter branch length than the others, placing them closer to the trunk of the tree than the other Oceanic populations. This could be the result of greater genetic drift in the MEL and PAP or admixture of the AuR with populations elsewhere on the tree.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2917718/bin/gr1.jpg
No, traditional racial categories to not reflect historical geographic separation of groups. This is because they consists of multiple ecotypes that have a proximate independent evolutionary origin. For instance, all individuals characterized as “black” are not more closely related to each other than either of them are to people with white skin color. Thus, traditional racial categories are not monophyletic, and therefore biologically invalid.
Humans do have between-group variation, but the fixation index for human populations is very small, on the order of 0.1. To conclude that subspecies exists, a fixation index of at least 0.25 is required.
The claims in the Nature reference you posted is based on a straw man fallacy of Steve Rose. He corrected the errors of Lahn & Ebenstein in Rose, S. (2009). Research into group differences isn’t wrong, just pointless. [10.1038/462035c]. Nature, 462(7269), 35-35.
The original commentary by Rose is Rose, S. (2009). Darwin 200: Should scientists study race and IQ? NO: Science and society do not benefit. [10.1038/457786a]. Nature, 457(7231), 786-788, which explains that:
as well as
Finally,
To make the situation worse for race realists, the article you are referring to is abusing principle component analysis (PCA) by taking a couple of individuals with vast geographical distances apart. This creates the illusion of genetic clustering because the genetic variation in the geographical areas between them are being ignored. If you put that data into the PCA, you would see nothing but roughly continuous geographical structure.
I suggest you carefully study the references in this blog post, such as Matzke’s article called Continuous geographic structure is real, “discrete races” aren’t.
Pingback:An Annotated Summary of C0nc0rdance Case Against Race Realism « Debunking Denialism
“…the vast majority of human genetic variation lies within populations, not between them.”
That’s not true. What you’re describing is an old myth that was debunked years ago by A.W.F. Edwards (“Human genetic diversity: Lewontin’s fallacy,” BioEssays 2003). You’re also misrepresenting Rosenberg’s findings. In the quote you pulled, he’s repeating Lewontin’s fallacy, but in the very next sentence he says this:
If you look at K=5 in Fig. 1 of the study, you can see that those five genetic clusters correspond clearly to Negroids, Caucasians, Mongoloids, Austro-Melanesians and Native Americans, the five main “discrete races”.
“Humans do have between-group variation, but the fixation index for human populations is very small, on the order of 0.1. To conclude that subspecies exists, a fixation index of at least 0.25 is required.”
That’s not true either. Humans have higher between-group variation than many other animals that scientists do divide into subspecies.
(M.A. Woodley, “Is Homo sapiens polytypic? Human taxonomic diversity and its implications,” Medical Hypotheses 2010)
Lewontin’s fallacy?
I am always highly amused when race realists spout the “you are performing the Lewontin fallacy!!1” when modern post-Lewontin data showing that there is more genetic diversity within groups than between are presented. Yes, Lewontin used a problematic method, but his general conclusion, using more solid methods, have been vindicated.
The conclusion that there is more genetic diversity within groups than between does not rest on Lewontin. The conclusion (“within-population differences among individuals account for 93 to 95% of genetic variation; differences among major groups constitute only 3 to 5%”) was based on the raw data analyzed by Rosenberg and colleagues. Lewontin and his method is completely irrelevant for that fact.
Rosenberg data
Again, Rosenberg and colleagues are not using Lewontin’s data or methods at all. Bringing up Lewontin is kind of like creationists bring up Haeckel in an attempt to undermine modern developmental biology. It is just a bait-and-switch tactic.
Genetic clusters?
Those genetic clusters that you see on that PCA graph do not represent discrete races. Rather, those genetic clusters are statistical artifacts due to low sampling density.
David Serre and Svante Pääbo (2004) explains this in detail:
They also point out that:
In other words, while differences between human populations exists, the data shows a mostly continuous genetic variation and not discrete races. “Discrete races” was just an artifact of non-homogeneous sampling:
They also reproduce the finding that most genetic diversity exists within groups than between:
They go on to discuss the attempted justification of discrete “races” due to medical issues:
I doubt that you will read it, but for those that want to know more about human diversity, I strongly recommend it. This is a paper that just keeps on giving.
You attempt to justify this using a reference to a paper published in the journal Medical Hypotheses. However, it is generally considered to be a crank journal, having published a lot of pseudoscience including anti-GMO, claims about vaccines and autism, HIV/AIDS denialism. It did not even apply peer-review at the time the paper you reference was published.
At any rate, the notion of “subspecies” for humans are defeated by the fact that human genetic diversity lacks strong continental clustering and is better described by a cline. I have the creeping suspicion that the subspecies in the species you list are more like ecotypes than races.
This further undercuts your case for race realism, which is already shot to pieces with the shotgun of rational science.
It’s evident that you haven’t read Edwards’ paper, and that you don’t really understand the subject, because Lewontin’s “general conclusion” has in no way been vindicated. Quite the opposite actually, and Rosenberg’s study is one of the works cited by Edwards as an example of research that disproves the fallacy. Since then, there have been many others.
Rosenberg published a rebuttal to Serre and Pääbo destroying their “genetic-clusters-are-statistical-artifacts-due-to-low-sampling-density” argument.
(“Clines, clusters, and the effect of study design on the inference of human population structure,” PLoS Genetics 2005)
The data I quoted from the Medical Hypotheses study are sourced to other studies from Molecular Ecology, Nature, PNAS, and a textbook co-authored by a Harvard biology professor and a Cornell genetics professor, so your ad hominem attack against the journal is a big fail. The unsourced claims you made about Fst and subspecies remain falsified.
Lewontin’s fallacy — again
Again, concluding that most genetic variation lie within groups than between groups using modern data is not an example of Lewontin’s fallacy. Lewontin’s fallacy was inferring this conclusion based on insufficient number of markers. Thus, what is fallacious is not his conclusion, but his method. No scientist working with modern data rely on Lewontin’s method. So, ironically, you are the one who does not seem to understand what Lewontin’s fallacy is all about.
I had already exposed your bait-and-switch trick. Why do you continue to deploy it?
Rosenberg versus Serre and Pääbo
You clearly have not understand Rosenberg’s method or response. That is because (1) you have neglected to quote highly relevant information from the paper (thus you are guilty of quoting out of context / selective quoting) and (2) the material you actually quote is inconsistent with the belief in discrete genetic races (another very ironic aspect of your comment) and you have also misunderstood that material.
The material you did quote
Here is the segment you decided to quote form the Rosenberg response:
Serre and Pääbo had the contention that human genetic variation was more or less continuous and that there were no genetically discrete races because if you sample enough individuals, there is going to be an overlap in the analysis. Sure enough, this is precisely what the quote you posted says: individuals between the geographic locations have mixed membership in the cluster from neighboring regions. This is the very opposite of the notion that genetically discrete racial groups exists. In fact, Rosenberg almost goes as far as to admit this in your quote, deciding to call continuous genetic variation “small discontinuous jumps” due to geographic barriers (essentially the position of Serre and Pääbo). Clustering reflects geographic ancestry, not evidence for the existence of discrete races.
The material you did not quote
Perhaps the most embarrassing for your position is the following:
Thus, the clustering observed corresponds to large geographic regions and does not contradict the conclusion that allele frequencies vary continuously. Thus, not only does this paper NOT support your position, it actively contradicts your position. For if allele frequencies vary continuously (i.e. genetic variation is continuously), how can genetically discrete races exist? This question is unanswerable from within your interpretational paradigm.
To clarify this issue, let us look at Witherspoon et al (2007) (which also contain data on Fst values):
The article further points out that clustering is due to geographic ancestry, which is not the same as traditional racial categories.
In the conclusion section, Witherspoon makes the following forceful point:
Medical hypotheses — again
It does not matter what references the paper uses. The paper is published in a crank journal that did not apply peer-review at the time. Had it been of any scientific merits, the authors would have chosen to send it in to a credible journal. But they did not. Presumably they tried, but got rejected. No serious scientists submit their paper to the worst of the worst journals first.
Conclusion:
You have, yet again, consistently misunderstood key aspects of the underlying science. You fail to understand what exactly was the problem with Lewontin’s argument. You abuse the content of multiple scientific papers, quote one of them out of context and clearly do not understand the scientific background. You even attempt to dress up the race realist beliefs in the shroud of science by referencing a paper published in a crank journal. Classic pseudoscience.
“Lewontin’s fallacy was inferring this conclusion based on insufficient number of markers.”
Read Edwards’ paper! You have no clue what you’re talking about. Lewontin’s fallacy was concluding that humans could not be divided into races based on their genes. He was dead wrong, as Rosenberg and many others have shown.
From Edwards:
“…you are guilty of quoting out of context / selective quoting”
LOL. I quoted the Abstract, which summarizes the methods, findings and conclusions of the study. You’re guilty of grasping at straws.
“For if allele frequencies vary continuously (i.e. genetic variation is continuously), how can genetically discrete races exist?”
http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallacies/56-argument-of-the-beard
“…clustering is due to geographic ancestry, which is not the same as traditional racial categories.”
Actually, they are the same thing, and saying they’re different is a political opinion, not a scientific reality. Even your fellow “race denialists” are forced to concede that fact.
(L. Lorusso and G. Boniolo, “Clustering humans: on biological boundaries,” Stud Hist Philos Biol Biomed Sci 2008)
(J.H. Relethford, “Race and global patterns of phenotypic variation,” Am J Phys Anthropol 2009)
“It does not matter what references the paper uses.”
It “does not matter” to you because they’re totally legit and they prove you wrong. Unfortunately for you, I can also do that without the Medical Hypotheses paper.
(D. Hartl and A.G. Clark, “Principles of population genetics,” Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates 1998)
(M. Nelis et al., “Genetic Structure of Europeans: A View from the North–East,” PLOS One 2009)
Lewontin’s fallacy
No, Lewontin’s fallacy was concluding that there was more genetic variation within populations than between populations based on single locus analysis. It is ironic that you encourage me to read the paper when you clearly have not done that yourself. Let us see what Edwards actually labels as a fallacy:
In other words, Edwards is labeling Lewontin’s inference as a fallacy.
Selective quotations
No, you carefully selective segments of the abstracts to quote. In fact, you still do not seem to realize the impact of what you quoted:
In other words, these genetic clusters actually overlap based on geography.
Continuous genetic variation
My question is not an example of the fallacy of the beard, as genetic clusters do not represents the extremes of a continuum. This is because the earth is spherical. Thus, the individuals used to construct those apparent genetic clusters are right within the continuum, not extremes.
Genetic clusters are not races
No, because traditional racial categories are not based on geographical regions. “Black” would encompass people in Africa, North America, the Caribbeans and Papua New Guinea, yet these clearly belong to different geographical regions, and therefore different genetic clusters. This is yet another reason for why the genetic clustering observed is unrelated to traditional racial categories.
The problem here is that you are starting with your preferred narrative (the alleged scientific validity of traditional racial categories) and then torturing the facts to fit that narrative. It does not work. It will not work.
Medical Hypotheses
Again, Medical Hypotheses is a crank journal that has published everything from HIV/AIDS denialism and anti-GMO fear-mongering. It did not even apply peer-review at the time that paper was published. If that is the best “science” that race realists can prove, then that is quite embarrassing.
FST values
An FST value of 1 indicates speciation. For example, a FST of 0.15 indicates that 85% of genetic variation is within populations and only 15% of genetic variation between populations. It is hardly reasonable to call that “great genetic differentiation”.
Again, it is not interesting to compare FST for populations living very far away from each other. The geographical distance creates the illusion of discreteness where no such discreteness exists. Remember, the Rosenberg paper you cited states clearly that allele frequencies are continuous.
“Let us see what Edwards actually labels as a fallacy:”
Copying and pasting the first paragraph under the heading “Fallacy” is not reading the paper. You still don’t understand (or don’t want to understand) how Edwards disproves Lewontin’s argument that there’s no genetic evidence for race. Try reading the sections labeled “Conclusion” and “Epilogue.”
“No, you carefully selective segments of the abstracts to quote.”
I skipped the introductory first half and quoted the results and conclusions from the second half. You’re still grasping at straws.
“My question is not an example of the fallacy of the beard, as genetic clusters do not represents the extremes of a continuum. This is because the earth is spherical.”
The populated parts of the earth are not spherical. Europe is one extreme (beard), and East Asia is another (clean shaven). Some people in the middle have a 5 o’clock shadow. The same applies to the Europe-Africa continuum in the other direction. That’s what Rosenberg means when he says that “some individuals from intermediate geographic locations hav[e] mixed membership in the clusters that correspond to neighboring regions”—i.e., they’re a mix of two different races.
“‘Black’ would encompass people in Africa, North America, the Caribbeans and Papua New Guinea, yet these clearly belong to different geographical regions, and therefore different genetic clusters.”
“Black” refers colloquially to the autochthonous people of sub-Saharan Africa, some of whom have migrated to other parts of the world in recent history. There’s a discrete genetic cluster for them. There’s also one for “White,” one for “Yellow,” one for “Brown,” and one for “Red.”
“Medical Hypotheses is a crank journal that has published everything from HIV/AIDS denialism and anti-GMO fear-mongering.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy
“The geographical distance creates the illusion of discreteness where no such discreteness exists. Remember, the Rosenberg paper you cited states clearly that allele frequencies are continuous.”
The Kalash of northern Pakistan are about three times closer to the Chinese geographically than they are to Orcadians, yet genetically they cluster with the Orcadians. That’s one of the “discontinuous jumps in genetic distance” Rosenberg mentions that make the clusters real and robust, and not an artifact of sampling density.
Lewontin’s fallacy
Quoting the relevant sections in an effort to explain to you where exactly the fallacy in Lewontin’s argument lies is highly appropriate. In fact, throughout this discussion, you have (1) brought up criticisms of Lewontin’s work despite the fact that neither I nor my sources appeal to Lewontin’s inference method (in other words you are performing the straw man fallacy) and (2) been chronically unable to accurately grasp exactly were the fallacy in Lewontin’s project lie.
The fallacy is not stating that there is more genetic diversity within populations than between them. Both Rosenberg and your FST values demonstrate this beyond a shadow of a doubt. The fallacy was, according to Edwards, that Lewontin exclusively used a locus-by-locus analysis and inferred that because his position was true for each locus, it had to be true for multi-locus analyses as well. In other words, the fallacy Lewontin’s inference did was arguably a fallacy of composition. Notice here that it was Lewontin’s fallacy occurred in his inference, not in his conclusion. His general conclusion; that more genetic variation exists within groups than between them, has been corroborated over and over again by modern research. Indeed, not even the staunchest race realist are claiming that humans have FST values of over 0.5.
Selective quotations
I am not going to let you get away with your selective quoting. You clearly quoted parts of the paper you felt corroborated your position and left out parts that did not. As I have shown, even the parts you quote do not support your beliefs.
The facts remain: The Rosenberg reply still showed that (1) genetic clusters overlap and (2) allele frequencies are continuous. From these two conclusions, race realism is refuted. Clustering reflects geographic ancestry, not evidence for the existence of discrete genetic races.
You also did not address the conclusion of the Witherspoon paper at all. Let me repost it for you:
Until you grasp this idea, you position will continue to wallow in ignorance.
Really? You do not see the irony with your racial classification?
1. Modern science has shown that white Europeans are descendants of black Africans. That would mean, according to the racial categories that you propose, that white Europeans are actually black. Oh snap!
You can attempt to escape this conclusion by claiming that you only mean black Africans still living in sub-Saharan Africa and descendants that still “look black”, but that would force you to exclude some descendant lineages of black Africans, thus making your allegedly evidence-based racial group of “black” be non-monophyletic. Oh snap again.
2. You claim is also contradicted by the fact that the group of people who “look black” are not monophyletic. People who “look black” living in Africa, North America, the Caribbeans and Papua New Guinea are not more related to each other than any other ethnic group. This is clear from human migrations derived from mitochondrial DNA. It makes a map like this:
Thus, people living in e. g. Papua New Guinea, who would be classified as “black” by many race realists (or at the very least who look indistinguishable from people who many race realists would classify as “black”), are actually more closely related to people living in India than Africa and they are not part of the same “discrete genetic cluster”.
3. You assert that five races exists (you call them “white”, “black”, “brown”, “yellow” and “red”) and claim that these correspond to genetic clusters. However, there are three problems with that: (1) response paper by Rosenberg uses K = 6 at most, (2) there is a lot of admixture in these genetic clusters thus contradicting the claim of discrete racial categories and (3) these clusters do not correspond to your traditional racial categories.
Let us see why. Look at figure 2 in the Rosenberg response paper. Focus in on the blue genetic cluster. For instance, it contains people living in France, Italy. Thus, this blue genetic cluster would represent what you believe is the “white” race. However, this blue genetic cluster also include many groups living in the Middle East (4) and Central and South Asia (9). Also notice the admixture as you can find blue admixture in many populations and Africa and East Asian.
Thus, the entire edifice of your assertion that “genetic clusters correspond to traditional racial categories” falls apart.
You also fail to defend your appeal to a paper published in a crank journal that did not apply peer-review.