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Arbitration Ruling on Race and Intelligence
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Because that's what talk pages are for, let's discuss here what improvements would be good to make to the article once full protection is removed. My immediate comment is that it would be good to shorten the article, by relying more on published secondary sources that give examples of treating this topic in a summary, encyclopedic manner. Does anyone have suggestions of such sources that haven't already been referred to in this article? -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 16:19, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
Efforts have been made to shorten this article in the past, with very mixed results, and I am dubious. My feeling is, Misplaced Pages is not paper, and complex topics need longer articles. Past attempts to shorten often left things out of context. This led to a predictable cycle, if you have been around Misplaced Pages long enough: first, someone cuts the reasons for a position, saying only the conclusion matters. Then, someone comes along and finds that position impossible to believe, and asks for more citations, or identifies it as a fringe view, or keeps it as is, but then begins another paragraph that starts "But most people believe (and then a paragraph explicating the opposite view). I think a better strategy is to provide as much detail as necessary to explain the major views, but to strive to find the simplets and clearest language possible to express it, and rely heavily on hypertext and a really good introduction that is a roadmap to the article helping people figure out which section they really wish to read. You know how EP has a "micropedia" and then the full version? I think WP should and will move to a model of longer introductions that provide the main points summary style with links so people can decide what they wish to read about in greater detail by navigating the page sucessfully.
That said, if you guys want to shorten the whole article, okay but I urge you to move ANY material deleted from this article to a linked article i.e. each major section of this article should be a summary of a longer linked article that goes into full detail. If some of these sections are not already summaries of longer articles, create new articles using the entire sectionl then provide a link to it in this article and write a summary.
I have found WeijiBaikeBianji and Vecrumba to both be very reasonable, thoughtful and well-informed editors and if both of you agree on specific major edits, well, I won't get in the way. Slrubenstein | Talk19:32, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
I may be talkative and verbose at times, not to mention my penchant for text decoration, but there's no desire to usurp wider discussion! :-) PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK20:34, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
And Maunus too!!! I would be quite please if the three of yo constituted an informal commitee, worked on a revision at one person's sandbox, and presented it to us. i for one would have high confidence in any thing you three agree to. But step one is a coherent strategy for linked pges that together cover all major and discree topics. !!!!
Thanks for your participation. I have been digging into current textbooks about general genetics and human genetics, to get a sense of what the mainstream biological view of race is. Yes, please feel free to start a draft of a slimmed-down and sourced-up article for all of us (anyone who surfs by and wants to help) to comment on. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 22:30, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
This article is no longer full protected, so you can edit at will. Presumably, some administrators will be keeping a close eye on changes here. I'll scramble to gather up more sources before starting many substantive edits, so feel free to dig in and fix what needs fixing meanwhile. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 20:21, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
Has much thought been given to Vecrumba's questioning what is the particular thesis of this article? It's still confusing to me where this fits in the lineup. We have this article, of course, and also Race and genetics, Historical definitions of race, Social interpretations of race, Human genetic variation, while we have no Folk races or Race as a social construct, which is surprising to me since the latter is used so often in social sciences and the former so often even in the biological sciences. Also we don't have an article Racial classification (this one redirects to Historical definitions of race which is about human race, not the more general race in biology). Yet we do have Race (biology) which is an absolutely useless, insensible article, imo, and lends no help whatsoever to understanding why race as defined in biology doesn't see examples in humans.
The subject is as complicated in real life as it is here on wikipedia, I'm sure. But if I could sketch out the basic gist of what comes through to me when reading a fairly broad sampling of sources used here is that there are two types of definitions of race in humans: one can be labeled folk conceptions of race and other scientific conceptions of race. And there was a long period of time in which pseudo-scientific conceptions of race took hold which were labeled "biology" or "science" but were really "folk". Then the pendulum went away from biology back toward folk in the so-called expert realm, even though the old pseudo-scientific ideas (folk race mislabeled science) lingered in the minds of the general public. Even though there's a debate (obviously) over whether or not race is biological, I think there's broad agreement from both sides to this overall background. However I would say there is something of an ongoing confusion/debate about how far the pendulum swung the other way such that at one extreme end are the "race is 100% non-biological" against the opposite extreme "race is obviously biological." While in the middle battles rage over nuances, definitions and caveats, much of it talking past each other and instead rebutting the extremists on either end-which I'm not sure to what degree actually exist.
Sorry for what's now a long winded attempt to say that I think the middle needs describing better because when the debate is overly focused on the "between two extremes" model the nuances, definitions and caveats in the middle get misapplied. For example, those on the "race is obviously biological", may invoke the work of somebody like Cavalli-Sforza who doesn't think this, while somebody on the "race is 100% non-biological" will invoke Lewontin who also doesn't think this. Since folk race has no classificatory scheme that I know of, I think a more general article about "human races" might be warranted, one which gives the broader overview of the universe of definitions today (including what it means as a biological classification as well as those that are "socially defined", "self-identified", etc). Beyond that, this one could be the niche for discussing the ins-and-outs of race in terms of a biological sub-classification in the human species, including how it does or doesn't correlate to the classic racial scheme. Professor marginalia (talk) 23:43, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
I thought the whole length of the question was helpful. I've been gathering books about general biology, general genetics, human genetics, general behavioral genetics, and human behavioral genetics for a while now, to add to a new citations list, and what is striking to me so far is how few of the most current secondary sources in those disciplines even mention race, especially race as categorized in the United States, in any context. Population genetics is mentioned a fair amount, but no one agrees about categories anymore, because the genetic information has been too nuanced for the old straitjacket categories. Those categories seem to appear in current literature only in a shrinking minority of primary studies, outnumbered by other studies that take different approaches. This prompts me to think I need to look soon at some of the articles related to this article to see if they are up to date with current literature and sourced mostly with unreplicated primary studies or with authoritative secondary textbooks and practitioner handbooks. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 00:03, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
I would like to contribute to this discussion by addressing the question of, "What is this article about" and "how does it fit in with other related articles?" (following on Professor Marginalia's comment). My approach to answering any question like this is to look at the history. This article is one of the oldest articles at Misplaced Pages; it was created back in 2001 i.e. within the first year of WP's existence. If you want to know what the original author's intention was in writing this article, I will quote for you the first three paragraphs:
A race is the taxonomic concept of a group of people associated by heredity, geography, culture, religion, and politics. Heredity is especially emphasized, as those who developed the concept in the 18th and 19th centuries appealed to and were inspired by the evolutionary biological concepts being developed at the time.
The historical definition of race, before the development of evolutionary biology, was that of common lineage, a vague concept interchangeable with species, breed, cultural origin, or characteristic quality. ("The whole race of mankind." --Shakespeare; "Whence the long race of Alban fathers come" --Dryden
The 19th-century anthropological concept of race was based on morphological characteristics such as skin colour, facial characteristics and amount and type of hair. Though such characteristics have since been shown to have a minimal relationship with any other heritable characteristics, it retains popularity because it is easy to immediately distinguish people based on physical appearance.
So, clearly, this article is about either "the human race" or "how the concept of race applies to humans." I realize there is some wriggle room in between these two descriptions, but I think it is fair to say that for most of its history for most editors this article has been about one or both of these things or something in between them. At certain times during its history this article included what some editors considered major racial taxonomies e.g. Carlton Coon's. So a major part of this article was an account of different human races. For most of its history however this kind of section was excluded from the article. It was decided among editors that we would have separate articles for specific races (which led to other debates - look at articles like "white people" "white race" "races of Europe" "ethnic groups of Europe"); this article would cover debates about the concept of race in relation to humans.
The disambiguation page dates back to 2007 so you see, compared to the existence of this article, the question of "what other articles should there be" and "what is their logical relation or arrangement" came pretty late.
These are my main recollections. 'First' that there were some debates that heavily overlapped but were formulated in terms of different questions:
a debate between evolutionary biologists versus zoologists - it appeared that zoologists still use the word "race" when referring to varieties of plants and animals, while most evolutionary biologists studying plants and animals do not use the word "race."
a debate over whether races are natural or socially constructed. As you might have guessed, people with a background in evolutionary biology were more likely to say "socially constructed" and people with a background in zoology were more likelly to say "natural."
so should we have one article on the biological concept of race, or two articles, one for humans and one for all other animals and plants? Most zoologists insisted on the latter. many other people came up with different answers to this question for different reasons.
Second there was a separate debate over the length of this article. Even if we restricted it to "race in relation to humans" if following NPOV we were to include ALL significant views on "race" as it has been applied to humans, this article would be three or four times the recommended limit for WP articles. The standard practice when an article gets too long is to turn each section into its own article, and either create a disambiguation page or (as in this case, and the Jesus article, and several others) keep the article but for each section (which now has its own article) just have a concise summary. But this means that the character of linked articles depends on the contents of this article. And in the time I have been here this article has gone through at least four major revisions, so major I'd say four fundamentally different versions (even if there was a lot of overlap). It is fair to say that these revisions have all involved debates over whether race is natural or a social construction. Take a sample of article versions from 2004, 2006, 2008, and 2010 and you will find different tables of contents. Do you see? If the tables of contents are different, it will lead us to spin off different articles. Articles spun off at one time may all fit together logically. Articles spun off at different times may well not fit together logically
So the reason for the state of the disambiguation page is that the division of articles is the result of two different sets of debates, one involving evolutionary biologists and zoologists and others that was resolved by treating humans and non-humans differently, and another over the contents and organization of the article on race among humans. In both debates, "natural or social construction" came up, but it was resolved differently based on different facts and criteria.
When the disambiguation page was first created, this article was called "Race (anthropology)" and then someone changed it to "Race (human)" but whatever it was called, I think there has been one major continuity - namely, that this article shoul dmore or less be about whatever this article was about when it was first created in 2001 (see the quotes above). I hope this is useful information.
I think we need an article that is about "race" as the term has been applied to humans, and that reflects research by scientists (including social scientists) and historians on race in relation to humans. A LOT of people turn to an encyclopedia to learn just about this. If the research is isomorphic with that of research by biologists on other genera, well, okay, but I see this as a secondary question. Then the next issue is, what views to include and how to organize them. I think it was a big advance when someone introduced the table from Long and Kittles 2003 summarizing four biological views of race, because it was a reliable secondary source identifying four significant points of view. That race is a social construction is another view that has to be included. In the context of explaining these five views, two other issues came up that I think have a place in this article: first, when biologists and sociologists use a word differently, we need to explain why - this was less controversial and complicated with regard to the word "race" than it was to the word "lineage;" molecular geneticists use the word lineage but in a way that has no relation to the way sociologists or social anthropologists or even novelists or plain people use the word; explaining this took some time an dintroduced another distinction, between how molecular geneticists interpret Y-haplotype and MtDNA data versus the way these terms are used by people in the "heritage" business who use the word in their marketing. Finally, in explaining how race may be a social construction, it was decided that we needed to explain how poulation geneticists talk about genetic variation without using the word "race," which led to sections on "population" and "cline." I am trying to explain the process by which the article developed the sections it has. I think we need to bear all this in mind when considering reorganizing this and linked articles. Slrubenstein | Talk14:03, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
I do not think aticles should have "arguments" or "points" because this leads us to violate NPOV and often NOR as well. But if there were to be an argument, I would say, discuss Franz Boas's basic argument - the point he and his students were making was pretty simple: human genetic variation and cultural variation are not reducible, one to the other. When Boas was writing, people inside and outside of the academy used "race" to refer to groups that were both biologically and culturally distinct from other groups. You still see this today when people use the word ethnicity as a euphamism for race (because they understand neither word) and then insist that ethnicity is biological, which voids the whole reason for using the word ethnicity instead of race to begin with. Since people use the word "race" to refer both to biological and cultural variation, I think it is unavoidable that an article on race say somethign about genetic variation, and also say something about cultural variation. Some people will argue that if the two are incommensurable or simply different things, they belong in different articles. But since peopel regularly use the word "race" in ways that brings biology and culture back together, I think the "race" article has to explain how it is that genetic and cultural variation have distinct mechanisms. And we need to explain why many times it appears that biological and cultural difference go together (the reason is actually prtty simple: since Columbus, the forced or voluntary movment of people from one continent to another has regularly placed them into distinct economic niches that are often politically as well as economically unequal. This does not always happen, but it often happens, and when it does, people who are biologically different, because they come from different continents, will also remain culturally distinct or develop new cultural differences, because they are economically segregated from others - that is to say, social segregation replaces geographic separation (Eric Wolf 1982 Europe and the People without History p 380; see also Marvin Harris Patterns of Race in the Americas and Peter Wade Race and Ethnicity in Latin America), Slrubenstein | Talk14:25, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for that, that was really valuable—and will require several re-readings(!). There might be some parallels regarding zoology where taxonomies are constructed based on observable characteristics—orderings of nature which genetics subsequently has proven or disproven. There do appear to be outliers among those studying genetics who disagree with the widely accepted view of in-population and between-population differences with regard to "races", but I need to do more reading before I can suggest a cogent statement or content on that—not extensive quotations. I would agree that this needs to be the article which brings together all the multi (but never completely separable)-disciplinary views of humans as organized along "racial" lines. Let me know if I'm misinterpreting! PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK14:55, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
I think you have it right. I would just underscore (1) that at crucial points in entrenched edit conflicts, Lieberman et. al. 1992, and Long and Kittles 2003, were both imensely helpful secondary sources for clarifying distinct points of view. But it has been a while since I immersed myself in this literature and I applaud you guys for looking at what has come out since then. Actually, I think the last really major overhaul of this article was around 2005 so any sources since then, especially really good secondary sources (and Alland's book comes to mind) really probably would be most valuable resources.
Anyway, I think the key thing is to imagine an omnibus article on "race," what are the distinct debates, and within those the distinct POVs, and how best to organize it ... and then decide what the linked articles should be, even if this requires merging or renaming some of the articles currently at the disambiguation page. I think all of you guys currently working on the article understand that the worst way to edit-war and degrade the quality of an article is when you take a view expressed in one context and use it in a different context. I can tell you that the current structure of the article was an attempt to provide a clear context for every view. I can also tell you that the most persistant erosion of the quality of the article was not done by real POV pushers, but by countless independent editors who, wherever they saw any explaination of race as a social construction, added "but most scientists disagree." The point is not that this statement is wrong. The point is that the article ought to have a whole section, or multiple sections, for scientists who express different views. But some reads the article and they think that whatever view they believe in, it has to be expressed in every section. So we move from an article with many sections each covering a different debate and a different view of race, to an article with many sections each of which repeats the same thing: some people say race is real, others say it is socially constructed. In every section. Then the article grows, gets too long, and the whole organization is a mess. It is death by a thousand small cuts, and each editor claims to be making the article "NPOV" but the problem is each editor is adding a point that already appears, just in a different section. So I think it is a complex topic that demands many different sections, and the problem is that the introduction and table of contents never provided a foolproof roadmap to the article, so people reading one section and getting pissed off would know that the other points of views are represented in later sections or other issues (like MtDNA research) are covered, just in a later section. The biggest challenge in my experience is an effective organization.
I do not have the Wade book on hand, but I think it is very valuable and I hope someone can find it. Another problem that makes it hard to come up with a good organization is: there is a good deal of research on the social construction of race in latin America. But most research on race as a biological distinction takes place in the US. Since the research is asymmetric, strage contradictions end up in the article - claims are made about biological difference that are true in the US but not Brazil or the Dominican Republic. But the research in Brazil was not reproduced in the US, and the research in the US was not reproduced in Brazil. So some sections end up being US - centric and others Brazil-centric. I do not know the solution to this. Slrubenstein | Talk15:25, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
I agree-I think maybe if the POV pushing is better curtailed, all these various aspects can be described more cogently. Now it's a bit like a tumble down the rabbit-hole, a kind of "Race can mean A, B, C or D. It used to be thought that race was Z." This is followed by in-depth discourse about Z, what's wrong with Z, different ways of measuring-grouping-clustering Z, quotes about Z, who still uses Z, who is marketing genealogy with Z. And after dispensing with Z, the A-B-C-D which we led with is largely treated as an afterthought, almost a catch-phrase, for left overs after sweeping up all the "Not Z". I'm still inclined to see the term "classification" in its Linnaean sense. I agree that the key piece is the omnibus article. And we don't need to put the cart ahead of the horse, but I'm thinking that a title with "classification" would muddy the picture given by the omnibus treatment. It would be voluminous to go into the various attempts and missteps in applying a classification scheme of race in modern humans (species/sub-species/cline/clade/ecotype etc). And if such efforts warrant describing in an article here, I don't think the best place for it is the omnibus article-there I think it should be left to the situation as it stands now. For example (I could be wrong so please correct me), haven't scientists moved beyond the multi-regional hypothesis and notions of race as sub-species? Maybe I need more coffee, but I think a clearer treatment would be to move away from this overemphasis on describing race this way: "Race as X" followed by several paragraphs about why it's not X, "Race as Y" followed by several paragraphs why it's not Y, and "Race as Z" followed by "so again no, race is not Z". What I'm saying is that while the general public may have mistaken ideas about how closely genetics aligns with it, in the everyday world people define race socially and culturally, not genetically. For example, people generally tell clinicians what race they belong to, not the other way around. We need more about how people define race, and maybe much less emphasis on the ways geneticists today don't anymore.Professor marginalia (talk) 18:02, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
I'll draw more attention to something I've found as I compile source lists to share with Wikipedians. While gathering books about general biology, general genetics, human genetics, general behavioral genetics, and human behavioral genetics over the last few months, to add to a new citations list, what is noteworthy is how few of the most current secondary sources in those disciplines even mention race, especially race as categorized in the United States, in any context. Population genetics is mentioned a fair amount, but no one agrees about categories anymore, because the genetic information has been too nuanced for the old straitjacket categories. Those categories seem to appear in current literature only in a shrinking minority of primary studies, outnumbered by other studies that take different approaches. Plenty of examples are published in the current textbooks of medically interesting genes that occur in multiple populations that usually aren't categorized into the same "race" category. This prompts me to think I need to look soon at some of the articles related to this article to see if they are up to date with current literature and sourced mostly with unreplicated primary studies or with authoritative secondary textbooks and practitioner handbooks. What sources do you have at hand? How many reliable, recent secondary sources mention race prominently or even at all? Specific citations would be very helpful for this discussion. P.S. The Misplaced Pages guideline on identifying reliable sources in medicine is an excellent research guide for this topic. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 18:39, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
I believe that this is the leading textbook for physical anthropology. Slrubenstein | Talk
A few other crucial articles:
Nadia Abu El-Haj 2007 "The Genetic Reinscription of Race" Annual Review of Anthropology Vol. 36: 283-300
William W. Dressler, Kathryn S. Oths, Clarence C. Gravlee 2005 "RACE AND ETHNICITY IN PUBLIC HEALTH RESEARCH: Models to Explain Health Disparities" Annual Review of Anthropology Vol. 34: 231-252
B F Williams 1989 "A Class Act: Anhropology and the Race to Nation Across Ethnic Terrain" Annual Review of Anthropology Vol. 18: 401-444
C C Snow 1982 "Forensic Anthropology" Annual Review of Anthropology Vol. 11: 97-131 (since many supporters of the race concept come rom this field, which really means it is a view from law enforcement).
Annual Reviews is highly reviewedn and an authoritative source and its reviw essays are sources of the literature considered most significant in the field. Slrubenstein | Talk19:46, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
Hi, Slrubenstein, I just realized you asked me a question earlier that I haven't answered specifically. The answer is that any Wikipedian is welcome to add source suggestions (or comments about sources already posted) to the suggestions page of the bibliography on subjects related to this article. The more, the merrier. People who post citations to that page will see those posted there immediately--that page operates like any talk page--and over time I'll read and digest sources (as I obtain them from libraries here) and add them to the main pages of the source list, which will be in copy-and-paste cite tag form for insertion into articles all over Misplaced Pages. Thanks for suggesting sources here based on your knowledge of the literature. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 21:02, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
I am sorry, but race is not a medical condition. Race is a sociological categorization based on population genetic differences, but these differences are not in any way "medically interesting", they are just "racially interesting".
I really think the debate whether race is "factual" or "a construct" is a big misunderstanding. There are any number of facts in the real world. But facts in themselves don't have meaning, attaching meaning to facts is what humans do. So race is, in fact, a human construct of meaning attached to selected population genetic facts. --dab(𒁳)06:42, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
Hi, dab, thank you for your comments. I am responding implicitly to earlier comments here and on other Misplaced Pages articles that the category of race has some medical relevance (for which citations to primary research publications are occasionally provided). My response to comments such as those is that if there is indeed an issue of medical relevance here, the way to decide what to say about that issue in the text of a Misplaced Pages article is to go to the sources of medical reliability, which is something I have been doing by requesting books from the Bio-Medical Library of the major research university in my metropolitan area. But in fact, I thus far have not found a lot of current, reliable, secondary sources about medical issues that mention "race" categories as important for human medicine. If there are such sources, I would be glad to hear about them. If there are not such sources, that suggests a path for future revision of this article. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 15:09, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
Really? You must not be looking very hard.
Body mass trajectories vary by race:
Truls Østbye, Rahul Malhotra, and Lawrence R Landerman. Body mass trajectories through adulthood: results from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 Cohort (1981–2006) Int. J. Epidemiol.
Race is an important factor in lactation score:
Krause KM, Lovelady CA, Ostbye T. Predictors of Breastfeeding in Overweight and Obese Women: Data From Active Mothers Postpartum (AMP). Matern Child Health J.
Rates of Hepatocellular cancer vary by race:
Qin H, Liu B, Shi T, Liu Y, Sun Y, Ma Y. Tumour Necrosis Factor-alpha Polymorphisms and Hepatocellular Carcinoma: a Meta-analysis. J Int Med Res. 2010;38(3):760-768.
Diagrams based on original research are not permitted in the article.
This talk page includes a link to a reminder to all Wikipedians from the Arbitration Committee about the care to be taken when sourcing statements for this and related articles. There is a vast and somewhat contradictory primary literature on this subject, which rapidly becomes obsolete as further research is done. There is also a considerable number of reliable secondary sources on this subject, including some much more recent than the primary sources often cited in this article, that are too often neglected by Wikipedians, even though the Misplaced Pages reliable source guidelines remind us that "Articles should rely on secondary sources whenever possible. When relying on primary sources, extreme caution is advised: Wikipedians should never interpret the content of primary sources for themselves. See Misplaced Pages:No original research." In my own reading of the secondary sources, one striking issue is how little agreement there still is on human ancestry trees based on DNA markers. As new human individuals are sampled, or as new DNA locuses are considered, the trees have to be rewritten. If there are to be diagrams of human ancestry groups put in this article, they must be sourced directly to verifiable, reliable secondary sources, and if different sources disagree on the structure or importance of such tree diagrams, that must be mentioned in the article for neutral point of view. P.S. Any Wikipedian reading this is very welcome to suggest additional sources (I mean reliable secondary sources, mostly) on the issues discussed in this article. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 18:21, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
Race and biomedicine
Chapter 5 in "Ian Whitmarsh and David S. Jones, 2010, What's the Use of Race? Modern Governance and the Biology of Difference, MIT press" contains a critical discussion of why racial categories are still being used as if they were markers of genetic variation in the field of biomedicine. Reviewing a large body of literature criticizing the continued use of racial categories in biomedicine the authors write:
"Two broad groups of arguments were observed: those relating to the use of racialized categories as (if they were) genetic variables, and those exploring their use as such within biomedical research. Five specific groups of arguments against the use of racialized categories as (if they were) markers of genetic variation emerged from these articles. These drew on concerns that most genetic variation is found within all racialized groups; only a modest amount of genetic variation loosely clusters around racialized groups (but does not result in distinct packages of genetic traits that are unique to each racialized group); genetically “ pure ” racialized populations do not exist (and have never existed); variation in phenotypic traits among racialized groups cannot be assumed to refl ect variation in genotypic traits; and using racialized categories as (if they were) markers of genetic variation tends to reify these categories as essential qualities of the individuals and groups concerned (rather than as context-specific and fluid forms of sociocultural identity). Six related themes emerged concerning the use of racialized categories as (if they were) genetic variables in biomedical research, drawing on concerns about the lack of consensus regarding the defi nition of racialized categories; the limited reliability and external validity of racialized categories; the limited internal validity of racialized categories; the way in which using racialized categories as (as if they were) markers of genetic variation tends to encourage their widespread use to (erroneously) infer genetic causality for disparities in health among racialized groups; the way in which research emphasizing differences in health risk and health care need among racialized groups can lead to the development of inappropriately targeted services for different racialized groups; and how the use of racialized categories to explore disparities in health (and particularly the possible genetic basis for these) can lead to stigmatization and stereotyping. We discuss how these arguments are not simply overlooked,ignored, rejected, or circumvented by contemporary geneticists and biomedical scientists within the context of contemporary genetics and biomedical science, but are selectively engaged with to generate a largely self-referential case for the continued use of racialized categories as (if they were) markers for genetic variation between populations by the researchers involved. As such, while the criticisms and concerns reviewed in this chapter provide powerful arguments for removing the use of racialized categories as (if they were) genetic variables from most genetic (and related biomedical) research, selective engagement with these arguments, together with the self-referential interpretation of findings from analyses using racialized categories as (if they were) genetic variables, continues to make their use as such appear useful to geneticists and biomedical researchers alike."
"It suggests that a more appropriate use of racialized categories as (if they were) markers of genetic variation would be one that recognizes these as, first and foremost, social categories that may only be usefully incorporated into biomedical research and practice in those instances (and these seem likely to be rare) when they are strongly associated with genetic differences responsible for disparities in health."
·Maunus·ƛ·18:35, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
So basically these scholars (Outram (a cultural anthropologist?) and Ellison) think race is not useful (because of "lack of consensus", "stigmatization and stereotyping", "erroneous" inference of causation (a serious charge), "inappropriately targeted services for different racialized groups" (surely the opposite is the intention?)), but because the entire field of genetics and biomedicine "selectively engages" these arguments, they continue to use race. And yet, despite the entire field of genetics and biomedicine continuing to use race, you use the opinion of a cultural anthropologist in the "Race and biomedicine" section. Maunus, you are a cultural anthropologist. This is the problem. 128.40.111.111 (talk) 07:42, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
Mike: You are not reading what it says. They SURVEYED 350 articles published in the field of genetics written by others that were critical of the use of race as a proxy for genotype. Those 350 authors used those arguments. Anyway Outram has a Msc in environmental epidemiology. ·Maunus·ƛ·11:11, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
This is probably the best statement of current mainstream POV, from Francis Collins. Race is useful, but it's better to be more precise. You should base the section on this. The massive condescending criticism heaped on the concept by Outram above is innappropriate. Much of it can be applied to any classification system. 128.40.127.155 (talk) 15:00, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
It is not the mpost critical source possible - it is a survey of an extensive body of criticism of the use of race in medicine that already exists and which the article (and most editors) has ignored untill now.·Maunus·ƛ·15:04, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
I have advocated the use of Collins as an example of the mainstream view among within biomedicine as well - but the article has to present the objections to the use of race in biomedicine (many of them also coming from within the field) as well, and here Outram contains an excellent summary of the arguments.·Maunus·ƛ·15:07, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Because the uses are already there - and a bunch of editors (including you) have argued that the use of race is standard practice with no opposition in biomedicine - this clearly shows that its not that simple. Anyway the criticism shows that the uses aren't necessarily more useful.·Maunus·ƛ·16:35, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Try to write up a suggestion for a raceand biomedicine section that you would find more balanced and present it here on the talk page for collaborative improvement?·Maunus·ƛ·17:24, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
If the IP wants to give it a shot, he should go ahead first (since it seems like he has more of a problem with it than me). If not, I'll see what I can do tomorrow, I'm a bit bogged down with class today. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 17:46, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Oh - didn't realize that. I'll try working on a suggestion tomorrow if I have time. The source the IP recommended might be worthwhile though, so I hope it's not a problem to use it. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 19:09, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Ferahgo, you need to reread neutral point of view policy if you think that every Misplaced Pages article on a topic you devote your editing to will be "balanced." By Misplaced Pages policy, articles have to represent the best available sources. The best available sources are anything but balanced on some issues that Wikipedians disagree about. That's a learning opportunity for the Wikipedians who take the time and effort to read the best current sources. I've changed my point of view over the years on a number of issues because I enjoy visiting a high-quality university library (and making use of interlibrary loan facilities and other aids to research) to read about things I wasn't taught in my undergraduate and postgraduate formal schooling. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 03:04, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
You seem to be misunderstanding my concept of "balanced." In no way did I mean to imply that I think the article should have undue weight in favor of the relevance of race (with caveats) in medicine, because from my own perception of the literature available, that is the mainstream view among doctors and geneticists. From my perception the article currently has undue weight towards the meaninglessness of race in medicine, which is not an accurate representation of the current body of research. But if even the discussions on the race & genetics talk wasn't able to convince you, I doubt I will. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 04:36, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
For what its worth I think Ferahgo has a point, the biomedicine section does seem a bit like a response to a statement that isn't provided (namely "this is how race is used in biomedicine"). It would be better if it provided the statement of how race is actually used in biomedicine, possibly providing some of biomedicines own reasonings to continue the use and then went on to describing the responses and criticisms. ·Maunus·ƛ·12:05, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
Maunus, your statement makes a lot of sense from the standpoint of best practice as well. It rules nothing out while acknowledging the body of knowledge to date. futurebird (talk) 14:53, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
We have, or used to have, citations for articles criticizing some uses of race in biomedicine. Modern science is founded on statistics and there is sometimes a high correclation of a disease and people from a particular part of the world. In some cases where one's recent ancestors were from correlates well with SIRE. But not always. Sickle-cell anemia correlates with people from swampy areas in warm areas that have been modified by the practice of agriculture. This includes Italy and parts of Africa. In the US most victims of SSA are descendents of Africans so people link it to "race" but there are many blacks who live in places where there has never been any SSAA, and Europeans who suffer from the illness. So a doctor has to be attentive to ancestry but also cognizant that it signals risks, not certainties. Anyone who assumes certainties that there are "white" or "black" diseases will, if they treat a lot of patients, eventually be wrong and perhaps in a grave way. Some drugs have been marketed to "black" diseases and it turned out it was far more a marketing campaign than science. So we need to be cautious and Maunus's excellent source is an important contribution. Slrubenstein | Talk19:45, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Maunus has found a thoughtful source (which I also obtained this week) from a major university press with articles by several medically astute experts on the current role of "race" in human medicine. The source is well worth reading, and is quite mainstream in how it reaches conclusions about former race classifications on the basis of the most recent and advanced consensus in genetic research. Remember, by Misplaced Pages sourcing policies, articles that make medical claims should be sourced to medically reliable sources, which that source indubitably is. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 02:56, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
Biomedicine draft
I felt that this basically needed to be rewritten from the ground up. It had a lot of problems, the most noticeable of which were constant synth and organization problems (in addition to the fact that the section was overwhelmed by criticism). The organization issue was probably the biggest one, which includes the fact that the original section didn't even explain the basics of race in medicine and basically dove straight into the arguments for/against instead. The whole thing jumped all over the place, without any clear flow and direction. My rewrite divides the issue into five distinct sections by paragraph: 1. Opening/overview of the situation, 2. Why some people think race in medicine is valuable, 3. Examples of race-linked disorders and race-based medicines 4. Why some people think race in medicine is not valuable, and 5. Looking forward/where this issue is heading.
I tried to keep almost everything that Maunus added from Outram & Ellison, but I removed a lot of content that was either obvious synth, POV, unsourced, or simply not relevant. For example, the source about sickle cell did not include anything related to criticisms of associating disorders with race, so I removed the POV-related stuff surrounding it while still pointing out the facts. I didn't think that the paragraph about the possibly insidious purposes of BiDil were relevant to this section, because what it's really criticizing is the marketing practices of the pharmaceutical industry rather than the concept of race-based medicine in general; this should be discussed in the article on BiDil but not here. The section is already long enough that I think things of only marginal relevance are better left out. The whole section about gene flow, while a decent point, is synth in that the source it cites mentions nothing about comparative levels of MS between Africans and African Americans resulting from gene flow (and I tried to find another source explicitly stating this, with no success). I tossed out the entire last paragraph due to being unsourced and only tangentially related to begin with. If anyone else would like to contribute further sources from either perspective, feel free, but as it is I think it's a reasonably good summary of the current body of literature in this area.
In biomedicine
The consideration of race by doctors and researchers in modern medicine has seen a marked increase since the turn of the millennium, due mostly to developments in genetics. The primary impetus for considering race in biomedical research is the possibility of improving the prevention and treatment of diseases by predicting hard-to-ascertain factors on the basis of more easily ascertained characteristics. Since medical judgment often involves decision-making under uncertain conditions, many doctors consider it useful to take race into account when treating disease because diseases and treatment responses tend to cluster by ethnicity. Diseases that are typically correlated with racial identification include Cystic fibrosis, Lactose intolerance, Tay-Sachs Disease, sickle cell anemia, and Crohn disease, which are genetically linked and more prevalent in some populations than others. A substantial degree of consensus among medical professionals exists that the ability to treat diseases improves with greater specificity of genetic analysis, and that racial groups are a fairly imperfect and unspecific way to identify genetic clusters which correlate with disease risk. However, until cheaper and more widely available methods of genetic analysis are commonplace, the consideration of race remains a worthwhile practice for many doctors and researchers.
The perceived benefit to using race as a consideration in biomedicine is based on the series of surrogate relationships between self-identified race and disease risk. Analysis of microsatellite DNA markers and SNPs from human populations have shown that it is possible to assign geographic regions with a high degree of accuracy to humans using a combination of these polymorphic genes. Furthermore, analyzing the fraction of human genetic variation that lies within and between geographically separated populations has shown that the genes that are geographically highly differentiated in their allelic frequencies are not typical of the human genome in general. Since race can be seen as an imperfect surrogate for ancestral geographic reason, it is in turn a surrogate for variation across one's genome. There is therefore some amount of correlation between genome-wide variation and variation at specific loci associated with disease. The ways in which these variants interact with environmental factors can subsequently give a less-than-perfect approximation of propensity for disease or treatment response.
distribution of the sickle cell traitdistribution of Malaria
A classic example of a disease that tends to correlate with ethnic clusters is Tay-Sachs, an autosomal recessive disorder which is shown to be more frequent among Ashkenazi Jews than among other Jewish groups and non-Jewish populations, though it has been shown to occur in other groups as well. Sickle-cell anemia, another well-known genetic disorder, has been shown to be most prevalent among individuals of sub-Saharan African ancestry, though there is also ample recorded instance of lesser prevalence among Hispanics, Indians, Saudi Arabs, and Mediterraneans. The sickle cell trait offers some resistance to malaria, since in regions where malaria is present, sickle cell has been positively selected and consequently the proportion of people with it is greater. Race-based medicine comes into play when a medicine is specifically intended for ethnic clusters which are shown to have a propensity for a certain disorder. A recent example of this practice in action is the FDA approval of BiDil, a medication for congestive heart failure targeted at black people in the United States. BiDil is based on the substantial evidence that African Americans with congestive heart failure respond less effectively to traditional treatments than Caucasians.
The continued use of racial categories as proxies for knowledge about genetically determined health concerns in populations has been criticized widely. Outram and Ellison have identified the most common concerns related to this practice. Most genetic variation is found within racial groups whereas very little genetic variation loosely coincides with racial groups, but without making any well-defined genetic criteria for ascription of individuals to racial groups possible. Completely genetically homogenous racial groups have never existed; phenotypic traits, and variation between them, do not translate directly to similar variation in genotypic traits; and the continued use of racial categories as proxies for genetic variation has a social function of cementing socially constructed racial categories as if they were natural classes, which could result in increased stereotyping and discrimination in society. In many cases, health disparities will be caused by environmental factors common to certain populations and geographic areas, such as differences in culture, diet, education, socioeconomic status, and access to health care, rather than by allele clusters. Another concern is that the way in which research emphasizes differences in health risk and health care need among racial groups can lead to the development of racial discrimination in health services.
Many researchers agree that a goal of health-related genetics should be to move past the weak surrogate relationships of racial health disparity and get to the root causes of health and disease. This largely includes research which strives to define human variation with greater specificity across the world. One such emerging method is known as ethnogenetic layering, which is a non-typological alternative to depending on the racial paradigm in biomedicine. It works by focusing on geographically identified microethnic groups, which are far more nuanced and sensitive than simple race analyses.
^ Ian Whitmarsh and David S. Jones, 2010, What's the Use of Race? Modern Governance and the Biology of Difference, MIT press. Chapter 9.
^ Collins, Francis S. What we do and don't know about 'race', 'ethnicity', genetics and health at the dawn of the genome era. Nature Genetics Supplement, volume 36 No. 11, November 2004.
Revisiting race in a genomic age. By Barbara A. Koenig, Sandra Soo-Jin Lee, Sarah S. Richardson. Rutgars University Press, 2008. Chapter 5.
Myrianthopoulos NC and Aronson SM (July 1, 1966). "Population dynamics of Tay-Sachs disease. I. Reproductive fitness and selection.". American Journal of Human Genetics 18 (4): 313–327. PMID 5945951.
Taylor AL, Ziesche S, Yancy C, et al. (November 2004). "Combination of isosorbide dinitrate and hydralazine in blacks with heart failure". The New England Journal of Medicine 351 (20): 2049–57. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa042934. PMID 15533851.
Exner DV, Dries DL, Domanski MJ, Cohn JN (2001). "Lesser response to angiotensin-converting-enzyme inhibitor therapy in blacks as compared with white patients with left ventricular dysfunction". N Engl J Med 344 (18): 1351–7. doi:10.1056/NEJM200105033441802. PMID 11333991.
^ Ian Whitmarsh and David S. Jones, 2010, What's the Use of Race? Modern Governance and the Biology of Difference, MIT press. Chapter 5.
Jackson, F.L.C. Ethnogenetic layering (EL): an alternative to the traditional race model in human variation and health disparity studies. Annals of Human Biology, March–April 2008; 35(2): 121–144 http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1080%2F03014460801941752
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