If you’ve noticed that I’m posting less, it’s the timing: my sabbatical is ending, I’m getting ready to plunge back into the teaching grind in January, and I’ve got a lot of prep work to do. And then we were hit with more cloudflare errors…but now we’re back.
Last year, I incorporated a significant unit on race and genetics; this year, I’m going to prepare the students a little better by including readings from the scientific literature throughout the semester, so I’ve been searching for good, easily digestible papers on the subject. One that I found (but probably won’t use in the course) is “Teaching the Science of Race and Racism,” by Kevin N. Lala, Jasmeen Kanwal, and Kalyani Twyman, which came from this book, Innovations in Decolonising the Curriculum: Multidisciplinary Perspective. The abstract for the paper hit me a bit hard, personally.
Social Science departments of universities regularly teach the history of scientific racism and how contemporary genetics undermines biological conceptions of race. By contrast, biology departments rarely embrace this challenge, and ‘race’ and racism barely feature on the curriculum. Seemingly, professional biologists shirk any social responsibility to educate future generations about these pressing social issues, despite the fact that racism is heavily reliant on the propagation of biological misinformation and that biologists are well-qualified to teach facts related to ‘race’ and racism accurately.
Harsh, but that’s why I added the topic of race to an otherwise convential transmission genetics course. I am feeling simultaneously vindicated and embarrassed for my discipline. I guess I’ll have to continue expanding on the subject.
I don’t think I’ll be facing much pushback from students and colleagues — the authors didn’t, after all.
Here we describe the experience of teaching a senior undergraduate course entitled ‘The Science of Race and Racism’ within the School of Biology at our institution in the UK. The module discussed the history of scientific racism, how contemporary genetics undermines biological conceptions of race and tackled race and sport, race and health, and race and intelligence controversies. Misgivings that delayed our offering the course proved unfounded: the course was extremely positively received by the students, and extraordinarily rewarding to teach. We encourage others to grasp the nettle and teach similar courses.
My students seemed to appreciate it last year, let’s hope they like it and learn something this year. I might only be teaching this course this year and next year before finally retiring!
Welcome back.
Neil Risch (“Genetic Structure, Self-Identified Race/Ethnicity, and Confounding in Case-Control Association Studies (NCBI/PMC)”) found that race and genetic ancestry are ‘only’ 99.86% the same thing. Tony Frudakis (“The Inconvenient Science of Racial DNA Profiling” in Wired) later found the linkage to be 100.0% (with a smaller sample).
The phrase ‘race is a social construct’ really means ‘race is only a social construct’. This has long (200+ years) been known not to be true. In our era, geneticists and other scientists have shown that race has a biological basis. This list of geneticists and other scientists is long and includes Collins, Frudakis, Hsu, Kahn, Reich, Risch, etc. Race is like sex and age, both a biological and social construct. Of course, this was known 200+ years ago (see the work of Blumenbach). For many years now, anthropologists have been able (with reasonable accuracy) to determine the race, sex, and age (at death). It sad but true, that our understanding of our own species has declined (in some respects), since then. Why?
There is actually a funny version of this. Quote
“Forensic anthropology and the concept of race: if races don’t exist, why are forensic anthropologists so good at identifying them?”
It turns out that we now have AI on this topic. AI has been found to determine race with considerable accuracy from X-rays. If race doesn’t have a biological basis, how exactly does this work? See “Reading Race: AI Recognizes Patient’s Racial Identity In Medical Images” in arXiv.
Well, darn. I was hoping that you just needed to spend more time translating our inane media for our new arachnid overlords. (They can’t possibly be more venomous than the ones we’ve got now.)
So, not leveraging AI for your prep, PZ?
<innoc>
Phew! Good to have this blog indeed all the FTB blogs back again!
#2: Genetic relatedness is real. It is very different from the concept of race, which drags in a whole lot of bogus presuppostions, and yes, is a cultural phenomenon.
Related.
The opposite of culture. South Park , the new Nazi Germany
.https://youtube.com/shorts/zGbE9MfcbQo
Genetic relatedness and race are ‘only’ 100.0%/99.86% the same thing. Let me quote from Reich
“With the help of these tools, we are learning that while race may be a social construct, differences in genetic ancestry that happen to correlate to many of today’s racial constructs are real”
nomorefascism@8,
Apparently you are unable to read for understanding. Try reading #6 again. Do you think anyone denies that differences in skin colour, hair texture, facial and body morphology, have no genetic basis?
I think PZ pulled that comment out of the spamtrap, which may have seemed encouraging.
re #8: Greeks, Italians, Spaniards, Tunisians, Germans.
Different phenotypes. Different cultures.
Genetic variation is clinal, not partitioned.
Adjacent populations blend into one another.
Specifically, such differences in genetic ancestry do not entail “race is a genetic category.”; it only entails that geography and history separated populations long enough to affect typical phenotypic traits, from racial constructs can be selectively chosen.
(Skin colour, sure. Earlobes, not so much)
[erratum: from racial → from which racial]
African, European, and Asian are the three broad categories of forensic anthropology as regards skeletal anatomy. It is the skull and particularly the dentition which is used to make this determination.
nomorefascism might note that none of those three broad categories are a race.
Heh. History elucidates the true nature of racism:
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Irish_sentiment#19th_century)
—
Tribalism, basically. To be clear.
^ John Morales : Broils? Huh? As in the cooking technique?
Or couldn’t Disraeli spell brawls? Or did he mean something else?
Idolatry meaning Catholicsim I guess which ofc England was until half way through Henry “wife-beheader” VIII’s reign.
StevoR @14
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/broil
“: a noisy disturbance : TUMULT
especially : BRAWL”
Note that when they said ‘race’, they meant it.
It was never scientific or genetics until it became a convenient excuse.
cf. https://flashbak.com/the-simian-negroid-irish-depicted-in-english-and-american-cartoons-12727/
@15. Hemidactylus : Ah. Okay, thanks for that – much appreciated. Didn’t know.
@8 One of the problems with Reich’s statement – or with our interpretation of it – is the confusion between technical/professional terms and concepts on the one hand, and ordinary language/colloquial terms and concepts on the other. What the biologist means by “race” in a technical sense is usually a population that develops a distinctive genetic make-up through generations of inbreeding: there could be hundreds of “races” in this sense. What ordinary Americans mean by “race” is one of four categories: White, Black; Red; Yellow referring almost exclusively to skin color.
So it is not surprising that biological anthropologists can identify “race” in the technical sense from biological material, since biological material is the basis for defining “race” in the technical sense. And given that there are only four “races” in American cultural categorization, it is also not surprising that a biological anthropologist could accurately identify which of them a skeleton belongs to. Who has shovel-shaped incisors except Asians — i.e. “Yellow” people?
And the ambiguity of “race” in the ordinary language sense is demonstrated by numerous examples over many years. Greeks and Italians were not considered “White” in the late 19th century. British racial categories consider people from India to be “Black” but American racial categories don’t. Americans have adopted the general term “ethnicity” as a substitute for “race” in those cases in which “race” in the ordinary sense doesn’t seem to map nicely onto our cultural categories. “Pacific Islander”? What “race” is that?
I’ll spare you a longer discussion of social or cultural construction.
@10. John Morales : “I think PZ pulled that comment out of the spamtrap, which may have seemed encouraging.”
Yes, sure I didn’t see it before when I first commented here.
@2. nomorefascism (nice nymn & yes please BTW) :
They have? Really? I rather thought the exact opposite of that was true.
Lessee (Googles) :
Source : https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11291859/
Emphasis added.
Plus :
Source : https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0924977X23002493
Again, bolding mine for emphasis.
As well as this and more :
Source : https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250417-biological-reality-what-genetics-has-taught-us-about-race
For thrice time, emphasis added.
So, no, race is NOT biological in nature. Humanity does NOT have sub-species.
(off topic)
@ ^
Now, if only we could convince you “planet” is a social construct. ;-)
(/off topic)
If that’s true, I conclude that forensic anthropologists are ignoramuses. Lumping together the majority populations of coastal north Africa with those of tropical west Africa? Those of Dravidian descent with Japanese?
@ KG
Irregardless of your rude opinion, forensics reconstruction does indeed have three broad categories for human anatomy. The palate is particularly diagnostic. Morphology has been accepted science for a few hundred years. How exactly do you think the people who do facial reconstruction manage to determine a race from a skull? It’s not DNA, it’s very slight differences in anatomical structures.
In the news: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce86jzgxxy4o
↓
True origin of ‘first black Briton’ revealed
4 hours ago
Scientists have shed light on the true origins of the so-called “first black Briton”.
The skeletal remains – dating from Roman times – were previously thought to belong to a woman from the sub-Saharan region.
This had led her to be dubbed “one of the earliest Africans in Britain”.
But scientists have now said they cannot find DNA evidence that indicates she had recent ancestry from Africa.
They detailed in a paper published online on Wednesday that she actually had a strong genetic similarity to individuals from rural Britain.
She likely had blue eyes, between pale and dark skin and light hair, scientists added.
A craniofacial reconstruction of the ancient skeleton had previously depicted her as having curly black hair, brown eyes and dark skin.
@John Morales
How very interesting. The difference between the possibly SubSaharan reconstruction and the new rural Briton reconstruction reveals that its creator was more than a little racist. What is going on with the eyebrows and lips? Observe the difference in hairstyle, or the completely ahistorical lack of such in the first version.
The reconstructed face itself is very similar in both versions IMO.
The linked paper has the osteological information used to create the first version.
Unfortunately, the cranium is missing all of its front teeth, which I’m sure contributed to their misidentifying a congenital deformation as indicative of sub-Saharan ancestry. She has a protruding jaw, aka underbite.
Race, like climate and many other things is both clinal and tends to cluster. To use a trivial example, Point Barrow, Alaska and Guatemala City, Guatemala have different climates. Yet no magic dividing line separates the two. They are not distinct. I guess that ‘proves’ that the climate of Point Barrow and Guatemala City are really the same.
StevoR, Let me quote from Francis Collins (who only ran the HGP).
“Well-intentioned statements over the past few years, some coming from geneticists, might lead one to believe there is no connection whatsoever between self-identified race or ethnicity and the frequency of particular genetic variants. Increasing scientific evidence, however, indicates that genetic variation can be used to make a reasonably accurate prediction of geographic origins of an individual, at least if that individual’s grandparents all came from the same part of the world. As those ancestral origins in many cases have a correlation, albeit often imprecise, with self-identified race or ethnicity, it is not strictly true that race or ethnicity has no biological connection…”
What part of ‘not strictly true’ don’t you get?
Feeble guess. No. What it proves is that climate is climate, wherever it may be.
PZ’s blog. Tricky, I know. Thing is, StevoR is but another commenter. Like you and I.
“Well-intentioned statements over the past few years, some coming from geneticists, might lead one to believe there is no connection whatsoever between self-identified race or ethnicity and the frequency of particular genetic variants. [blah]”
You are perverting this: https://www.genome.gov/Pages/News/Documents/RaceandGeneticsCommentary.pdf
Clearly, you got that misinterpretation at least second-hand.
He is not claiming that socially defined “races” are biological categories, or that race is a meaningful genetic construct, or that genetic differences map cleanly onto racial labels.
His actual position is the opposite, to wit: race is a crude, imprecise, and often misleading proxy for ancestry.
(Tsk)
@26. nomorefascism : “What part of ‘not strictly true’ don’t you get?”
What part of the bits in bold in my #19 don’t you get?
Multiple sources cited there back up the fact that race is a social and NOT a biological construct.
One unsourced and undated quote from one famous scientist who :
Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Collins#Views
Does not overturn or refute the consensus that race is NOT biological. It merely shows that on this topic Francis Collins may well be wrong or at least that he doesn’t share the majority view of most experts in the field.
StevoR:
Tsk. Not even that.
Did you find and peruse and evaluate his alleged claim?
(I did)
—
Also, how weak is it to claim he is Christian to attempt to refute his science?
(Very)
Race (however defined) is rather obviously heritable and hence biological. Let me offer a few quotes
F. Collins “Increasing scientific evidence, however, indicates that genetic variation can be used to make a reasonably accurate prediction of geographic origins. It is not strictly true that race or ethnicity has no biological connection.” The oral statement (which followed him writing the same thing) is from https://radiolab.org/podcast/91654-race-doesnt-exist-or-does-it/. The timestamp is from 3:05/.
“Groundbreaking advances in DNA sequencing technology have been made over the last two decades. These advances enable us to measure with exquisite accuracy what fraction of an individual’s genetic ancestry traces back to, say, West Africa 500 years ago — before the mixing in the Americas of the West African and European gene pools that were almost completely isolated for the last 70,000 years. With the help of these tools, we are learning that while race may be a social construct, differences in genetic ancestry that happen to correlate to many of today’s racial constructs are real.”
“Predicting someone’s race from their DNA is supposed to be impossible: But one forensic scientist claims he can do just that, and proves it by helping Baton Rouge police find a serial killer.”
“The researchers found a near-perfect correspondence of 99.86% (or similar figures like 99.84%) between a person’s self-identified race/ethnicity and the genetic cluster they fell into based on DNA analysis.”
nomorefascism, you do amuse.
But do go on; ignore the science, ignore the reality, misinterpret claims, and perform other such caperings.
After all, you have form, no? cf. #27 if you doubt me.
You’re parroting long-discredited talking points, and it’s clear you have no idea.
Again, Francis himself repudiates your interpretation.
Go on. Try to sustain that claim, which I took a few seconds to check.
Pretty sure it’s a misunderstanding and misreporting of https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13524-013-0242-0
Also, gotta love you started with an actual expert (who repudiates your claims and who you attempt to misrepresent) such as Francis Collins and now debase yourself by adducing a podcast.
Heh.
SteveoR, John Morales, the following is a direct quote from F. Collins in Nature Genetics (https://med.stanford.edu/content/dam/sm/cirge/documents/activities/journalclubs/Nat%20Genet%202004%20Collins.pdf)
“Is race biologically meaningless?
First, it is essential to point out that ‘race’ and
‘ethnicity’ are terms without generally agreed-
upon definitions. Both terms carry complex
connotations that reflect culture, history,
socioeconomics and political status, as well as
a variably important connection to ancestral
geographic origins. Well-intentioned state-
ments over the past few years, some coming
from geneticists, might lead one to believe
there is no connection whatsoever between
self-identified race or ethnicity and the fre-
quency of particular genetic variants1,2.
Increasing scientific evidence, however, indi-
cates that genetic variation can be used to
make a reasonably accurate prediction of geo-
graphic origins of an individual, at least if that
individual’s grandparents all came from the
same part of the world3. As those ancestral
origins in many cases have a correlation, albeit
often imprecise, with self-identified race or
ethnicity, it is not strictly true that race or eth-
nicity has no biological connection.”
What does ‘not strictly true” mean to you? Obviously, something other than “not strictly true”.
It means that biological traits that are expressed (phenotype) is due to invisible ones (genotype) and to development environment, so that there is a statistical correlation.
“‘Not strictly true’ means that while race is not a valid biological category, it is not utterly disconnected from biology. Genetic variation correlates with geographic ancestry, and ancestry sometimes overlaps with self‑identified race. Thus, biologically speaking, race is best understood as a crude, imprecise, and often misleading proxy for ancestry, not as a meaningful genetic construct.”
Again: He is not claiming that socially defined “races” are biological categories, or that race is a meaningful genetic construct, or that genetic differences map cleanly onto racial labels.
His actual position is the opposite, to wit: race is a crude, imprecise, and often misleading proxy for ancestry.
I did some reading on the topic of AI being able to reliably identify self-reported race from radiological images. Skeletal elements can certainly give clues to age, sex, and race, but I am entirely skeptical that would be the case for soft tissues.
The paper referred to @2 by nomorefascism did not undergo any sort of peer review, and later research using cardiac imaging has found that
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/AI-recognition-of-patient-race-in-medical-imaging%3A-Banerjee-Bhimireddy/3870f203248262e9815e01beca21c71ba9aa0eed
I second John Morales @33 about nomorefascism misunderstanding Dr Collin’s statements about race.
There are links to multiple papers about the topic of AI technology and diagnostic imaging supposedly being used to predict race.
Several of them note that
A: No, the AI is not predicting race accurately.
A: The AI somehow manages to consistently under-diagnose the same demographics as any typical white supremacists. The racist bias comes from the AI PROGRAM.
(Poor people, women, and especially black or brown women)
Tethys, ahem. I know you mean well.
“A: No, the AI is not predicting race accurately.”
By that you tacitly grant not only that race is a real thing that can accurately be predicted, but also that it’s a thing that can be determined by genomic testing.
I get you did not intend do that. I myself am often over-terse.
Still, intent and magic…
(That lexical concession surely vindicates nomorefascism’s perception)
The quote from the research also shortens “self-reported race” into simply race.
The tldr from several of the papers @34 is that the AI is using information other than the medical images to predict race. The AI is amplifying biases, which would seem to be the opposite of the desired goal in using AI as a diagnostic tool.
@29. John Morales : “Also, how weak is it to claim he is Christian to attempt to refute his science?”
Fair point. It wasn’t actually meant as refutatuion of hiscsience merely a note on who Collins is.
^ his science.
@30. nomorefascism : You seem to be ignoring all the sources linked in my #19 and have not addressed them – why is that?
Plenty of other sources contradict the assertion that race is biological and the consensus of experts in the field seems to be against that from what I’ve found and read.
See Lancet Digital Health (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35568690/). The title is “AI recognition of patient race in medical imaging: a modelling study”. The abstract reads
“Background: Previous studies in medical imaging have shown disparate abilities of artificial intelligence (AI) to detect a person’s race, yet there is no known correlation for race on medical imaging that would be obvious to human experts when interpreting the images. We aimed to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the ability of AI to recognise a patient’s racial identity from medical images. “
Just one of the papers at my link @34. There are multiple papers that show the AI is not using the medical image in their predictions of race, and exhibits bias based on its predictions of race.
Tethys, your TLDR shows that AI systems were quite able to discern race from medical images
@nomorefascism
I’ve spoon-fed you several papers that are more current than either your initial @2, or the Lancet link @41.
If you took the time to actually read any of the papers @34, you would learn that the AI is not using the medical images to make their predictions, and is frequently incorrect.
Neither medical experts or AI can accurately determine race from a chest X-ray no matter how many times you repeat the false claim.
[meta]
You’re still doing it, Tethys. X-ray imaging is not genetic analysis, but ‘race’ is still a thing that can be found.
(Why you forever concede stuff is beyond me; the issue is genetics, not X-ray imagery or AI)
Here, let me remind you:
<q?Neil Risch (“Genetic Structure, Self-Identified Race/Ethnicity, and Confounding in Case-Control Association Studies (NCBI/PMC)”) found that race and genetic ancestry are ‘only’ 99.86% the same thing. Tony Frudakis (“The Inconvenient Science of Racial DNA Profiling” in Wired) later found the linkage to be 100.0% (with a smaller sample).
That was the initial claim. You keep waffling about other things.
(Argumentation as art, I has it)
@ John Morales
Arrogance, yous gotz that too. I’m really not interested in arguments, just facts.
Nothing is being conceded by using the term race in its biological sense.
Race isn’t only cultural. There are plenty of illnesses that are asymmetrically linked to racial ancestry.
Sickle cell anemia
Porphyria
Fulminating psoriasis
Diabetes
Understanding the asymmetry of these illnesses among the three broad race groups is central to Dr. Collin’s goals in sequencing the human genome in the first place.
Tethys, you preferred didn’t even look at medical imaging. Let me quote from your study “we test whether it is possible to predict age, race, and sex from cardiac ultrasound images using deep learning algorithms and assess the impact of varying confounding variables”
“No, the AI is not predicting race accurately.”
“In our study, we show that standard AI deep learning models can be trained to predict race from medical images with high performance across multiple imaging modalities, which was sustained under external validation conditions (x-ray imaging [area under the receiver operating characteristics curve (AUC) range 0·91-0·99]”
I guess that 91%-99%i is not accurate
John Morales, geneticists vary in how accurately race can be determined from genes, F. Collins uses the word ‘crude’. Reich (“With the help of these tools, we are learning that while race may be a social construct, differences in genetic ancestry that happen to correlate to many of today’s racial constructs are real”) does not provide a numerical estimate. Risch found a 99.86% linkage. Frudakis (using a smaller sample) found 100.0% linkage,
Medical X-Rays were mentioned (by me) to show that race is quite biological.
StevoR, look up the words “existence proof”