Why the Biological Fiction of Race Persists

First,
Jewish people are the most intelligent. They win almost %40 of the Nobel Prize's and they have a small population of only 14 million. So by far they exceed the other races in intelligence. The other races having huge numbers and such small contributions.

Second,
IQ tests, test intellectual conformity, not creativity and originality. This would explain the Asian high IQ's. They as a people are the ultimate conformists.

In IQ tests there are typically only one answer to the problem. That problem being a social conformity to reason. But everyone knows that Genius's and all the greatest developments in the world are not the product of conformity. Conformity never breeds creativity. We can see this in the lack of influence the Asian population has had on Science. China used to be called the "sick man" of Asia. Their population is massive and their contribution to innovation is almost nil. We can see this lack of originality in their adoptation of European philosophies, I.e. Communism. As well in all of China's 2 Billion people there was no one who could design a car for their new car company so they hired Italians to do it. The Asian races remain as factory slaves for European and Western peoples.

Friedrich Nietzsche and other Philosophers have made fun of Asian people as a race. Nietsche used the words "Pallid osification" to describe Orientals.

Pallid: lacking sparkle or liveliness : dull

Osification: Process of becoming inflexible: the process of becoming set and inflexible in behavior, attitudes, and actions.

5. Inflexible conformity: rigid, unthinking acceptance of social conventions.

The reality is Asian people have yet to understand that laws and rules are arbitrary. Europeans make the rules and Asian's follow them.

It also doesn't make sense that Asian's are considered smart because of the fact that they have destroyed their own countries. This is due to over-population and their basic lack of enviromental understanding.

It is also common scientific fact that women who have many children are ignorant, and those who have less children are more intelligent. This has already been proven in studies. So it seems strange to say that Asians are smart when the obviousness of their backwards country, and medieval lifestyle makes them contrary to that premise.

Europeans have the most advanced civilizations and every other race has yet to meet these levels other than the Japanese. The Japanese only being good at copying other people's inventions and making them better. Other than that their original creativity is lacking as well. They took American cars and made them better. They took the German camera and made it better. And they took German steel and made it better. Otherwise the greatest advances still come from Europeans and Jews. Other than that the Orientals have yet to produce an Einstein or Thomas Edison. One Thomas Edison who created 2000 or so patents is probably heads and tails over 100 million orientals in mental originality.

When it comes to Black people. It makes sense that they have low intellectual comformity, I.e. IQ tests. They are far too creative to be trapped in this unoriginal form of conditioning. You can tell their creative capacity in their athletics, music, dance, and the way they talk. They by far exceed the Asiatic races in these areas. Being better singers, musicians ect. I have yet to see an Asian person talk out of the norm. The only type of originality they have is mimicry. Blacks far exceed Asians in emotive expression. In all of North America there is only one or two famous high-paid Asian actors.

Reality, europeans rule the world and they have allowed others to exist only out of desire for economic bennifet. They, (europeans) are also the physically strongest, winning the Strongest Man competitions again and again. And they have become the most effective hunters due to their neccesity for animal food stuffs in a northern climate with lack of vegetables. The progression of killing animal to foreign humans, being a small step when resources and land were diminishing due to increased population and cultural expansion.

The greater the conformity, the weaker the race. Thus we see the races as they are today. The wild animal being bred out of man, and the physically impotent, dull conformist thriving. The intelligent genius being alone and trampled by the herd.

Otherwise "group psychology" is the most destructive thing in the world. All these stereotypes are false when it comes to the individual. Individualism is the most important thing for this time. All countries, Relgions, groups need to dissolve for man to live in peace.

Matt:

It is not so much that race is a biological fiction (it isn't) but rather the unfortunate way that human beings interpret variation between populations. We seem primed by our biology to arrange the world into categories like 'me/not-me' and 'us/them', and this not only helps perpetuate racism, but also makes it difficult for people to recognize the significance of what Darwin called 'the mutual affinities of organic beings.'

This, I think, is the basis of Dawkins' complaint that the human mind seems almost designed to misunderstand evolution. A strong desire to promote the perpetuation of our own genes encourages a tendency to dichotomize between populations of own species, leading to something like essentialism.

The problem is not that there are no meaningful genetic differences between different races, its that the term 'race' itself is misunderstood by many to mean something akin to species or subspecies. The old racist 'crime' of miscegenation is practically meaningless to a human geneticist since all living humans are clearly closely related in evolutionary terms and genetically heterogenous. The idea of genetic 'purity' is one that should be dispensed with since we are all the result of numerous mixtures of genes.
That said, there are differences in allele frequencies in different human populations that have to do with both genetic drift and natural selection - its the reason why there are more lactose tolerant redheads in Ireland compared to Shanghai. Deep genetic analysis of populations is only just beginning but already it is showing that the genes for gross physical attributes (skin, eye and hair color) are not the only ones that are present in different frequencies in human populations of different races, or demes. These different allele frequencies may have important roles to play in terms of drug efficacies or disease susceptibilities and should not be ignored but at the same time the heterogeneity factor means that one cannot say that a particular drug or disease will be exclusive to a race or a person of a particular race.
I think Razib from Gene Expression would be the best one to comment on this issue as he has frequently blogged on the topic.

Talking about race is futile as long as even the concept of species is foggy. The classical example is the willow tree. There are about 400 species of Salix, but many of them happily interbreed and produce fertile offspring.

Race or species should be seen as a statistical characteristic of a population. Applying it to individuals can lead to absurdities. Creationists often ask how a new species can be born, if the parents of the first individual belong to the old species? They refuse to see that there is variation within a population, and eventually the variations may lead to speciation. Since the process is statistical, it is not possible to pinpoint which generation is the first of the new species.

But yes, Razib has written volumes about this.

I think Razib from Gene Expression would be the best one to comment on this issue as he has frequently blogged on the topic.

Matt:

This is one of the blogs I keep recommending to you. Racial differences are no more "fictitious" than say the differences between the sexes.

There are actually several questions embedded in "Is race a biological fiction?"

1. "Are there continental human populations that can be fuzzily discerned?"

The answer to that is yes. I think "race" has too much ugly baggage and misleading associations to be valuable. This is largely a semantic issue.

2. "Are there marked genetic and physiological differences between these continental populations?"

There is disagreement on the relative importance and analytical utility of this inter-continental variation. This issue is sometimes confused with 3) below.

http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_2.html#pagel

Mark Pagel: "(L)ike it or not, there may be many genetic differences among human populations including differences that may even correspond to old categories of 'race' that are real differences in the sense of making one group better than another at responding to some particular environmental problem. This in no way says one group is in general 'superior' to another, or that one group should be preferred over another. But it warns us that we must be prepared to discuss genetic differences among human populations."

3. "Are there genetic differences in cognitive function between races?"

Only a minority of scientists say yes. This, of course, is an incendiary issue.

John Hawks, New Scientist, 2005, on Bruce Lahn's (now falsified) theory: "Whatever advantage these genes give, some groups have it and some don't. This has to be the worst nightmare for people who believe strongly there are no differences in brain function between groups."

Gregory Cochran, 'Overclocking,' 2002: "There is a good chance that an odd cluster of hereditary neurological diseases among the Ashkenazi Jews is a side-effect of strong selection for increased intelligence."

Henry Harpending, American Association of Physical Anthropologists, 2007 abstract: "(H)uman are more, not less, differentiated than other large mammal species. ... It appears that there is a lot of ongoing evolution in our species and the loci under strong selection on different continents only partially overlap. Human race differences may be increasing rapidly."

Henry Harpending, Evolutionary Anthropology, 1996: "Rushton's Race, Evolution, and Behavior...is an attempt to understand ... differences in terms of life-history evolution....Perhaps there ultimately will be some serious contribution from the traditional smoke-and-mirrors social science treatment of IQ, but for now Rushton's framework is essentially the only game in town."

This is one of the blogs I keep recommending to you. Racial differences are no more "fictitious" than say the differences between the sexes.

hm. well, that's apples to oranges. lassi & sigmund have said what i would have said. from the op-ed
The vast majority of academics who have considered the issue, be they anthropologist, sociologist or geneticist, view race as a biological fiction

many anthropologists and almost all sociologists have no ground to make assertions about biology. many biologists don't know much population genetics either; they just repeat what they heard their colleagues say or what they learned in their one population genetics class during undergrad.

There is more genetic variation within "races" than between them.

on any given locus 85% of the variance is within groups and 15% between. but, that ignores correlation structure of the variation. additionally, there are many salient loci which don't exhibit this pattern of greater within group variance (skin color being an important example). the latter are probably more ecological relevant loci.

That said, there is no doubt that there are discrete genetic differences between sub-populations.

better word would have been statistical. genetics is discrete by definition.

We need to get the facts straight, thus diminishing the chance of inappropriate extrapolation.

yes, we do need to get facts and concepts straight. but i disagree with the premise, because it too is overly simplistic. unfortunately, humans are stupid and most have no capacity for statistical thinking. pick your poison....

What Crick actually said: "There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."

Genetic drift is a well-documented phenomenon. Why is this any different?

The more troubling issue is the media minefield in which all persons of fame (just coined that phrase) now operate. The response to Will Smith's comment about Hitler comes to mind. How many people actually read and parsed the quote?

Steve Sailer on the biological reality of race:

* * *

First, it's all about who your relatives are.

A modern Darwinian approach to race would start from the bottom up, with the father, mother, and baby. All mammals belong to biological extended families, with a family tree that features all the same kinds of biological relatives as you or I have�grandfathers, nieces, or third cousins and so forth. And everybody belongs to multiple extended families�your mom's, your dad's, etc.

Which leads to my modern definition of race:

A racial group is an extended family that is inbred to some degree.

That's it�just an "extended family that is somewhat inbred." There's no need to say how big the extended family has to be, or just how inbred.

We know that humans have not been mating completely randomly with other humans from all over the globe. Most people, over the last few tens of thousands of years, just couldn't afford the airfare.

If you go back to 1000 AD, you would theoretically have a trillion ancestors alive at that time�that's how many slots you have in your family tree 40 generations ago. Obviously, your family tree has to be a little bit inbred. That far back, you'd probably find an individual or two from most parts of the world among your ancestors.

But, in anybody's family tree, certain statistical patterns will stand out. Just ask somebody, "What are you?" and they'll tell you about some of the larger clusters in their family tree, such as, "Oh, I'm Irish, Italian, and Cherokee."

So, my definition is close to a tautology. But then so is "survival of the fittest." And that proved to have a bit of predictive power.

This is a scaleable solution. Do you want to know a lot about a few people? Then, the more inbred, the more distinct the racial group. Or, do you want to know a little about a lot of people? The less inbred, the larger the group.

http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/presentation.htm

Genetic drift is a well-documented phenomenon. Why is this any different?

drift is an unlikely parameter to drive salient phenotypic changes for humans IMO. at least unaided.

drift is an unlikely parameter to drive salient phenotypic changes for humans IMO. at least unaided.

Why? All you'd need is a bottleneck event.

Why? All you'd need is a bottleneck event.

which is why the world is divided into the native american and non-native american race? population genetics tells us that migration is very efficient at requilibrating drift driven differences. please don't use drift as a deus ex machina.

which is why the world is divided into the native american and non-native american race? population genetics tells us that migration is very efficient at requilibrating drift driven differences. please don't use drift as a deus ex machina.

I know some Australians that might take umbrage at the above...

But, given that you've identified interbreeding (not migration, per se) as a leveling force, does that mean that a distinct population that has a counter-force to interbreeding might diverge to a notable degree?

This is an example of what I call the "Ambiguity Principle"
This approach can be used in biology and philosophy, as well as for instances such as the "wave-particle duality"
A simple summary of this is: You need to maintain competing and contradictory concepts together simultaneously.

So for race - it is a useful concept for simplifying ideas on human variation.
It is widely used by people as an important aspect of their self-understanding.

yet
It has very little use in explaining the biological diversity of humans.
It is used more often for purposes which have undesirable results viewed from a wider perspective.

But, given that you've identified interbreeding (not migration, per se) as a leveling force, does that mean that a distinct population that has a counter-force to interbreeding might diverge to a notable degree?

1) yes. but please note, you only need 1 migrant per generation across demes to prevent genetic drift from not equilibrating. if the demes are physically adjacent that is usually impossible. if you are curious the rough ball park of average human Nm (effec. pop. size X migration rate as proportion) ~ 1. so some populations, like andaman islanders, might be below this, but i doubt the major ones on the 'world island' (eurasia + africa).

2) populations can diverge on selected loci and not on others through various processes. all of them having to do with selection. as well as the inversion (selection can unit populations on specific loci of large effect despite large differences in the underlying genomic content).

1) yes. but please note, you only need 1 migrant per generation across demes to prevent genetic drift from not equilibrating. if the demes are physically adjacent that is usually impossible. if you are curious the rough ball park of average human Nm (effec. pop. size X migration rate as proportion) ~ 1. so some populations, like andaman islanders, might be below this, but i doubt the major ones on the 'world island' (eurasia + africa).

Well, I was thinking specifically of the Ashkenazi intelligence debate, since there are religious prohibitions against intermarriage (though you could argue that 2000 years isn't long enough for drift to show up anyway).

2) populations can diverge on selected loci and not on others through various processes. all of them having to do with selection. as well as the inversion (selection can unit populations on specific loci of large effect despite large differences in the underlying genomic content).

Plenty of examples of people being defined as ingroup or outgroup by physical phenotype. (That would be social selection - works a lot faster than natural).

But I don't believe that migration is an instantaneous mitigater of genetic drift. And if there is lag, there's the opportunity for local maximums and minimums.

In addition to the african stereotype, there's also the 'dumb blond' stereotype. Seems interesting that the people who are furthest away from the mixing point are the ones being singled out here (do you know anything about North Indians vs. South Indians?).

And then there's this:

http://www.wired.com/politics/law/magazine/16-01/ps_dna

Well, I was thinking specifically of the Ashkenazi intelligence debate, since there are religious prohibitions against intermarriage (though you could argue that 2000 years isn't long enough for drift to show up anyway).

it depends on the population sizes. that's where there are debates about long term effective population sizes for askhenazi jews. cochran et. al. argued that autosomal markers showed relatively normal long term effective pop sizes, and so selection is a better rationale for them. risch et. al. have argued that population bottlenecks and subsequent genetic barriers is an explanation.

Plenty of examples of people being defined as ingroup or outgroup by physical phenotype. (That would be social selection - works a lot faster than natural).

does it? again, it depends on the parameters. these verbal arguments get us nowhere really. specifically, how strong social selection might be can be gauged by something like the extent of the indices of assortative mating. in theory this could drive evolution fast, but if you look at the data assortative mating isn't always as extreme as you'd think (e.g., tall with tall, etc.).

But I don't believe that migration is an instantaneous mitigater of genetic drift. And if there is lag, there's the opportunity for local maximums and minimums.

you don't believe? this isn't about belief, there are pretty standard models of population genetics which quantify the relationship between migration and genetic drift. you just need to posit particular allele frequency
differences and migration rates. like i said, for humans Nm is ~ 1. assume variance and one posits that those with Nm well below 1 might diverge purely on drift alone, but those above 1 would need selective differences.

Seems interesting that the people who are furthest away from the mixing point are the ones being singled out here

northern europeans and africans have been traditionally the two largest components of the american population. so you have lots of data sets. additionally, africans and europeans are highly disjoint in a large number of loci (to some extent, africans and all non-african groups). so it makes sense that you'd focus on these groups since tracing out the shape of between group variation is easier when that variation is more marked. the difference between northern and southern indians is not very large, on the order of that between northern and southern europeans (a bit more, but not that much more more).

northern europeans and africans have been traditionally the two largest components of the american population. so you have lots of data sets. additionally, africans and europeans are highly disjoint in a large number of loci (to some extent, africans and all non-african groups). so it makes sense that you'd focus on these groups since tracing out the shape of between group variation is easier when that variation is more marked. the difference between northern and southern indians is not very large, on the order of that between northern and southern europeans (a bit more, but not that much more more).

Ah, but blond is a Scandinavian trait, not a northern European trait. The further south/east you go, the less of it there is. There is *within* group prejudice in African Americans - darker skinned people are considered less intelligent. OK, that might be bias towards the traits of the dominant (white) group. Where does the *blond* stereotype come from?

The social difference between northern and southern indians (and between northern and southern europeans) is huge.

Quoting Steve Sailer on anything but rabid racism?!

Ah, but blond is a Scandinavian trait, not a northern European trait. The further south/east you go, the less of it there is.

no. not really:
http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/214-the-blonde-map-of-europ…

it's a baltic trait.

The social difference between northern and southern indians (and between northern and southern europeans) is huge.

so? the genetic difference isn't.

Quoting Steve Sailer on anything but rabid racism?!

bora, why don't you petition SEED to become the official comment board censor so that correct thought can be propagated?

no. not really:
http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/214-the-blonde-map-of-europ…
it's a baltic trait.

Were we looking at the same website? "the central parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland, where at least 80% of the population is fair-haired, the highest figure in all of Europe."

>The social difference between northern and southern indians (and between northern and southern europeans) is huge.

so? the genetic difference isn't.

Much of the social stigma and disadvantage used to explain achievement differences in African-descended and European-descended Americans is also evident in India (Southerners are darker, and poorer) and Europe (in the US, it wasn't until just recently that Italians and Greeks were considered to be of the same "race" as English and German. Then there's the Irish.)

Small genetic variation, though the different phenotypes are readily identifiable.

Wherever one stands on issues of race (existence of races, profoundness of differences, purported cognitive differences) I'm baffled that the possible implications of the Hawks et al paper for this issue have stirred relatively little discussion.

I am just saying, for the benefit of those who are not aware, that citations to Steve Sailer, that despicable racist moron who dazzles with pseudo-math to push his agenda, are not to be trusted. Nothing "official", just a heads-up to people who may not have heard of him before.

Coturnix,

Do you disagree with the substance of the Sailer excerpt I posted above? If so, why not stick to that? More persuasive to argue the merits than to engage in character assassination. And if you don't disagree with the excerpt, then I don't understand the purpose of your post.

Crap, having two links put the comment in the Junk folder, which Matt probably never checks. So here they are, one comment at the time, showing that this 'character' has self-assassinated himself many time over: see this first.

And see this second.

Coturnix,

Again, my question was whether you disagree with the excerpt I posted above. (As it happens, I read Sailer's blog on a fairly regular basis. I don't agree with everything he says, but generally find his views provocative and interesting.)

But that's besides the point. The question is whether you disagree with the particular view at issue here.

I wonder if Larry Moran will weigh in about this, since he has been outspoken about both framing and race.

Yes, I disagree with that excerpt as it is biological nonsense. And it is also framed in a way that gives Sailer the starting point for a racist rant further on.

Were we looking at the same website? "the central parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland, where at least 80% of the population is fair-haired, the highest figure in all of Europe."

you said "it was a scandinavian trait." not really, you can look the old anthropological phenotypic data and lithuanians and other baltic peoples are nearly as blonde, and the phenotype drops off clinally. anyway, i don't know what your point really was with the blondism....

also evident in India (Southerners are darker, and poorer) and Europe

no offense dude, but it's hard to have a discussion with you when you don't really present facts. southerners are darker, but they aren't poorer. india's a big place, but the poorest parts are in the north, the two largest states, uttar pradesh and bihar. the richest are punjab (in the northwest) and gujarat (on the west coast). the southern cities are the hub of the tech renaissance, so the south is richer than the northern 'cow belt' states but not as rich as punjab or the west coast

http://www.mapsofindia.com/maps/india/percapitaincome.htm

I'm baffled that the possible implications of the Hawks et al paper for this issue have stirred relatively little discussion.

look at the psychometric data, humans are very stupid animals. the implication is trivially obvious, if you can connect propositions and make the first order inferences. but most people can't.

Razib: "...you can look the old anthropological phenotypic data and lithuanians and other baltic peoples are nearly as blonde..."

I've seen several maps, all different. Usually the Centre of Blondness is on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. The details probably depend on how later industrial age migrations are corrected for to get "the original" distribution. It leaves lots of wiggle room to present whatever the presenter wants to present.

What isn't obvious on the maps is that the population of central Sweden and Norway is close to zero. The fertile agricultural lands in the south are more attractive than the northern forests and mountains. The few people living there might be decendants of ancient Finnic inhabitants, while the Scandinavians (in linguistic sense) are more related to the Ertebölle Culture around the southern seashores of North and Baltic Seas.

You start out with:
"Why the Biological Fiction of Race Persists"
Yet continue with questions like:
-If race is a biological fiction, what are the reasons for persistent belief in this social myth?
-What do readers think? Is race a biological fiction?
That does not really sound like a sincere question given that you've already stated that it's a myth! Or, you are seriously backtracking from the assertion in the title.

Timothy Caulfield wrote in the linked article:

"When a 2005 Washington Post headline declared "Heart supplement targets Blacks, echoing race-based drug" might there be a subtle message that there is something biologically different between Blacks and others?"

Does Timothy Caulfield doubt that there is such a difference? Besides the obvious phenotypical differences, the very existence of such a drug implies a biological difference (on average) between groups. A "biological difference" need not even be genetic!

Lassi wrote:

I've seen several maps, all different. Usually the Centre of Blondness is on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. The details probably depend on how later industrial age migrations are corrected for to get "the original" distribution. It leaves lots of wiggle room to present whatever the presenter wants to present.

Well said.

you said "it was a scandinavian trait." not really, you can look the old anthropological phenotypic data and lithuanians and other baltic peoples are nearly as blonde, and the phenotype drops off clinally. anyway, i don't know what your point really was with the blondism....

My point was a question: Why is there a 'dumb blond' stereotype as well as a 'dumb darkie' stereotype? Baltic or Svensk, the question still stands.

no offense dude, but it's hard to have a discussion with you when you don't really present facts. southerners are darker, but they aren't poorer. india's a big place, but the poorest parts are in the north, the two largest states, uttar pradesh and bihar. the richest are punjab (in the northwest) and gujarat (on the west coast). the southern cities are the hub of the tech renaissance, so the south is richer than the northern 'cow belt' states but not as rich as punjab or the west coast

I'll grant it's been a long time since I've been there, and the economy has changed (though reports from friends who are still there indicate that the light-skinned bias is alive and well). I will not grant that I'm a dude.

I haven't read through every response posted here, but if the first five or so are representative there seems to be a long argument about whether race is a biological fiction when nobody has even attempted to define race!

If I may venture my working definition of race in biology (not that I have any authority to do so):
Race - A classification of individuals within a species whose behaviors can be accurately predicted on the basis of some common outward charactersitic.

That is to say that if you were to claim that the races mentioned in the blog posting (white, black, asian) were to qualify as race, you would be claiming that you can look at a white person and predict a different behavior than a black or an asian person. These differences in behavior would have to be scientifically relevant and, I would argue, inherent. Of course this opens the door up for a genetics vs. culture dicatomy that I won't delve into, but this working definition has been sufficient for me thus far. Improve on it if you will!

Chris Hanson: "Race - A classification of individuals within a species whose behaviors can be accurately predicted on the basis of some common outward charactersitic."

But a positive correlation of appearance and behaviors could theoretically be entirely due to a) shared history or b) an independent environmental variable determining both appearance (including genes underlying physical traits) and plastic behaviors rather than c) genetic determination of behavioral differences. Statements about associations of traits need to be precise.

See Boas' discussion of race, language, and culture.

"Deme" avoids some of the baggage of "race." (And "subspecies" sounds ugly and dehumanizing when applied to human beings.)

In principle, there could be a totally clinal rather than clustered distribution of genes determining cognitive differences. And some supporters of the validity of the race concept for humans do not accept significant genetic cognitive and temperamental differences between races. But these issues are often conflated.

No, race is not a biological fiction. The "biological fiction" view was popularized by Richard Lewontin and unfortunately seems to have become the conventional wisdom among anthropologists and social scientists. Steven Pinker points to this New York Times piece by Armand Leroi, discussing the error in Lewontin's reasoning, which was apparently first described by A.W.F. Edwards, a Cambridge statistician.

As Leroi explains:

Certain skin colors tend to go with certain kinds of eyes, noses, skulls and bodies. When we glance at a stranger's face we use those associations to infer what continent, or even what country, he or his ancestors came from - and we usually get it right. To put it more abstractly, human physical variation is correlated; and correlations contain information.

Genetic variants that aren't written on our faces, but that can be detected only in the genome, show similar correlations. It is these correlations that Dr. Lewontin seems to have ignored. In essence, he looked at one gene at a time and failed to see races. But if many - a few hundred - variable genes are considered simultaneously, then it is very easy to do so. Indeed, a 2002 study by scientists at the University of Southern California and Stanford showed that if a sample of people from around the world are sorted by computer into five groups on the basis of genetic similarity, the groups that emerge are native to Europe, East Asia, Africa, America and Australasia - more or less the major races of traditional anthropology.

Larry Moran has weighed in:
http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2008/01/matt-nisbet-asks-embarrassing-ques…

"Now I ask you, dear readers, would you rely on a lawyer to decide whether there was such a thing as races in the species Homo sapiens? The only thing lawyers are good at is framing ....

The title of Matt's posting, "Why the Biological Fiction of Race Persists," leaves no doubt about where his bias lies. Matt has fallen hook line and sinker for the false frame about biological race. ...

That's right, Matt. It's just a framing problem to you isn't it? Do you even give a damn about scientific truth?

Biological races in humans exist, Matt, whether you like it or not. Frame that."

1) But what are Dr. Moran's views on the specific aspects of the scientific issue of "race" that I discussed above?

2) Afarensis, Coturnix, Razib, Orac, MarkH, Greg Laden, PZ Myers: thoughts on race-Nisbett/Moran?

Colugo,

3. "Are there genetic differences in cognitive function between races?" Only a minority of scientists say yes.

And I think only a minority of scientists say no. I think the majority would probably say something like "We don't know yet."

Not that simply polling "scientists" in general on the question, rather than scientists who have particular knowledge and expertise in this area, would be terribly meaningful anyway.

I think that the 'dumb blonde' stereotype may be clouding the issue somewhat. The stereotype may originate, not in any assumptions about 'natural', or genetic blondes, but in assumptions about synthetic, dyed blondes; i.e. about the kind of women who were likely to dye their hair.

I think that the 'dumb blonde' stereotype may be clouding the issue somewhat. The stereotype may originate, not in any assumptions about 'natural', or genetic blondes, but in assumptions about synthetic, dyed blondes; i.e. about the kind of women who were likely to dye their hair.

Could be, but there is also (or WAS also) a Swedish janitor stereotype. There are also many stories of prostitutes in ancient Rome being blonde (by default or dye), since they were captured northern slaves. And being considered stupid (or at least "barbaric").