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sundin13 on 23 February 2018
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fatslob-:O said:
sundin13 said:

1) That is not an argument against the point I am making.

3) The cluster is not a good distinction of meaningful genetic diversity as demonstrated in later points. 

4a) I don't believe that this point sufficiently rebuts this critique. The issue is the arbitrary nature of race determination. If clustering is your criteria, and clusters are accurately formed with 3 "races", 4 "races", 5 "races", 6 "races", 14 "races" and more, that makes the classification of "race" fairly meaningless. 

b) That isn't really a defense of the use of Structure, when quantifiable issues with the clustering has been pointed out. To say that the results matched expectations and therefore criticism should be thrown out is to perform science backwards, and thus break the entire process. If your methodolgy proves to be flawed, you cannot ignore those flaws because your results look good.

I am not sure what you mean when you say "Sampling heterogenous populations is also flawed". 

c) That is not a criteria for the establishment of race. Ancestry is relevant to medicine at a level far exceeding that of "race". 

d) That is simply not true. The biological relevance of clusters needs to be established, otherwise the term race becomes effectively meaningless within an evolutionary context. Rosenberg does not seek to establish the significance of these clusters, and as such, does not recommend that clusters be used as a stand-in for race. 

1. It absolutely is since we can make a distinction for human races through genetic analysis ... 

3. "Good" is subjective and clusters are a statistically significant measurement ... 

4. 

a) Well then this just means that just about any biological categorizations are "arbitrary" according to your issue ...  

b) From your article: 

"In STRUCTURE's defense, no single analysis is appropriate for all data, nor can a single analytic method be expected to reveal all patterns in data. Furthermore, the simulations presented here show that in many circumstances, STRUCTURE will produce evolutionarily appropriate clusters. If this wasn't true, STRUCTURE probably wouldn't be as widely used as it is."

From an evolutionary perspective, the classification of race is valid ... 

c) Ancestry is a criteria for the establishment of race ... 

1) But what differentiates between "race" and any of the other distinctions that can be made by genetic analysis?

3) If you don't like the word "good", replace it with "valid". Clusters are a statistically significant measurement of clustering, not races. The author of the study even specifies that the two are not synonymous within the study.

4a) How so? Species, for example, are determined primarily by the ability to produce viable offspring. This is a very real biological division. There is nothing arbitrary about it.

b) Humanity could theoretically be broken up at any point along our evolutionary history. What is the deciding factor for determining which one of these points is to be considered a "race"?

c) I am saying that there are many levels of ancestry which provide medically relevant information. This exists at levels of ancestry more recent than what is typically used to describe race.