| sundin13 said: 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. |
I literally don't know but biologists have created a monster too good for their own handling ...
Nearly everything about the biological classification system is arbitrary, complex and worst of all may not even be self consistent with the idea of backwards evolution or convergent evolution ...
Even the classification of "species" has it's boundaries blurred since two separate species can potentially interbreed so if there is no hard criteria in general for biological classification then these "deciding factors" are only soft criteria for these groupings so I do not see why human races are precluded from this since they can be grouped according to evolutionary history ...
Science doesn't play politics, it plays with data and tons of revisionism comes with it too ...
