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Comment by ofTheFountain | Hacker News Reader

Yea as a biologists who's done some genetic research this isn't about wokeness (though I don't think that's necessarily bad anyway).

Race is a cultural term, not scientific. No one doing this research thinks there's no difference in genetic makeup between groups, it's that how we use and thinK about the word race doesn't line up with those groups and differences.

It's just not accurate for scientific publications, not just the cultural and historical baggage it has. Like down anyone thing that white, black, or asian describe narrowly defined genetic groupings?

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Yes, "race" for geneticists is an imprecise term and in that field there is a growing need for a better descriptor.

Now for cops, or social workers, or everyday speech, race may be just the perfect term - morphology is important to their work, and will remain important. But geneticists are concerned with more than morphology, or appearance.

I don't believe there is a linguistic threat here to everyday speech, or a threat to how we refer to each others appearance. But in genetics, race as a scientific term is in need of improvement - and that is what the article is acknowledging.

I'm not sure I would impute a "woke" angle here.

Does the color of an organism fall under the study of morphology? I don't believe it does. Nor do I believe race is a good term for anyone to use, partially because its entirely subjective. A good example of this is that in the US, a person can be considered black if they have African (or otherwise considered black) ancestry anywhere in their genetic history, even if the rest of their ancestors would have been considered "white"

On top of this subjectivity we have the historical baggage and oppression, so it would be best to move away from race as currently used. We are all part of one race, the human race. We need to stop splitting ourselves into in/out groups because that only holds us back.

I agree we need a better term. Maybe 'cluster', as they are distinguishable in PCA plots.

One interesting aspect of these clusters is that the higher the resolution, the more clusters you can find, up to the point that neighboring towns can have slightly different distributions.

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