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Comment by barry-cotter | Hacker News Reader

Race and IQ are not scientifically precise tools.

Genetic Structure, Self-Identified Race/Ethnicity, and Confounding in Case-Control Association Studies

We have analyzed genetic data for 326 microsatellite markers that were typed uniformly in a large multiethnic population-based sample of individuals as part of a study of the genetics of hypertension (Family Blood Pressure Program). Subjects identified themselves as belonging to one of four major racial/ethnic groups (white, African American, East Asian, and Hispanic) and were recruited from 15 different geographic locales within the United States and Taiwan. Genetic cluster analysis of the microsatellite markers produced four major clusters, which showed near-perfect correspondence with the four self-reported race/ethnicity categories.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1196372/

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One of the co-authors of that paper has withdrawn some of the strong conclusions once based on it in his subsequent co-authored article in the latest edition of Vogel and Motulsky human genetics textbook (cited in my link to a Wikipedia user page in another comment in this thread). Anyway, what the article shows in relation to this thread is not the point the participant above was relying on. It is occasionally possible, with a sample of genetic information about genes not under strong selection pressure, to make a reasonably accurate rough guess of the "race" categorization of many individuals. (I have read the article, and I see that that is the claim, as in the excerpt you kindly quote, but the article also notes exceptions in the sample it examined who were miscategorized.) But those study authors, and all competent human geneticists, do NOT argue the converse: that if you know an individual's race categorization, you know to a reasonable degree of accuracy what specific genes that person has of interest to human behaviors. In fact, we generally do not know that at all about any individual. There are still few genes significant behavorial effect that have been even tentatively identified in a first sample, and the widely replicated result is that ANY "race" group defined by the varying social definitions around the world will still be highly diverse as to any genetic characteristic of interest.

>It is occasionally possible, with a sample of genetic information about genes not under strong selection pressure, to make a reasonably accurate rough guess of the "race" categorization of many individuals. (I have read the article, and I see that that is the claim, as in the excerpt you quote, but the article also notes exceptions in the sample it examined who were miscategorized.) But those study authors, and all competent human geneticists, do NOT argue the converse: that if you know an individual's race categorization, you know to a reasonable degree of accuracy what specific genes that person has of interest to human behaviors.

I don't think the comment you're replying to purported to argue that in the first place. He was just trying to refute the notion that race is merely a matter of social labels; the fact is those labels refer to something real in terms of a person's ancestry that can be detected by genetic tests.

Like you say, it has never been demonstrated that racial groups differ in their genetic propensity for intelligence, but it has also never been demonstrated that they don't. Given the observed IQ differences between racial groups and the fact that these groups differ genetically, a genetic basis for these differences seems like a reasonable thing to hypothesize about, and apply scientific methods of inquiry into. This is why I have a problem with a statement like "race and IQ is not a legitimate matter for scientific inquiry."

This is why I have a problem with a statement like "race and IQ is not a legitimate matter for scientific inquiry."

But both are social-political constructs. They are labels. What do you gain by correlating some feature of human behavior under examination with them? (I provide one answer in another comment: the effective distribution of useful information through existing social channels.)

Yes, racial labels refer to something real. But it's like correlating geological data with the state of California. California refers to something real. But as a scientist why would I want to correlate seismic activity with the state borders of California as opposed to, say, some fault-line that runs out into the Pacific or up into Oregon?

[T]he widely replicated result is that ANY "race" group defined by the varying social definitions around the world will still be highly diverse as to any genetic characteristic of interest.

True, but I can't recall seeing anyone arguing the opposite. And the fact that two distributions overlap doesn't mean that knowing which distribution an individual belongs to contains no information. Men really are on average taller than women.

So are you saying that if we did the same analysis across Africa, you'd find the same markers throughout the populations in "near-perfect correspondence" for people self-identifying racially as African?

Or is this specific to the populations you studied in the United States?

Dude, I didn't do the study.

Re: Sub Saharan Africans you can get a decent idea if someone has such ancestry from one allele.

As one example, the Duffy Null allele (FY0) has a frequency of almost 100% of Sub-Saharan Africans, but occurs very infrequently in populations outside of this region. A person having this gene is thus more likely to have Sub-Saharan African ancestors.*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancestry-informative_marker

Obviously the more such alleles you test for the better you'll be able to distinguish the populations.

This page gives links to ~300 AIMs which allow you to distinguish ancestry pretty well within Europe.

http://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Ancestry_Informative_Marker

Given that that's possible distinguishing continental ancestry seems to be a problem of application not theory.

Any statement which manages to leave out a reasonable self-identification that about 1/6 of the world's population - Asian Indian - would use, is a little suspect.

I'm sure they're working on it. :)

Google Bamshad and Wooding. There are plenty of papers that analyze Indians and show that you can probabilistically identify not just subcontinental ancestry, but caste as well from the genome.

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