There’s a good article by geneticist David Reich at the New York Times on how DNA studies have changed our views on race. Simply stated, although concepts like “whiteness” are social constructs, there actually are different identifiable human populations which can be distinguished from each other by empirical means. Here’s what was for me the heart of the article:
Recent genetic studies have demonstrated differences across populations not just in the genetic determinants of simple traits such as skin color, but also in more complex traits like bodily dimensions and susceptibility to diseases. For example, we now know that genetic factors help explain why northern Europeans are taller on average than southern Europeans, why multiple sclerosis is more common in European-Americans than in African-Americans, and why the reverse is true for end-stage kidney disease.
I am worried that well-meaning people who deny the possibility of substantial biological differences among human populations are digging themselves into an indefensible position, one that will not survive the onslaught of science. I am also worried that whatever discoveries are made — and we truly have no idea yet what they will be — will be cited as “scientific proof†that racist prejudices and agendas have been correct all along, and that those well-meaning people will not understand the science well enough to push back against these claims.
This is why it is important, even urgent, that we develop a candid and scientifically up-to-date way of discussing any such differences, instead of sticking our heads in the sand and being caught unprepared when they are found.
Read the whole thing.
It can’t be emphasized often enough that you can infer nothing about differences between two individuals based on knowledge about the differences between the groups to which they belong. That fallacy is the source of much sorrow.
It’s funny that he mentions an ‘onslaught’ of science. I find it hard to believe that in my lifetime we will have a working idea of how genes in an individual cause one to delay having children, as the article suggests. And if genetics can’t explain the complex psychology of an individual, how much of a real scientific onslaught will there be? It’s like saying that because sexual dimorphism exists in humans, then women are more likely to be neurotic.
He doesn’t say it directly, but I’m sure he’s worried that research in this area will not be conducted in the U.S., but in other countries that aren’t hampered by academia’s politics. (Some of this is a given — China is / will be modifying human embryos earlier and more extensively than other countries, but its pure research I’m referring to)
I am skeptical of DNA science. We have over 500 years of physics knowledge, and the science is anything but settled.
Physics went from Aristotelian to Newtonian to Einsteinian, and Einstein is not the end. At best, genetic science is at the Newtonian phase, but I suspect it is still Aristotelian. Simply, much of genetic science is philosophically based.
Modern science is objective. A scientific concept must be specific, and it must be testable using a fixed set of criteria. Race may or may not be a valid scientific concept, but first, there needs to be an objective set of criteria to validate the concept.
Gender is simple. You either have X-X or X-Y chromosomes. What you feel you have is irrelevant. I suspect the gender differences are, at least, partially hormone based, and the variations are too numerous for objective criteria.