An update to the 23andMe ancestry algorithm, how populations are constructed
The genomics testing company 23andMe has come out with a new algorithm for ancestry assignment from their SNP panel. They describe the new procedure in a blo...
All posts tagged with race
Link: Zeresenay Alemseged on race in the U.S.
I want to draw readers’ attention to a personal essay by the paleoanthropologist Zeresenay Alemseged, who reflects on Black Lives Matter and the current raci...
Quote: Fay Cooper-Cole on bones and races
In 1945, American Naturalist published a lecture by Fay Cooper-Cole on “Some problems of human racial development and migration”. Cooper-Cole had been a stud...
Quote: Darwin on human variation
There is much that could be said about Charles Darwin’s discussion of human races in Descent of Man. In Chapter 7 he embarked on a long discussion of whether...
Link: Wired on the legacy of Jim Watson
A fascinating read in Wired by C. Brandon Ogbunu: “James Watson and the insidiousness of scientific racism”.
Remembering King Leopold’s human zoo
National Public Radio (U.S.) has a story about one of the evils of Belgian colonization of the Congo: King Leopold brought hundreds of Congolese to Belgium t...
Link: DNA conspiracy theories
In a post this week on the Anthropology News site of the American Anthropological Association, the sociologist Joan Donovan describes her work on DNA identit...
Link: National Geographic looks at its history on race
NPR reports on National Geographic’s new issue devoted to the topic of race, and the way that the organization has examined its own history: “‘National Geogr...
Link: DNA conspiracy theories
In a post this week on the Anthropology News site of the American Anthropological Association, the sociologist Joan Donovan describes her work on DNA identit...
Race and the medical student
Ike Swetlitz in Stat has an article about the ways that some medical educators are trying to build a more anthropological knowledge of race and health in the...
Quote: Dobzhansky on borderline cases of species and races
Theodosius Dobzhansky, in his essay, “On species and races of living and fossil man” (1944):
Multiracial America
National Geographic online has an article titled, “The Changing Face of America”, which focuses on the growth of “multiracial” as a category on the U.S. cens...
Diversity and science-art
The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, in Berlin, has an interesting short description of a science-art project on human variation: “Looking at...
Caucasian "news analysis"
Shaila Dewan, an “economics reporter” for the New York Times catches up with anthropology circa 1963: “Has Caucasian Lost Its Meaning?”.
Phrenology, race and history
The movie Django Unchained includes a scene in which the antagonist (a rich, white, plantation owner) expounds on phrenology as a justification of slavery. J...
Race and Tolkien
Henry Gee comments in the Guardian about the other kind of hobbits, featuring orc reproductive biology: “Hobbits and hypotheses”.
J. Barnard Davis and the variation within races
Once again, I’m looking through source material for a very different reason, but ran across an interesting piece of history. J. Barnard Davis was a British p...
Melungeon genetic roots
The AP is running a story about a recent genetic study probing the ancestry of the Melungeons.
The H preparation
Razib Khan comments on the current round of Henry Louis Gates ancestry programming: “Finding fake roots”, and “Reification is alright by me! Razib notes that...
Understanding population differentiation
This lab has a take-home assignment, which is worth three points when you turn it in at next week’s lab section.
Measuring population subdivision
The basic measure of genetic difference between two populations is the statistic, FST. In genetics, the term F generally stands for ``inbreeding’’, which ten...
Cranial features and race
Individuals whose ancestry derives mostly from different parts of the world sometimes have different cranial features. Forensic anthropologists have studied ...
Cranial features and race
Individuals whose ancestry derives mostly from different parts of the world sometimes have different cranial features. Forensic anthropologists have studied ...
Braiding Denisovans into our ancestry
Dalton Luther reflects on the Denisovan admixture paper Skoglund:Jakobsson:2011 that I wrote about earlier this week (“How widespread is Denisovan ancestry t...
Gould's "Unconscious Manipulation of Data"
OK, so I can’t say it’s not “brain science” because measuring skulls is as close to brain science as anthropology ever gets. But it just shouldn’t be that ha...
Weidenreich and the Hittite Goddess
By chance I ran across an 2009 post by Rachel Martin of NYU Museum Studies, which investigates a mystery related to one of my scientific heroes, Franz Weiden...
Good grief, the Neandertal test kits have been sent
Blaine Bettinger (the Genetic Genealogist) writes that some commercial test offerings are trying to sort out a way to tell you how Neandertal you are:
African-American mtDNA and regional populations of Africa
I’m attending a symposium on genetics and genealogy of the African Diaspora this morning. Fatimah Jackson is here giving a very interesting talk about her ge...
Return of the "amazing" Boskops
Oh, good grief!
Mailbag: Statistics and future evolution
I was trying to find out more about recent research predicting a relative convergence of racial features in future generations (but I don't know anything abo...
Mailbag: Race, words and definitions
I believe this problem with the word "race" which biologists have needs to be handled as a communication problem. The way that biologists use the term is, li...
Modern genomics and race
Another little thing from that Anne Wojcicki interview that I linked last week – she fielded a question about race:
Hunting a myostatin SNP-phenotype association
I happened to be reading some literature on myostatin today and ran across a recent paper (Kostek et al., 2009). Conclusion: MSTN ...
Darwin the abolitionist?
The New York Times today reviews a new book by Adrian Desmond and James Moore, titled Darwin’s Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin’s Views on...
Ashley Montagu on recent evolution
Ashley Montagu was a British anthropologist, born under the name Israel Ehrenberg. He moved to the United States for work at Columbia for his Ph.D work, afte...
Plain statements on race, from Earnest Hooton (1936)
This seems to be “Race Month” on the internet. I thought some history might be enlightening, since most people seem to be just writing off the tops of their ...
That which must not be named
Constance Holden was at an October NIH workshop, titled, “Workshop on Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues in Natural Selection Research.”
Population genomics rising
Genetic Future has been on fire lately, with various announcements from and about genomics testing companies. More on that later. Today, he reflects upon the...
The Lemba story jumps the shark
Not only are they one of the lost tribes of Israel, now Tudor Parfitt says they are hiding the Lost Ark of the Covenant:
Public genomics, privacy, and James Watson
Another thing I didn’t expect to see today: DeCode Genetics went looking through James Watson’s genome sequence for evidence of African ancestry:
Wherein the New York Times says Hawks was right
Nearly two years ago now I wrote a column for Slate arguing that DNA genealogy tests were misleading people. Here's what I wrote:
They clone horses, don't they?
"Horse racing editor" Mike Brunker checks in with an excellent MSNBC article on cloning in the horse racing world. Racing officials are, so far, against it,...
Cold Spring Harbor denounces Watson
James Watson has now recanted his remarks, but not before his lab issued this terse press release:
Disagreeing with Hillary Clinton on human genetic differences
It's not really a politician's job to explain human biology to high school students. Still, with the number of politicians in New Hampshire this year, they ...
Finding new kin
Writer Corey Kilgannon in the NY Times writes about a "DNA reunion:"
A profile of "disparity research" and cancer
Science writer Jennifer Couzin has an important profile of cancer researcher Olufunmilayo Olopade. I say it's important because the profile really presents ...
What to do about the Sentinelese?
From Science last week, this article by Pallava Bagla on the Indian government's quandaries dealing with the Andaman Islands.
Only the wisest and stupidest…
Admit it, Reuters, you knew I couldn't resist linking to <a href=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13372791/">this</a>:
But can his daughter compete for Miss Mongolia?
Can I just say, "Yuck"?
Nukak narratives
The New York Times has a curious article about a hunter-gatherer group in Colombia, the Nukak, leaving the forest:
Unintended consequences of genetic ancestry tests
The NY Times has an article describing how people are using genealogy testing to prove minority status for college applications!
Culture clash and genetic similarity
I really like this Slate article by Jon Cohen in which he discovers his not-quite-Cohen-modal haplotype and journeys to South Africa to meet a Lemba. It's o...
Your tax dollars at work
I'm reading through the recent review article on "The use of racial, ethnic, and ancestral categories in human genetics research," by the "Race, Ethnicity, ...
Mitochondrial ancestry of African Americans
Antonio Salas and colleagues have a paper in the October American Journal of Human Genetics concerning the mtDNA affinities of African Americans within toda...
New HGDP book reviewed
In Nature this week there is a short but interesting review by political scientist Diane Paul (University of Massachusetts) of the new book Race to the Fini...
DNA collection from the innocent as well as the guilty
According to the Washington Post, Congress is moving toward approval of a measure that would require DNA collection from all federal detainees, and the reco...
Mitochondrial DNA and "performance enhancement"
One of the articles by Douglas Wallace referenced in the previous post covering mtDNA selection is subtitled "On the road to therapeutics and performance en...
The sad tale of the Black Indians
Wired is running a compelling story of tribal citizenship, genetic ancestry, and race (via Dienekes). </p>
Maori objections to Genographic Project
I wrote about the Genographic Project earlier this year. The project is attempting some of the aims of the former Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP), whi...
Ancestry testing: what, me worry?
This post at MajorityRights.com dissects my opinion about the DNAPrint AncestrybyDNA tests. The MajorityRights.com post does explicate many aspects of the t...
If you are going to "debunk" race with gene testing, please stop.
Humans do not have discrete races. Racial groups in humans do not have reproductive boundaries. Genetic variation in humans is clinal. Allele frequencies of...
Is racial prejudice like fear of snakes?
An article on MSNBC suggests that the apprehension people hold for members of other races may be part of human nature. The study (subscription required) by ...
Patents, BRCA2, and Ashkenazim
A column in Slate by Masha Gessen covers the controversy surrounding Myriad Genetics' patent on a test for breast cancer risk via mutations in BRCA2. The te...
Race and medicine: the BiDil trial
The New York Times reports on the FDA approval of the drug BiDil (via Gene Expression). The story is also covered by Time magazine and Science.