Is DNA Pioneer James Watson racist?

Discussion in 'Politics & Current Events' started by johan neeskens, Oct 24, 2007.

  1. Chewmylegoff

    Chewmylegoff Member

    Jan 26, 2004
    London
    sickle cell anaemia is caused by a double recessive gene. if you have one copy of the recessive gene then you are immune to malaria. that's why sickle cell anameia is common in malarial areas - evolutionary pressure means that having one copy of the gene makes you more likely to survive and reproduce.

    i think there is a theory that a single copy of the gene that causes cystic fibrosis makes you immune to bubonic plague as well, which is why cystic fibrosis is more prevalent in people from european stock, although i'm not sure if i have that right.
     
  2. taosjohn

    taosjohn Member+

    Dec 23, 2004
    taos,nm

    I always wondered if Alvin Dark's friends did... :cool:
     
  3. Demosthenes

    Demosthenes Member+

    May 12, 2003
    Berkeley, CA
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    A large part of the success of Kenyan distance runners is due to their training methods, and due to being from, and training in, high-elevation areas.

    White distance runners who have trained in Kenya using similar methods have had a lot of success.
     
  4. Chewmylegoff

    Chewmylegoff Member

    Jan 26, 2004
    London
    yeah. not as much success though.
     
  5. vivzig

    vivzig New Member

    Oct 4, 2004
    The OC
    Science, as you are proving, is only as good as the questions asked and the researchers involved. But especially the questions asked. As hard as it is for biologists (and admittedly, social scientists) to believe, there is considerable overlap.
    Well that certainly is the kneejerk position. Do those of North African ancestry get sickle-cell more or less? What about Egyptians? How much "black blood" is necessary to get sickle-cell? If my great-great-great granddad was black, can I get it? Do you have to look "black" to get it? If I'm "white" can I never get it, or only if I'm "white-but-from-Scandinavia"?

    These are social categories that have nothing to do with the presence or absence of a specific gene completely unrelated to physical appearance. There is a "white" gene. It is responsible for skin color. That's it.

    The fact is, there is more genetic variation within racial categories than between them. Saying race is socially constructed isn't PC-ism, it's reality.
     
  6. vivzig

    vivzig New Member

    Oct 4, 2004
    The OC
    Sure, in part. Are women genetically worse drivers? Are they genetically predisposed to make less money?

    Give me a 1000 years of real gender and race equality and then we'll talk about genetic differences. Until that happens, I'm prepared to deny most genetic explanations for differential behavior. Culture, structure, and normative socialization are incredibly powerful forces.
     
  7. vivzig

    vivzig New Member

    Oct 4, 2004
    The OC
    Nor do they have equal motivation or an equally deep population from which to draw.
     
  8. RichardL

    RichardL BigSoccer Supporter

    May 2, 2001
    Berkshire
    Club:
    Reading FC
    Nat'l Team:
    England
    any kind of study would have to go beyond "race" as it is currently defined, as black is as useless a category as "Asian" would be. Even white is pretty useless. It's unlikely to be quite as obvious over in the US, but if you travel around europe you'd notice that white people from different regions are different. Not to the extend that someone from Thailand would be different to someone from Japan, but different all the same. I could go to the various food stalls around the Madejski stadium, for example, and point out by looks alone which servers are Polish with a high degree of confidence.


    No idea how literal you were being, but I'd actually say it's incredibly unlikely that there's one gene that control skin colour. If that was the case then it'd be impossible for the child of a mixed-race family to be anything but one colour or the other as they'd either genetically take after either their mother or father.
     
  9. YankHibee

    YankHibee Member+

    Mar 28, 2005
    indianapolis
    I'm far from an expert, but I think most of these questions have already been answered. I'm having a look around here, but I don't want to say anything about the contents until I've done some reading. Nonetheless, the contributors appear legit.
     
  10. superdave

    superdave Member+

    Jul 14, 1999
    VB, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    FYI, it's mostly one specific tribe, the Kalenjin. Some Kikuyu, but mostly Kalenjin. They're a small enough group that as a non-statistician, it seems to me possible that there might be some kind of genetic predisposition.

    I would point out that it's Western Africans and their descendants who dominate sprinting, while it's Eastern Africans who excel at distance running.
     
  11. saosebastiao

    saosebastiao New Member

    May 22, 2005
  12. vivzig

    vivzig New Member

    Oct 4, 2004
    The OC
    I was recalling a news article a while back--they discovered a
    "white" gene.

    I think there's a lot of wiggle room there--their major point was that they had discovered the point of divergence. I'll go dig for it.
     
  13. YankHibee

    YankHibee Member+

    Mar 28, 2005
    indianapolis
    Then JBigjake posted the story about the red haired neanderthals in the weird news thread today. Cavemen with gingervitis!
     
  14. Attacking Minded

    Attacking Minded New Member

    Jun 22, 2002
    Are you a parent?
     
  15. vivzig

    vivzig New Member

    Oct 4, 2004
    The OC
    Are you about to tell me about something that I could never ever in a million years understand unless I were to spawn little (1/2) mes to replace myself?

    Cuz if so, save yourself.

    Arguments like that remind me of my idiot alcoholic, nicotine addicted, exercise adverse coworker who informed me that, just wait til I turned 30 and god slipped a tire around my waist. :rolleyes:
     
  16. saosebastiao

    saosebastiao New Member

    May 22, 2005
    Actually, he might have something useful to say. Like the fact that women who have avoided child birth and the time constraints that accompany it have been found to have near equal incomes to men of the same age.
     
  17. argentine soccer fan

    Staff Member

    Jan 18, 2001
    San Francisco Bay Area
    Club:
    CA Boca Juniors
    Nat'l Team:
    Argentina
    Are there more lions in West Africa than in East Africa? That perhaps might help explain the dominance of West African sprinters.
    :D
     
  18. vivzig

    vivzig New Member

    Oct 4, 2004
    The OC
    Wow. Excellent website. I remain skeptical about some of the articles, but there are some real gems. Duster's and Goodman's articles fill in a lot of specifics about what we've been debating here.

    Such as:

    Race is not a biologically useful concept. It remains a socially useful concept only because we continue to reify it as such. Social science must acknowledge it as real in its lived experience, but biological science has no business doing so except as environmentally relevant.
     
  19. vivzig

    vivzig New Member

    Oct 4, 2004
    The OC
    Well, that would be the point, wouldn't it?

    And, no. Anyone who introduces a topic with a litmus test is either about to make an ad hominem attack or claim special knowledge--ergo, unknowable to the other party--to win an argument.

    Not a game I like to play.
     
  20. saosebastiao

    saosebastiao New Member

    May 22, 2005
    So you only like to have arguments with people who will not attack you and do not have any knowledge beyond what you already have... Sounds boring.
     
  21. vivzig

    vivzig New Member

    Oct 4, 2004
    The OC
    Sounds like you have a problem with reading comprehension. Go back and try with a dictionary.
     
  22. Attacking Minded

    Attacking Minded New Member

    Jun 22, 2002
    Well I would make that arguement but you wouldn't understand.
     
  23. saosebastiao

    saosebastiao New Member

    May 22, 2005
    I understood perfectly fine. I am provoking you because it is easy and fun. You should probably relax a little.
     
  24. PhillyQuakesFan

    PhillyQuakesFan New Member

    Jun 25, 2007
    Delaware County, PA
    Club:
    Philadelphia Union
    Nat'l Team:
    United States

    If you're close friends with a recent 7'1 Serbian Pistons #2 overall draft pick
     
  25. RichardL

    RichardL BigSoccer Supporter

    May 2, 2001
    Berkshire
    Club:
    Reading FC
    Nat'l Team:
    England
    that's pretty much what I was saying about race, as we tend to classify it, being next to useless.

    Also people become preoccupied with any suggestion of genetic deference as if it's a suggestion of humans diverging into different species. It's not. It's just (or would be if scientists felt comfortable doing such work) a study of how the migration and isolated breeding of humans across the planet had resulted in a diversity of phyical and possibly mental characteristics.

    These differences have happened. That is fact. Anyone who seriously tries to suggest that all "races" (however you define them) are identical apart from skin colour is trying too hard to be PC. If everyone had the same skin colour and hair type, we would not all look the same. There is more to it than that. Go to Japan, for example, and a huge amount of people have skin that is just as white as almost any Europeans, but they don't look European. Go to southern India and people there are as black as almost any in Africa, yet you wouldn't think of them as being "black".

    To deny those differences have occured is pure denial, and to say they are irrelevant because there are contradictions in how we define races is just avoiding the issue. There are differences, and the only way to understand them is through scientific study. To react in knee-jerk fashion and say any such study is racist, and insist everybody is exactly the same without evidence is unscientific, which was exactly Watson's point.
     

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