Shiao has a strong grasp, but ultimately the critique doesn?t stick. It?s been critiqued substantively in popgen, and Shiao never hit back.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0735275114551532
Womp. Womp.
Geneticists reveal evolutionary origins of Cannabis sativa
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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK542554/#sec_000027
The major challenge in defining and designating subspecies is that, given a particular species, there are many ways to define a subspecies (Haig et al., 2006). The earliest definitions of a subspecies identified sets of populations whose members shared specific variations in color patterns or morphology that were not found in other populations of the same species that were geographically separated from the population under consideration. The modern definitions of subspecies follow the spirit of these original definitions, focusing on congruent variation in many characteristics that distinguishes one geographically distinct set of populations from other sets. The various definitions generally differ on the specific quantitative criteria they use for when a subspecies designation is war/ranted, but all definitions emphasize geographic separation and distinctive sets of trait values.
Taxonomists who study different major groups of plants or animals tend to use different criteria for designating subspecies. This does not mean that the criteria for recognizing a distinctive unit are arbitrary and capricious. Rather, a distinctive group of populations may be considered a subspecies of a wide-ranging species by one group of taxonomists but considered to be a different species altogether by another (Isaac et al., 2004). The different frequencies of subspecies designations in different groups can reflect biologically based differences between taxa in the prevalence and patterns of distinctive geographic variation among populations, but to some extent they also reflect the different taxonomic traditions of the scientists who study different groups of species.
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Here's Reich politely soft-pedaling some truth while trying as hard as he can to avoid making anyone upset:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.htmlKey statement: "many academics are implausibly denying the possibility of average genetic differences among human populations"
That's really the issue here.If we treat humans as we would any other animal, there's no serious reason to not taxonomically divide humans into multiple subspecies, especially seeing as genetic, morphological, and even behavioral differences point toward species-grade difference at least between the most divergent of human populations (if we consider all living humans to be the same species, then humans have by far the highest morphological diversity of any single animal species). As with other animals, there is no one singular methodology toward defining subspecies. I would strongly suggest others in this thread try to understand the concepts of phylogenetic species and cladistic species, and how studying regionalized patterns of human evolution through phylogeography reveals definably different clades of humans that would in context of another animal clearly war/rant subspecific designatoin.
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Shiao has a strong grasp, but ultimately the critique doesn?t stick. It?s been critiqued substantively in popgen, and Shiao never hit back.
You were already refuted on this regarding Shiao never hitting back (read his response), but I'll also note one of the main criticisms of Shiao was stating that his framework doesn't hold because human genetic diversity is purely clinal -- that is, the criticism was that there are no "clinal classes," only clines.
We now know that there are in fact measurable genetic discontinuities in human variation:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337648141/figure/fig2/AS:874097693171717@1585412538636/Regional-patterns-of-genetic-diversity-a-Scale-bar-for-relative-effective-migration.jpg
Those geographic bar/riers strongly cor/relate to cladistic separations between groups of humans that can be defined with extremely high confidence using phylogenetic software. -
Shiao has a strong grasp, but ultimately the critique doesn?t stick. It?s been critiqued substantively in popgen, and Shiao never hit back.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0735275114551532
Womp. Womp.Shiao is explicitly acknowledging social construction as a relevant factor there. How do you think this supports your denialism?
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Shiao is explicitly acknowledging social construction as a relevant factor there. How do you think this supports your denialism?
Shiao describes his work as a refutation of the social constructionist consensus on race in sociology, which he states requires radical revision to maintain relevance in context of advances related to genomics and is founded on a denial of the possibility of meaningful genetic variation between humans. He acknowledges a role of social construction regarding recognition of ancestral differences and how those are socially delineated in shifting manner, yes.
"There are meaningfully different biological categories of humans that can be empirically described" is a refutation of the core axioms of the social constructionist view on race. Shiao still leaves room for a type of social construction to occur, yes, but if he were a "social constructionist" in the manner of the general consensus among social scientists, they wouldn't have published a series of articles attacking him in almost hysterical terms regarding implications they saw from his work and even basically accusing him of colluding with white supremacists, etc.
Shiao explicitly described himself as attacking the social constructionist account which he describes as being founded on biological presumptions that are refuted by present data.fwiw I would say Shiao was basically objectively accurate on almost everything, although his concept of clinal classes would be somewhat unwieldy when translated into biological science even if it has meaning as he describes in a biosocial sense. Or he allows space for what are considered meaningful clinal classes to shift depending on spatial or historical context. Or "clinal class" is really a sociological concept utilizing advances in biological science but in a way strongly deviating from consensus within his own field, rather than a purely biological concept.
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Shiao is explicitly acknowledging social construction as a relevant factor there. How do you think this supports your denialism?
Shiao acknowledges a role of social construction regarding recognition of ancestral differences and how those are socially delineated in shifting manner, yes.You’ve finally articulated the social construction of race at the freshman level, after denying it for years! Congratulations!
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You�ve finally articulated the social construction of race at the freshman level, after denying it for years! Congratulations!
You don't seem to have realized yet that Shiao is attacking the social constructionists. If he wasn't, why did he say he was?
Just following from the previous paragraph, what "clinal class" as a primarily sociological concept would entail is: while Shiao took a sort of sledgehammer to postulates of the social constructionists through his criticisms, his proposed solution of clinal classes while interesting and likely valid in its own sociological terms would not solve problems regarding, for example, a cladistic taxonomy of human races nor would it aspire to do so.
As stated above, it's not like there could be only one methodology to determining meaningful "races" of humans, but the most objective would be to designate phylogenetic species of humans that are meaningfully divided by genetic bar/riers as being human subspecies. This is just consistent with zoology in general. This could mean there would be many human subspecies, probably more than 40. For context note that the red fox is divided into anywhere from 39 to 46 subspecies.
Phylogenetic species, unlike the "clinal classes" Shiao proposes, would involve nothing really amounting to "social construction" as such but would be strictly defined by running analysis on data.If you were the person arguing "All biological categories are socially constructed" that's still false unless you're just stating that all science as a process is socially constructed, and so the idea of gravity is as socially constructed as the idea of a mammal.
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"All science is a social construct" is fine.
But notice that for whatever reason the only part about that we really hear about is race. We never hear people talking about how gravity is a social construct.A huge percentage of sociologists who say "Race is a social construct" do not mean it in the strictly literal terms you're talking about regarding science as a human social process, but rather take that to mean "There are no meaningful biological categories of humans that could plausibly be described as races and the notion of discrete biological categories of humans has been objectively refuted by science" and furthermore "any attempt to define biological categories is driven by white supremacist ideology." And they usually go on repeating Lewontin's fallacy as if even people on their own side (Long and Kittle) had not already refuted that specific line of argumentation.
Science as a process is socially constructed by humans -- who can argue against that? But when sociologists talk about how "race is a social construct" they usually are not stating just that, but bringing along numerous other presumptions, several of which at this point can be described as refuted -- that was basically the whole point of Shiao's article. -
Shiao has a strong grasp, but ultimately the critique doesn?t stick. It?s been critiqued substantively in popgen, and Shiao never hit back.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0735275114551532
Womp. Womp.You haven’t shared a response to popgen.
You’ve shared a response to individual scholars, most of them sociologists, anthropologist, or in the medical humanities. This is a common type of publication. I’m sure you know more about this than your peers, but based on some of your mistakes and your apparent state of mental health, I’m assuming you are a graduate student. Again, you have some grasp of this, but you seem confused about which people and publications represent which fields. I’m commenting from a health department. Admittedly, I haven’t had the time to read all of your responses to the various people here.
Use the winter break to actually rest. I think you need it.
