Hi. I did my master's in computational biology focusing on androgen independent prostate cancer. After that I worked in an autoimmunology lab. My projects included rheumatoid arthritis GWAS and b-cell phylogeny. To demonstrate that we did case-control matching correctly, I looked at how well self-reported ancestry corresponds to hapmap populations. The mapping is very noisy. "Race" is a social classification, sure it's correlated with biological markers but there are better measures. So, yeah, "race" as such isn't important.
I don't follow the conclusion that you're trying to draw. It sounds like you're saying that people do not self-report their own ancestry accurately better than chance.
On the surface of it this sounds absurd, because (unless adopted) people do not determine their ancestry by looking at photos of themselves. I can see getting proximal affiliations wrong, confusing or missidentifying oneself as being half Italian when they're actually half Iberian, or or confusing turkic ancestry with Persian. But I don't think people are going to not know whether they are primarily of say East asian, african, or european ancestry.
"Race" is a social construct. We assign "race" based on physical and cultural traits, not genetic. We back into the relationship of "race" and "genetics".
You could easily have a genetic predisposition to prostate cancer without being a certain race, even though that "race" may have a higher propensity for that genetic trait.
>We assign "race" based on physical and cultural traits, not genetic.
Not really, everyone knows that an albino African is still an African. Physical traits are just the most visible aspect of genetics. And your second point is just explaining outliers, it doesn't say anything.
bhickey|2 years ago
ChainOfFools|2 years ago
On the surface of it this sounds absurd, because (unless adopted) people do not determine their ancestry by looking at photos of themselves. I can see getting proximal affiliations wrong, confusing or missidentifying oneself as being half Italian when they're actually half Iberian, or or confusing turkic ancestry with Persian. But I don't think people are going to not know whether they are primarily of say East asian, african, or european ancestry.
Toast_|2 years ago
>The mapping is very noisy.
>"race" as such isn't important
Sounds like quite the leap to reach the conclusion that you're trying to make.
refurb|2 years ago
You could easily have a genetic predisposition to prostate cancer without being a certain race, even though that "race" may have a higher propensity for that genetic trait.
mufti_menk|2 years ago
Not really, everyone knows that an albino African is still an African. Physical traits are just the most visible aspect of genetics. And your second point is just explaining outliers, it doesn't say anything.
outofwood|2 years ago
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