From: Mark Steven Heyman (markheyman@infoproconsulting.com)
Date: Thu Jun 17 2004 - 02:31:36 BST
Hi all,
Et tu, Platt'e?
Platt reads a few numbers, 94%, 6%, 98.5% and concludes, I guess
because the numbers all have % signs, that they must be referring to
the same thing. So, rather than investigate, he reflexively fires
off an email to "refute" my point, and, in the process, dismisses
the American Anthropological Association as a bunch of crackpots.
Here's the full relevant quote:
"Evidence from the analysis of genetics (e.g., DNA) indicates that
most physical variation, about 94%, lies within so-called racial
groups. Conventional geographic "racial" groupings differ from one
another only in about 6% of their genes. This means that there is
greater variation within "racial" groups than between them."
What this is saying is that variation in physical appearance within
so-called "racial" groupings is MUCH GREATER than physical variation
between "racial" groups. In other words, people who divide humanity
into separate groups based on appearance, have NO scientific reason
for doing so. As the rest of the AAA paper points out, the division
was made, and continues to be upheld, for social reasons, and not
very pretty ones.
Platt's comment:
Compare this to a Reuters news item about a report attributed to Asao
Fujiyama of the RIKEN Genomic Science Center published in the May 26,
2004 issue of Nature:
"Genetically, chimpanzees are 98.5 percent identical to humans."
Hmmm. Something does'nt compute.
msh says:
That's for sure. The quote has nothing at all to do with the
physical variations within and between "races" described above.
Besides, the quote appears nowhere in the Fujiyama team paper. The
line was written by the Reuter's reporter, who probably got the idea
from someone else. But this is ok, because the idea is essentially
correct. Here's a quote from another Nature magazine writer,
explaining the issue (kink to follow):
"We already knew that around 98.5% of the base pairs that make up our
DNA are the same as those in chimps. So the old idea was that all the
things that differentiate us from apes, such as highly developed
cognitive functions, walking upright and the use of complex language,
should come from the other 1.5%."
...
"The sequences of chimp chromosome 22 and human chromosome 21 are
roughly equivalent. Out of the bits that line up, 1.44% of the
individual base pairs were different, settling a debate based on
previous, less accurate studies.
"However, the researchers were in for a surprise. Because chimps and
humans appear broadly similar, some have assumed that most of the
differences would occur in the large regions of DNA that do not
appear to have any obvious function. But that was not the case. The
researchers report in Nature1 that many of the differences were
within genes, the regions of DNA that code for proteins. 83% of the
231 genes compared had differences that affected the amino acid
sequence of the protein they encoded. And 20% showed "significant
structural changes".
Chromosome 22 makes up only 1% of the genome, so in total there could
be thousands of genes that significantly differ between humans and
chimps, says Jean Weissenbach from France's National Sequencing
Centre in Evry. This could make it much harder than scientists had
hoped to find the key changes that made us human."
http://www.nature.com/nsu/040524/040524-8.html
Here's the link to the original Reuter's report:
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=scienceNews&storyID=52
64726§ion=news
And here's the actual RIKEN Genomic Science Center research paper, as
it appears in Nature Magazine:
http://www.nature.com/cgi-
taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v429/n6990/full/nature02564_fs.h
tml
msh continues:
As for Platt's invocation of the nature-nurture debate in regards to
human behavior , it is off point. It's true that there continues to
be debate about whether or not certain human characteristics, such as
intelligence, temperament, emotional responses and levels of
aggression are genetically determined. But there is NO scientific
support for the idea, say, that members of any one "race" are less
intelligent or more prone to aggression than members of a different
"race."
Anyone who holds such a belief is a racist, by definition.
Thanks to all,
Mark Steven Heyman (msh)
-- InfoPro Consulting - The Professional Information Processors Custom Software Solutions for Windows, PDAs, and the Web Since 1983 Web Site: http://www.infoproconsulting.com "Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is everything." -- Henri Poincare' MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org Mail Archives: Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/ Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at: http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu Jun 17 2004 - 02:29:41 BST