Human Genetic Diversity: Lewontin's Fallacy

"Human Genetic Diversity: Lewontin's Fallacy" is a 2003 paper by A. W. F. Edwards.[1] He criticises an argument first made in Richard Lewontin's 1972 article "The Apportionment of Human Diversity", that the practice of dividing humanity into races is taxonomically invalid because any given individual will often have more in common genetically with members of other population groups than with members of their own.[2] Edwards argued that this does not refute the biological reality of race since genetic analysis can usually make correct inferences about the perceived race of a person from whom a sample is taken, and that the rate of success increases when more genetic loci are examined.[1]

Edwards' paper was reprinted, commented upon by experts such as Noah Rosenberg,[3] and given further context in an interview with philosopher of science Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther in a 2018 anthology.[4] Edwards' critique is discussed in a number of academic and popular science books, with varying degrees of support.[5][6][7]

Some scholars, including Winther and Jonathan Marks, dispute the premise of "Lewontin's fallacy", arguing that Edwards' critique does not actually contradict Lewontin's argument.[7][8][9] A 2007 paper in Genetics by David J. Witherspoon et al. concluded that the two arguments are in fact compatible, and that Lewontin's observation about the distribution of genetic differences across ancestral population groups applies "even when the most distinct populations are considered and hundreds of loci are used".[10]

  1. ^ a b Edwards, A. W. F. (2003). "Human genetic diversity: Lewontin's fallacy". BioEssays. 25 (8): 798–801. doi:10.1002/bies.10315. PMID 12879450.
  2. ^ Lewontin, R. C. (1972). "The Apportionment of Human Diversity". Evolutionary Biology. pp. 381–398. doi:10.1007/978-1-4684-9063-3_14. ISBN 978-1-4684-9065-7. S2CID 21095796.
  3. ^ Rosenberg, N. (2018). "Variance-Partitioning and Classification in Human Population Genetics". In R.G. Winther (ed.). Phylogenetic Inference, Selection Theory, and History of Science: Selected Papers of AWF Edwards with Commentaries. Cambridge University Press. pp. 399–403. ISBN 9781107111721.
  4. ^ Edwards, A.W.F. (2018). "Human Genetic Diversity: Lewontin's Fallacy". In R.G. Winther (ed.). Phylogenetic Inference, Selection Theory, and History of Science: Selected Papers of AWF Edwards with Commentaries. Cambridge University Press. pp. 249–253. ISBN 9781107111721.
  5. ^ Dawkins, R. (2005). The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution. with additional research by Y. Wong. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. pp. 406–407. ISBN 9780618619160.
  6. ^ Ramachandran, S.; Tang, H.; Gutenkunst, R. N.; Bustamante, C. D. (2010). "Chapter 20: Genetics and Genomics of Human Population Structure" (PDF). In Speicher, M. R.; et al. (eds.). Vogel and Motulsky's Human Genetics: Problems and Approaches. Heidelberg: Springer. p. 596. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-37654-5. ISBN 978-3-540-37653-8. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 December 2013. Retrieved 29 October 2013.
  7. ^ a b Marks, Jonathan M. (2010). "Ten Facts about Human Variation". In Muehlenbein, M. P. (ed.). Human Evolutionary Biology. Cambridge University Press. p. 270. ISBN 9781139789004.
  8. ^ Winther, R.G. (2018). "The Genetic Reification of "Race"? A Story of Two Mathematical Methods". In R.G. Winther (ed.). Phylogenetic Inference, Selection Theory, and History of Science: Selected Papers of AWF Edwards with Commentaries. Cambridge University Press. pp. 489, 488–508. ISBN 9781107111721.
  9. ^ Winther, R.G. (2018). "Race and Biology". In Paul C. Taylor; Linda Martín Alcoff; Luvell Anderson (eds.). The Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Race. Cambridge University Press. pp. 305–320. ISBN 9781107111721.
  10. ^ Cite error: The named reference Witherspoon was invoked but never defined (see the help page).