Philadelphia Wheelchair Taxi

Lewontin's fallacy

1) Introduction

Lewontin's fallacy is the false statement about race most repeated by the Marxist and everyone who has been in ideological sphere of influence, that is, by almost everyone. This statement implies that races do not exist, and is based on a fairly elementary treatment of the data (which is why the statement dates from 1972). The time has passed but Lewontin continues his ground and today, when the advance of genetic science has clearly demonstrated its absolute falsehood postulate, is still not recognized, as would a real scientist, not an ideologue. Also check as the error is not due simply to the state of current knowledge, 1972.

network does not exist in a lot of objective information on the Lewontin fallacy in English. It is important to have because, I repeat, this is the most repeated false claim by those who say that races do not exist. And we must respond.

2) The fallacy

has its origins in the claims made by the geneticist Richard Charles Lewontin and ideologue in his works The apportionment of human diversity in 1972 and The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change , 1974 (later published in English as human diversity and The genetic basis of evolution , respectively).

fallacious Lewontin's statement claims that since 85% of human genetic variation (defined as the total amount of the genetic characteristics present in humans) occurs between individuals within a population and that 10% of human genetic variation occurs only among populations of the same continent, the race would only by 5% and 10% of human genetic variation, percentage judged Lewontin taxonomically insignificant.

3) The rebuttal

The most famous rebuttal has been undertaken by geneticist Anthony William Fairbank Edwards. Article took place in August 2003, "Human genetics diversity: Lewontin's fallacy" , published in Volume 25 of the journal BioEssays . However, it should be noted that in April 1977 was a further refutation, on similar grounds, the Lewontin fallacy by Jeffrey B. Mitton in article "Genetic Differentiation of Races of Man as Judged by Single-Locus and Multilocus Analyses", published in Issue 111 of The American Naturalist journal . And again, by the same author, "Measurement of Differentiation: Reply to Lewontin, Powell, and Taylor," published in issue 112 of the same magazine, The American Naturalist , in 1978.

The refutation is based on the argument that most of the information that distinguishes populations is in the correlation structure of data and not the mere variation of individual data as Lewontin intended. To understand what Edwards means that we must first understand what is and what is a loci allele:

- Loci refers to the set position (locus) fixed on a chromosome, an example would be the specific position of a particular gene.

- is one variant allele of the DNA sequence at a particular locus, something like the different ways in which a single gene may occur. As man is diploid, has two alleles of each gene, one from the father and one mother. Each pair of alleles is placed in the same locus (chromosome specific location).

Edwards's argument is that the alleles (remember, the way it presents each gene) more frequent in a given population at a locus and the most frequent alleles in the same population at another locus are correlated.

An intuitive way to understand this would be: Lewontin ISAs you consider when to support his thesis only the most purely quantitative question d the matter, the basic genetic material, the "cement." Mitton and Edwards entered into his analysis qualitative aspect of the question, "structure", the setting that takes basic genetic material, thus achieving a more complete understanding of reality. It's simple to understand , unless you do not want to do it: with relatively similar cements can be very different buildings.

For if anyone is there any doubt the veracity of the Met od or Mitton and Edwards, it is important to note that individuals can be correctly classified into races using the above correlations between alleles of different loci.

But there's more.

Trick Lewontin on the analysis of polymorphisms of nuclear eótico simple (Single Nucleotide Polymorphism, SNP)

SNP This is basically a variation in the DNA sequence that affects a single base genome sequence. In the human genome, these variations appear every 1300 bases and are up to 90% of human genetic variation. Depending on the region where this variation is, act on one or the other processes in producing amino acids (the essence of DNA).

In natural conditions, ie those that guarantee and l reproductive isolation of different races, such SNPs tend to increase, and this process can be considered as the genetic basis of speciation by which different human races should, over time, diverge and become even more species.

Lewontin, that Marxist charlatan, simply count all SN Ps and concludes, as usual, there is little var bership between populations (races), but forgets to tell us that not all SNPs have the same important; some SNPs have a greater role in the production of certain amino acids than other SNPs that, in principle, are useless. Here we are again with a crude analysis, quasi-nineteenth century, which only takes into account all the quantitative and qualitative.

4) Conclusion

Lewontin The general assertion is false, it is really a fallacy, a sophism. Was successfully rebutted only six years after it stated. After being denied continued, sometimes explicitly (as in AWF Edwards) and other implicitly, by working many geneticists daily operating from the premise that human races do exist. The same as, p olitically correct or afraid of political and academic establishment, call these "people" (the way of working, for example, Cavalli-Sforza).

But in the content, which may progress fallacy remains. Do not give up nor will they give it up easily. Its success lies in its simplicity, is simply a matter of mere num: 15 is more than 85. With these materi als build these people. Well, at that, nothing better to tell the dubious: in the picture above are differences between women of the right and the left? If you find it, are individual differences are explained in terms of race?

Genetics has proved a particularly suitable area for the ideologue. The assumptions must be demonstrated and this demonstration must be maintained over time and new perspectives and developments that are appearing. Y e ste process, although it may hinder, not can avoid or UNESCO, or American Anthropological Association, to name two examples. Here is the testimony Mark Pagel, an eminent geneticist at the University of Reading, before negating the existence of human races and today, with the rapid development of genetics and the consequent contribution of evidence for the reality of the race, convinced of his existence:

"With independe ncia wrong as they are the old ideas and races, modern genomic studies reveal a surprising scene, exciting and different from human genetic diversity. On average, some races are genetically similar to others in a 99.5% . This percentage is not being considered before it is lower than previously estimated, which was around 99.9%. To put into perspective this difference, may seem tiny, it should be noted that we are genetically similar at about 98.5%, or maybe more, to chimpanzees, who are our closest evolutionary relatives. In other words, this new rate is very important to us. Among other things, derived from many small genetic differences s that are known from comparative studies of human populations. Like it or not, it is possible that there are many genetic differences between human populations, without ruling out differences that may even correspond to the former classification by race, and differences that are real in the sense that they make to a particular group better than another when responding to a particular problem given the environment in which it operates. This does not mean at all that there is a group that generally is 'superior' to another. However, warns us that we must be prepared to discuss genetic differences among human populations. "