If not, how to interpret this?
Earlier, we mentioned “Prominent science writer insists Darwinian evolution is ongoing, wants to revive “conversation” about race” and “Geneticists use code words for race, science writer says,” but no one paid much attention.
And we didn’t think that in the age of epigenetics, jumping genes, and bacteria grabbing genes from dead bax, they’d be such dam fools as to follow through with a book advocating the very stuff we could safely and conveniently junk.
Shows what we know! Here, from Wall Street Journal:
A 2009 appraisal of the available genome-wide scans estimated that 14% of the genome has been under the pressure of natural selection during the past 30,000 years, long after humans left Africa. The genes under selection include a wide variety of biological traits affecting everything from bone structure and diet to aspects of the brain and nervous system involving cognition and sensory perception.
The question, then, is whether the sets of genes under selection have varied across races, to which the answer is a clear yes. To date, studies of Caucasians, Asians and sub-Saharan Africans have found that of the hundreds of genetic regions under selection, about 75% to 80% are under selection in only one race. We also know that the genes in these regions affect more than cosmetic variations in appearance. Some of them involve brain function, which in turn could be implicated in a cascade of effects. “What these genes do within the brain is largely unknown,” Mr. Wade writes. “But the findings establish the obvious truth that brain genes do not lie in some special category exempt from natural selection. They are as much under evolutionary pressure as any other category of gene.”
Let me emphasize, as Mr. Wade does, how little we yet know about the substance of racial and ethnic differences …
Yes, well, if the human race subsisted successfully for millennia without this information, how important is it?
What disease does it cure?
Reviewer Charles Murray predicts controversy, based on past experience.
Cat. Pigeons. Betting shop closed for Sabbath observance.
See also: The Science Fictions series at your fingertips (human evolution)
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