Talk:Human genetic variation/Archive 1

Archive 1

Comment

'Some commentators have argued that these patterns of variation provide a biological justification for the use of traditional racial categories. They argue that the continental clusterings correspond roughly with the division of human beings into sub-Saharan Africans; Europeans, Western Asians, Southern Asians and Northern Africans + Eastern Asians, Southeast Asians, Polynesians and Native Americans; and other inhabitants of Oceania (Melanesians, Micronesians & Australian Aborigines) (Risch et al. 2002).'

How many 'traditional racial categories' does that make? If only semicolons are being used to divide one listed category from the next it makes three. If both commas and semicolons serve this purpose then it makes eight. The punctuation of this sentence makes it very unclear; semicolons, commas, 'and', brackets, and a '+' are all used ambiguosly. Could somebody try clearing this up? Thanks. Donnachadh (talk) 19:20, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

I am not a wiki editor, I am not active enough to know how the community handles this. But "Variation in a trait under selection, skin colour" is lifted word for word from "The Use of Racial, Ethnic, and Ancestral Categories in Human Genetics Research," American Journal of Human Genetics, 77:519-532, 2005 without mentioning it is a direct quote. Thank you. 152.132.9.64 (talk) 19:44, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

The "groups" mentioned in "Section 3 - Physical variation in humans" are not defined. Are they separated by continent? Is there some geographic border being used between groups? It is notable that the corresponding picture is severely out of date and at best loosely descriptive of the section. --ThomasGFunk 07:38, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

this article includes some non-standard english: "than do populations in the rest of the world" should be "than populations in the rest of the world (do)"

"have higher levels of diversity than do humans"

Edwards and Lewontin

Regarding this Edwards nowhere claims that this distribution of variation is an unwarranted observation. This is what Edwards actually says it is often stated that about 85% of the total genetical variation is due to individual differences within populations and only 15% to differences between populations or ethnic groups. It has therefore been proposed that the division of Homo sapiens into these groups is not justified by the genetic data. This conclusion, due to R.C. Lewontin in 1972, is unwarranted[1] It is clear that what Edwards claims that it is unwarranted' to claim that the division of Homo sapiens into discrete groups is not justified based on the observation that the majority of genetic variation is at the individual level. Edwards does not claim that the majority of variation is not at the individual level, he does not claim that Lewontin's data, or methodology are incorrect. Let's get this straight once and for all. Edwards observation has been misrepresented all over Wikipedia. Edwards argument is about classification, it is not about the extent of genetic variation. Alun 06:21, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

I wonder if an analogy here will be helpful.

Suppose I meet a man and am told he is either German or Italian, but not which. I can guess, and I'll be right a bit more than half the time, but I certainly can't be sure. Now suppose I meet 100 men, either all German or all Italian. I can be pretty certain which they all are. Does this mean that "Germans are different from Italians"? I don't know, I don't care, I consider it an ill-defined question. I think I can say all the above without fear of controversy. But anyone who asks the question "are black people different from white people" is likely to have his motives misunderstood, and to start arguments. Maproom (talk) 11:01, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Human dispersal and evolution

I'm wondering why there are such large sections discussing the multiregional and RAO modles. While these models obviously have some bearing on human genetic variation, they occupy a very large part of the article. Indeed the majority of this article does not seem to address human genetic variation at all. There is a big section on physical variation, something that is affected by environment a great deal, though obviously there are genetic factors. This article needs a rewrite. It also needs a lead section as there is none at all at present.

There are several points that need to be addressed in this article.

• Analysis of F_ST it's uses and validity.
• Clustering analyses, what do they tell us? What do they say about the distribution of variation?
• Comparisons of individuals from different parts of the world, what they tell us about the genetic similarities between people from different parts of the world?
  

I've been planning to write something about these observations for some time and may have something to contribute here in the near future. Alun 18:14, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Epigenetics

The epigenetics section of the article needs to be expanded if anyone is interested. --Fat Cigar 16:22, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Article length

I propose a RfC to address the issue of article length. The article may be too long or meticulous. --Wet dog fur (talk) 18:20, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Discussion about Jagz/WDF's edit

• Question. Is this partial rewrite [2] an improvement over the article as it is currently written? I had spent quite a bit of time on this and all my edits were reverted twice. --Wet dog fur (talk) 11:55, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

That's impossible to judge. You've made such massive edits, moving text around willy nilly with no real justification. This is typical of your usual editing style. Alun (talk) 13:18, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I've looked at the current version of the article, and at the partial rewrite in the link from Wet dog fur just above. In my opinion, the partial rewrite is a big improvement over the present version, and editors should comment on the content, not on others' typical editing styles. I think the rewrite is superior in that the introduction has been shortened, but still needs to be edited further, to (1) decrease the amount of narration in the form of "author and author said this, then author and author said that," instead simply stating the fact and citing a reference, and (2) get all of the references into numbered, in line form. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:04, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

For the convenience of other editors interested in reviewing this, here is the diff I understand to be in question. The lead section of the revised version is too short. Per WP:LEAD#Length, the lead section of articles larger than 30,000 characters should generally be three or four paragraphs. The two paragraphs of the revised version's lead (which in themselves are smaller than ideal) is too brief; the size of the revised version (~56,000 characters) suggests that four paragraphs may be most appropriate. Furthermore, the lead should summarize salient points in the article -- the revised version does not do this as well as the current version. The summary paragraphs that make up the lead should most likely be about the topics of each section in the article (e.g., the extent of human variation, its distribution; results of clustering analyses, substructure in the human population -- one paragraph for each).

Per WP:MOS#HEAD, "section names should not explicitly refer to the subject of the article...unless doing so is shorter or clearer." I interpret that to mean section headings like "Types of human variation" should be reduced to "Types" (which I would suggest further be changed to something along the lines of 'Types: SNPs vs CNVs' or more simply 'SNPs vs CNVs'). Terms like "human variation" and "variation" should be removed, since the article's title makes it clear that the text is about variation and humans.

About whether the current or revised version is better, I would keep the current version for now. Both versions have problematic lead sections, but the revised version seems to have removed paragraphs without much explanation, and transplanted other paragraphs from the lead into sections of the body without first addressing problems in those paragraphs. I would work on fixing individual sections for now by adjusting perspective, slashing quotes, and converting references to use the cite template. After problems in each section are worked out, summarizing finished sections in the lead should be much easier. Emw2012 (talk) 19:18, 20 January 2009 (UTC)