User:Travis Daily

Safe Keeping

I cam currently in a thinly veiled edit war with potential sockpuppets on the page Race and genetics. I've been asked to unambiguously articulate what grievances I have with the introduction with the citation needed tag. In an effort to not have my edit and work undone again, I've mirrored the changes here.

Most tags were added because the rest of the article did not contain key words I expected to be able to search for and find a citation. An example of this is "cline".

It should also be noted that the intro in question makes use of weasel words and first person pronouns, both of which I have tagged with who.

Intro

The relationship between race and genetics is relevant to the controversy concerning race. In everyday life many societies classify populations into groups based on phenotypical traits and impressions of probable geographic ancestry and socio-economic status - these are the groups we tend to call "races". Because the patterns of variation of human genetic traits are clinal, with a gradual change in trait frequency between population clusters, it is possible to statistically correlate clusters of physical traits with individual geographic ancestry. The frequencies of alleles tend to form clusters where populations live closely together and interact over periods of time. This is due to endogamy within kin groups and lineages or national, cultural or linguistic boundaries. This causes genetic clusters to correlate statistically with population groups when a number of alleles are evaluated. Different clines align around the different centers, resulting in more complex variations than those observed comparing continental groups.

For example if a person has light skin, light hair and blue eyes, a combination of traits that seems to have evolved in Northern Europe and is found at a high frequency there, it is probable that person has some recent European ancestry. And by extension, according to the racial categories in use in North America that person is likely to be classified by others, and to self-identify, as "white". In a similar way, Genetic analysis enables us to determine the geographic ancestry of a person pinpointing the migrational history of a person's ancestors with a high degree of accuracy, and by inference the probable racial category into which they will be classified in a given society. In that way there is a distinct statistical correlation between gene frequencies and racial categories. However, because all populations are genetically diverse, and because there is a complex relation between ancestry, genetic makeup and phenotype, and because racial categories are based on subjective evaluations of the traits, it is not the case that there are any specific genes, that can be used to determine a person's race.

Research in genetics offers a means to classify humans which is more precise than broad phenotypically based racial categories, given that genetics can provide a much more complex analysis of individual genetic makeup and geographic ancestry, than self identified membership of a racial category. With a blood transfusion, for example, it is vital to know the genetically determined blood type of the donor and recipient, but it is not helpful to know their respective geographic ancestries. Most physical anthropologists consider race to be primarily a social category that does not correspond significantly with biological variation, but some anthropologists, particularly forensic anthropologists, consider race a useful biological category. They argue that it is possible to determine race from physical remains with a reasonable degree of certainty; what is identified is the geographic phenotype. Medical practitioners also sometimes argue that racial categories can be used successfully as proxies to assess risk of those different heritable illnesses that occur with different frequencies among populations of different geographic ancestries. Others argue that this use may be problematic because it risks underestimating risks of individuals from ethno-racial categories that are not considered high-risk, and to overestimate the risk in populations that are, resulting in stigmatization.

"Talking"

Unsurprisingly, another account has reverted my change. It is very obvious that there is, at minimum, coalition against me. I added justifications on the talk page, and will again copy/paste my work here to prevent it being undone:

Unreasonable revert of "who" and "citation needed" tags.

I've been trying to get citations added to the lead of this artivcle, but a coalition of 3 accounts, User:WeijiBaikeBianji, User:Maunus, and User:Dougweller have attempted to prevent this. I will now defend each and every "citation needed" and "who" tag I have added. If a week has gone by and my rationals still hold, I will re-add the tags. Future reverts will result in me contacting administrators for support. To prove a citation is not needed, the best way is to point to the part of the article which accompanies the citation in the intro. Of course, this is not the only way.

"In everyday life many societies" : Keyword "societies" does not appear in the rest of the article. No section appears to be about societies's definitions of race.

"- these are the groups we": The use of first person pronouns violates MOS:FIRSTPERSON. Reverting this was wrong.

"tend to call "races"": This becomes a controversial statement when coupled with the use of first person.

"Because the patterns of variation of human genetic traits are clinal with a gradual change in trait frequency between population clusters": The accompanying citation states that human genetic traits are clinal only for "population pairs from the same cluster", NOT between clusters: "However, for pairs from different clusters, genetic distance is generally larger than that between intracluster pairs that have the same geographic distance." Stating "patterns of variation of human genetic traits are clinal" is false, according to this citation.

"This is due to endogamy within kin groups and lineages or national, cultural or linguistic boundaries": Keywords "endogamy", "kin", "lineages", "culture" do not appear in the rest of the article. No section appears to be about endogamy.

"if a person has light skin, light hair and blue eyes, a combination of traits that seems to have evolved in Northern Europe": WP:LEADCITE states "The lead must conform to verifiability and other policies." This claim is not supported by the in-body text.

"Genetic analysis enables us": The use of first person pronouns violates MOS:FIRSTPERSON. Reverting this was wrong.

"to determine the geographic ancestry of a person pinpointing the migrational history of a person's ancestors with a high degree of accuracy": This becomes a controversial statement when coupled with the use of first person.

"In that way there is a distinct statistical correlation between gene frequencies and racial categories": This is unambiguously controversial.

"it is not the case that there are any specific genes, that can be used to determine a person's race.": This is unambiguously controversial.

"Most physical anthropologists": Keyword "anthropologist" is used, but the given anthropologist is not labeled a "physical" anthropologist.

"consider race to be primarily a social category that does not correspond significantly with biological variation": This needs a citation because there are no obvious physical anthropologists cited in the article.

"forensic anthropologists, consider race a useful biological category." The accompanying citation for this states "In this country that person is likely to have been labeled Black regardless of whether or not such a race actually exists in nature."

"They argue that it is possible to determine race from physical remains": See above.

"Medical practitioners also sometimes argue": This is cited well in the article and does not need a citation or a disambiguation on the "who" tag. I retract my tags.

"Others argue": "Others" here does not seem to refer to any group.

Travis Daily (talk, edits) 02:44, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

Not a coalition, you need to read WP:CONSENSUS. Dougweller (talk) 08:06, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

The first impression resulted from tag-bombing the lede rather than raising exactly the same questions first on the article talk page. Now that we are talking on the article talk page, we may as well also talk more cordially and with more assumption of good faith on one another's talk pages about the specifics of updating the article. I invite you, as a conciliatory gesture, to take a look at the source list I keep in Wikipedia user space and update from time to time with specific reliable, secondary sources about the article topic. (If you have other sources to suggest, I would be glad to hear about those.) As you may have gathered, the editing environment on that article has been contentious for a long time, but if you are all about fixing articles by using better sources to make sure that the articles are reliably sourced, then I am all about collaborating with you to meet the aims of the Wikipedia project. (P.S., Maunus, Dougweller, and I are most definitely distinct human individuals who live and work in different places, but we have a lot of the same articles on our watchlists since the 2010 Arbitration Committee case mentioned earlier on this talk page. The article where we "met" is pretty heavily watched by a lot of alert editors.) See you on the wiki. Please let me know if you think there are reliable, secondary sources that should be added to the article's references. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 01:46, 23 September 2014 (UTC)