Wednesday, January 11, 2017

Enumeratio and distinctio in the Leroi and Hammonds text by Sophie Schwippert

A Family Tree in Every Gene by Armand Marie Leroi

Enumeratio
-          Beneath the jargon, cautious phrases and academic courtesies, one thing was clear: the consensus about social constructs was unraveling.
-          Most scientists are thoughtful, liberal-minded and socially aware people.
-          The shapes of our eyes, noses and skulls; the color of our eyes and our hair; the heaviness, height and hairiness of our bodies are all, individually, poor guides to ancestry.
-          Certain skin colors tend to go with certain kinds of eyes, noses, skulls and bodies.
-          […] all it takes is a mouth swab, a postage stamp and $400—though prices will certainly fall.
-          To navigate it, you need a map with elevations, contour lines and reference grids.
-          We do not know why some people have prominent rather than flat noses, round rather than pointed skulls, wide rather than narrow faces, straight rather than curly hair.
-          But through it, we may be able to write the genetic recipe for the fair hair of a Norwegian, the black-verging-on-purple skin of a Solomon Islander, the flat face of an Inuit, and the curved eyelid of a Han Chinese.
-          They will remain visible in the unusually dark skin of some Indonesians, the unusually curly hair of some Sri Lankans, the unusually slight frames of some Filipinos.

Distinctio
-          At a smaller scale, three million Basques do as well; so they are a race as well. Race is merely a shorthand that enables us to speak sensibly […].
-          When The Times of India article referred to the Andaman Islanders as being of ancient Negrito racial stock, the terminology was correct. Negrito is the name given by anthropologists to a people who once lived throughout Southeast Asia.


Straw Men and Their Followers: The return of biological race by Evelynn M. Hammonds

Enumeratio
-          A number of evolutionary biologists, geneticists, biological anthropologists and medical researchers have recently challenged the view […].
-          […] that human beings can be lumped together in groups by skin color, hair type, eye shape and color, head shape and body type.
-          This is in many ways a familiar, almost Biblical, competitive tale in which the righteous son speaks in the voice of “true science.”
-          The book generated extensive critiques by historians, social scientists and journalists. In the collection of reviews, arguments, historical background and critiques of the work published in 1995, there are detailed criticisms against each aspect of the argument, evidence and research presented by Herrnstein and Murray.
-          It is even more troubling to geneticists that there is no consensus within science as to what race is, how it should be used, or its utility for predicting health outcomes in individuals.
-          It is time for geneticists and biomedical researchers to directly confront the methodological limitations, errors and uncertainties in the way they use race constructs in their research designs and statistical analyses.
-          Can genetic research tell us who we really are, where we come from, who we are related to, or why we get sick without resorting to concepts of race that confound and distort these very questions?

Distinctio
-          They have characterized those ascribing to the view that race is socially constructed as “race deniers”—people who refuse to acknowledge what any child can see— […].
-          The same is true of disease. If the incidence of disease differs by race and if race is biological, then we must use race to explore the cause and treatment of disease.
-          The project called “The Genographic Project” is a joint venture […].

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