Looking for race in all the wrong places: analyzing the lack of productivity in the ongoing debate about race and genetics

The ongoing debate about the relationship between race and genetics is more than a century old and has yet to be resolved. Recent emphasis on population-based patterns in human genetic variation and the implications of those for disease susceptibility and drug response have revitalized that long-standing debate. Both sides in the debate use the same rhetorical device of treating geographic, ancestral, population-specific, and other categories as surrogates for race, but otherwise share no evidentiary standards, analytic frameworks, or scientific goals that might resolve the debate and result in some productive outcome. Setting a common goal of weighing the scientific benefits of using racial and other social heuristics with testable estimates of the potential social harms of racialization can reduce both the unreflexive use of race and other social identities in biological analyses as well as the unreflexive use of racialization in social critiques of genetics. Treating social identities used in genetic studies as objects for investigation rather than artifacts of participant self-report or researcher attribution also will reduce the extent to which genetic studies that report social identities imply that membership in social categories can be defined or predicted using genetic features.     

Commentary: the year in endocrine genetics for basic scientists

During the past several years, one of the most interesting and challenging issues in endocrine genetics is determining how to integrate the findings and approaches traditionally used to understand the powerful, single-gene mutations causing endocrine syndromes with those newer techniques used to dissect the complex genetic architecture of polygenic conditions. With this overriding consideration in mind, it makes sense to begin these considerations with recent novel findings derived from the study of a particularly prismatic monogenic disorder, isolated GnRH deficiency, in defining an area of neuroendocrinology and development. Careful study of this human disease model has been employed successfully by several groups to provide unique windows through which to gain an improved understanding of the challenging issues of the developmental biology of the GnRH neurons where previous nonhuman approaches have had significant technical limitations. For example, study of this disorder has provided the field of neuroendocrinology with several unique insights into the surprising origins and early development of the GnRH neuronal network. Its associated clinical phenotypes have helped to unearth a growing list of genes responsible for GnRH neuronal specification, migration, and neuroendocrine function. Finally, this human genetic model is beginning to provide increasing evidence of interactions between these single genes, clearly demonstrating that an oligogenic genetic architecture underlies this condition.     

Proposal of general,ethical statement for natural scientists

Summary It is proposed to open the possibility for natural scientists to make an ethical statement in public immediately after passing the examination giving the right to practise a scientific profession. A concept of a possible text of this statement is presented.     

Whiteness studies and laypeople's engagements with race and genetics

This paper proposes a research strategy for examining laypeople's thoughts and reflections on innovations in the science of race and genetics. While some sociologists have shown a reluctance to engage in such discussions, this paper argues that social scientists need to take such views seriously. To do this, the paper brings together an anthropological approach to the study of scientific literacy and recent scholarship in the field of Whiteness studies. The combining of these literatures raises a set of interesting and sometimes uncomfortable questions about the ways in which social scientists and research participants contribute to the reproduction of White power and dominance in Western societies.     

Chimerical categories: caste, race, and genetics

Is discrimination based on caste equivalent to racism? This paper explores the complex relationship between genetic, race and caste. It also discusses the debate over the exclusion of a discussion of caste‐based discrimination at the 2001 World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held in Durban, South Africa.     

By the scientists, for the scientists

My association with the JCB began very early in my scientific career. In fact, it predated my understanding that there would even be a scientific career. In the mid-1970s while still an undergraduate, the JCB published my very first paper, a contribution noted perhaps less so for its reporting the characterization of the first known protein in plant cell walls than for a footnote that called attention to the evolutionary conservation of a relationship between “sex and slime” throughout the plant and animal kingdoms.     

Scientific basis for the Soviet and Russian radiofrequency standards for the general public

The former Soviet Union (USSR) and the USA were the first countries to introduce standards limiting exposure to radiofrequency (RF) fields. However, the exposure limits in the USSR standards were always much lower than those in the USA and other countries. The objective of this article is to provide a history of the development of the Soviet and Russian RF standards. In addition, we summarize the scientific evidence used to develop the original USSR RF and subsequent Russian public health standards, as well as the mobile telecommunications standard published in 2003, but we do not critique them. We also describe the protective approaches used by the Soviet and Russian scientists for setting their limits. A translation of the papers of the key studies used to develop their standards is available in the online version of this publication. Bioelectromagnetics 33:623–633, 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Sex-linked and maternal effects in the Eberhart-Gardner general genetics model

To deal with differences between reciprocal crosses found in many animal breeding experiments, an extension of the general model for genetic effects, given by Eberhart and Gardner (1966, Biometrics 22, 864-881), is presented. In this extension, reciprocal differences between crosses are defined in terms of several maternal and sex-linked parameters, the latter being expressed as functions of gene values and their frequencies. Models are given for several kinds of crosses. Experimental setups or designs of increasing complexity are presented for the estimation of some of the parameters in the models, particularly the sex-linked and maternal ones, as well as the interpopulation heterotic additive-by-additive epistasis. For prediction purposes, different analyses are suggested for the model with highly correlated variables. If the genetic architecture of a trait in different populations is to be compared, the analysis of variance will provide enough degrees of freedom to allow the investigation of the importance of each kind of genetic effect. An example which uses all possible two-way crosses and a partial set of three-way crosses applied to two quantitative traits in the flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum, is included merely as a guide for computations. Population means given by Eberhart and Gardner are extended to incorporate the inbreeding coefficient.