Salter, strawmen and a box of matches

Here and there one finds some absurd, strawman fallacies of genetic similarity and some absurd, strawman representations of Salter’s work being promoted. So with this post I am seeking to correct any misunderstandings arising from these.

The genetic interests that a given group has as a group is that genetic information that distinguishes it from other groups. Genetic information that is found randomly distributed among all humans may be a genetic interest at the human/non-human level (dependent upon whether it is species-distinctive) - but it is not relevant genetic interest for intra-human, inter-population comparisons.

The same principle applies for ANY evaluation of genetic interest. Since genetic interest is a relative concept, genetic interest at each and any level of comparison is based only on that genetic information that is distinctive between the groups being compared - eg, family vs ethny, ethny vs humanity, humanity vs mammals, etc. Put another way, genetic information found in all groups cannot be a part of a genetic interest of one groups vs another!!!

If this still isn’t crystal clear see pages 47 and 95 of Salter’s book where, of course, the job is done so much better than I can do it.

It is also worth noting my previous post on mouse genetics - compared to humans, mice are ~99% similar genetically, with a ~80% one-to-one correspondence of genes, and a ~40% correspondence of genetic structure. And yet, a mouse litter is not a greater genetic interest to a human than is another human. The similarity of mice to humans is not distinctive at the mammalian level.

Another point. Although Michael J.Bamshad’s experiment with the random genetic markers is not relevant to genetic interests, it can be pointed out that if a greater number of random markers were used, it is probable that the “mis-identification” rate would be lower than 1/3 (and I won’t dwell upon the fact that when distinctive information/structure is looked at, the accuracy rate of racial identity of over 3,000 individuals was 99.86%).

Note also that one could theoretically devise an experiment in which it can be shown that an individual person is less related to themselves than to a total stranger! Given that humans are diploid and heterozygous at many alleles Sarich and Miele (in “Race”) pointed out that much human genetic variation is in the individual.

Thus … begin by adopting the view than an individual’s two sets of alleles represent single sets of alleles from two different people. Compare a small number of random loci from those 2 sets of alleles to a third set obtained from a totally different person. Allele set 1 from “Joe” may be more similar to alleles from “Tom” than they are from Allele set 2 from Joe. In other words - Joe is less similar to himself than to Tom!

The point of this contrived experiment is that when looking at randomly distributed genetic information, genetic similarity is

meaningless

- especially when one uses a fixed number of alleles to examine the randomly chosen information.

Unless that is, you think Joe should sacrifice himself for Tom based on this experiment. Well, maybe if Joe was white and Tom was actually Tandu, the former could become the extended phenotype of the latter?

Posted by JW Holliday on Monday, June 6, 2005 at 08:26 AM in Ethnicity and Ethnic Genetic Interests
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Comments:

Posted by James Bowery on June 07, 2005, 01:20 PM | #

I think the more efficient reductio ad absurdum is this:

The only unit of genetic information that is not subject to recombination is the one that defines cross-over during meiosis. Correct me if I’m wrong but the codon is the smallest unit of genetic information I believe.

Since all life shares 100% of this smallest unit of genetic information then we’re all 100% related to every life form.

Any attempt to squirm out of this reductio ad absurdum is the slippery slope to real genetic interests.

Posted by JW Holliday on June 08, 2005, 09:24 AM | #

Functional genetic information can include regulatory non-coding gene sequences, as well as codons (which code for the amino acids).

Furthermore, I - but not Salter (yet??) - believe that certain types of non-functional gene sequences qualify as genetic interests

if they are population distinctive and thus carry information on kinship.

So, I maintain that genetic interest for “X” (where X is an individual or a group) is that genetic information characteristic of X, but not of “Y” (where Y is another individual or group to which we are comparing X).

Thus, overall “genetic similarity” is simply not the issue. Salter makes this crystal clear on page 47 of his book. If the world was composed of cousins (or a single ethny), there would be no genetic interests at the group level, because there would be no gradient of “kinship” - and that despite all the “genetic similarity” that exists.

Random differences in gene frequencies that are distributed among the groups being compared cannot be a genetic interest for any single group because the frequencies remain the same regardless of the outcome of competition. That’s why Bamshad’s experiment - even if valid if many more markers and better categories were used - does not impact genetic interests. If 85% of genetic variation is within groups (and half of that within individuals), of
course one can find non-ethnics with a greater overall “genetic similarity.” But that includes all the gene sequences that do not constitute genetic information, including non-functional sequences that do not carry kinship information because they are randomly distributed among all groups.

By definition, that cannot be a genetic interest, since it is not distinctive genetic information, actually not really any sort of information at all.

If we include genetic structure as a valid genetic interest, then the whole mindset behind the Bamshad-Salter connection is even more irrelevant. Then the real comparison is between Tang/Rosenberg and Salter, or with DNAPrint data and Salter.

Posted by JW Holliday on June 08, 2005, 02:50 PM | #

The genetic interests of group “X” can be defined as that genetic informaion that would be lost if X became extinct, or for some other reason its members did not replicate their genomes. Genetic information found in all humans in ~ equal proportions is not a genetic interest at the intra-human level.

Thus, to summarize:

1. Even given Bamshad’s totally random (and limited number) markers, and crude classifications, it is still true that co-racials were “more similar” than non co-racials 2/3 of the time.

2. However, randomly distributed genetic information, represented by a sample of randomly chosen STR markers, does not represent genetic interest because the genetic information is not distinctive at the level of intra-human comparisons. Much of this information is represented by the 85% of genetic variation that exists within groups/individuals. The freqs of this information stay the same regardless of the outcome of competition.

Thus, genetic interest is not represented by Bamshad’s experiment.

3. Genetic structure represents a crucial genetic interest - perhaps the most important - and this is indepedent of any one-by-one correspondence of markers.

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