Talk:Race and genetics

Proposal to Shorten the Article

This article strikes me as too long and unfocused. Does anyone have opinions on that? I am planning to delete a bunch of stuff. (Needless to say, others are free to revert those deletions.) As a concrete example, do we really need a section of genetic drift? I don't think so. We could mention the words "genetic drift" and provide a link to the Wikipedia article on that topic. David.Kane (talk) 17:59, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Can you list some other sections you plan to delete. Also, to tighten up an article, it is recommended to summarize sections rather than delete them, unless they are totally irrelevant to the article.--Ramdrake (talk) 19:06, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

I would, for example, replace the section on genetic drift with the two words genetic drift placed somewhere sensible. I would do the same with "Recent admixture" and "Founder effect." Again, none of this is wrong or even poorly done. I just think that the article is too long. David.Kane (talk) 00:26, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

One suggestion is to merge some material into human genetic variation as the two articles overlap significantly. Wapondaponda (talk) 01:12, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. The same may be true for other articles. I will give everyone another day or two to chime in before I start editing. David.Kane (talk) 12:36, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I think we should come to an agreement first on what the scope of the article race and genetics should be. It is a difficult issue because in some circles, race is a social construct and not a genetic one, therefore there would be no genetics to discuss in race and genetics. Furthermore there has been little, if any, direct scientific investigation in the "genetics of race". By this argument, we would simply redirect this entire article to human genetic variation and merge any useful information. Race could be a subsection in human genetic variation. I think establishing the scope of the article will prevent the haphazard addition and subtraction of material. Another related article is human genetic clustering. The contents of all three articles currently overlap significantly. Wapondaponda (talk) 16:10, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I will not be taking a stand on the social versus genetic construct issue. My deletions will come from both "sides." If you want to have a discussion on the "scope of the article," then I am happy to participate. But that discussion should not prevent change to the article in the meantime. Any changes can always be reverted. David.Kane (talk) 21:13, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I am beginning this process now. David.Kane (talk) 18:11, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

I am largely finished. Main goals were to both trim content and re-organize the material. I think that this makes room for other more relevant material to be added. Thanks to all the suggestions above. David.Kane (talk) 21:46, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Going forward

As I have previously mentioned, I intend to add information from the following publications regarding race and global patterns of human genetic variation

• Handley; et al. (2004). "Going the distance: human population genetics in a clinal world" (PDF). {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Explicit use of et al. in: |last= (help)
• Jorde; et al. (2004). "Genetic variation, classification and race" (PDF). {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Explicit use of et al. in: |last= (help)
• Tishkoff (2004). "Implications of biogeography of human populations for'race'and medicine" (PDF). {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
• Ramachandran; et al. (2005). "Support from the relationship of genetic and geographic distance in human populations for a serial founder effect originating in Africa". doi:10.1073/pnas.0507611102. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Explicit use of et al. in: |last= (help)

If they are any objections, to using the information from these articles, please state so. Since nobody has yet written anything from History and Geography of Human Genes, I may include some information myself. If they are any objections please state so. Wapondaponda (talk) 08:20, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

At least some progress on the text, though I still have some concerns. Firstly Arya has placed the Fst matrix within the image, because of space the numbers are barely legible. Secondly the image is quite large about 123kb, not a big deal for high speed connections, but many wikipedians have slow internet connections, so the page takes forever to load because of the image. Cutting out the distance matrix from the image may go a long way towards solving both those problems. Text loads faster than images. There is still an apples and oranges situation because the text in geographic analysis is not directly related to the matrix or the image. I intend to clarify this discrepancy so that there is no confusion. Wapondaponda (talk) 18:16, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree with your comments on the distance matrix in the image. In fact, it was only included as a compromise, and I am certainly willing to cut it out. At the same time, I think the geographic data matrix might also benefit from being in image form, as there is a formatting error when it is aligned to the right of the page (for some reason there is no padding between the text and the table). As you likely noticed, I also included a sub-section on linguistic analysis, as this is also a major feature of Cavalli-Sforza's work. Besides that, it's quite interesting in itself. Much improvements can be made here, however, and the current text is nothing more than a rough draft. --Aryaman (talk) 18:23, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I have cropped the image and reduced the resolution and uploaded a derivative work. It is down from 123kb to 12kb. We can use it or any other version that is acceptable. I have never quite figured out how to align wikitables. Concordance with linguistics is indeed important but is very general as their are numerous exceptions. I disagree with Ethiopians being in the category of exceptions as more recent studies have demonstrated. Wapondaponda (talk) 19:02, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Could you please leave the image a bit bigger? Your last version makes it almost impossible to read the node distances. As long as those remain legible, I don't care how big or small it is.

If you have more recent data on Ethiopians, by all means, add it. As I know the linguistic categorization has not changed, I'd be interested in knowing what current research says about their genetic association. --Aryaman (talk) 19:34, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Kudos to you for adding information from these articles! I am finishing up my efforts to trim less relevant material, the better to provide room for this much more important information. David.Kane (talk) 22:01, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes linguistically Ethiopians speak Afroasiatic languages. In his book Cavalli-Sforza states that Afroasiatic languages are predominantly spoken by "caucasoid" peoples and hence he believes that this is inconsistent with Ethiopians being African. However, the contemporary theories regarding the origin of Afroasiatic languages, indicate that Afroasiatic is most likely an African language that was adopted by caucasoid populations, rather than the other way around. Though most Afroasiatic speakers are considered "caucasoid", (Arabic is the most spoken Afroasiatic language with about 300 million people in North Africa and the Middle East). The majority of distinct Afroasiatic languages are found in East Africa indicating that it is the most likely source of the language family. A similar situation is found with English, where the majority of English language speakers are found in North America, over 300 million, but English's original homeland is located in the regions that were populated by Germanic tribes in Northern Europe, where there are a lot fewer English speakers today than in North America, but a greater diversity of Germanic languages. In short there is a linguistic correlation between Ethiopians and their continent of origin as the leading hypotheses consider Afroasiatic African. Cavalli-Sforza's work is quite dated now, and he may not have had access to some of the latest publications concerning Afroasiatic. Wapondaponda (talk) 22:29, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Scope of article

Defining the scope of this article is quite challenging because there isn't yet an established discipline that is dedicated to studying the genetics of race at the genomic level. However race, or biogeographical ancestry, is an important element in many biomedical and genetics studies. One could make an argument that because there isn't an established discipline of race and genetics, then the whole article is original research and should be deleted or merged into human genetic variation. When one thinks of race and genetics, a few things spring to mind.

• Firstly race is socially constructed around certain traits that can be discerned visually. As a result race and genetics could discuss the genetics of traits such as skin color, hair texture, eye shape etc. Unfortunately what is known about these traits comes from observing phenotypes from generation to generation, not much is known about the actual genes.
• The next issue that comes to mind is whether variation in physical appearance corresponds with invisible genetic variation. I suppose the answer is yes and no. Yes because isolation by distance means that people who live near each other will be genetically more similar than those who live further apart. As a result people who live near each other will look more similar. On the other hand, non-concordance means that people can still look different but share some of the invisible genetic ancestry. Genes that are beneficial can quickly spread over long distances, for example the sickle cell trait and haplogroup E both spread rapidly from sub-saharan Africa into Europe. The sickle cell trait conferred resistance to Malaria to Mediterranean Europeans, and haplogroup E spread from Africa to Europe with the emergence of agriculture. As a result both light skinned Europeans and Dark Africans share some common ancestry that would not be known without genomics(Blond blue-eyed brit with DNA of an African). Overall the genetic profile of an individual will be concordant with socially constructed races, but is more concordant with geography and isolation by distance than it is with race.

• The most contentious issue is whether variation in external appearance is strongly concordant with certain behavioral traits, most notably intelligence or aggression (physiognomy, phrenology). The genetic basis of such traits has yet to be determined, so any hypotheses regarding these traits race and genes is still circumstantial.

• The subject of human genetic variation is useful in creating a foundation for discussions of race and genetics, but the topic is too broad to have an extensive discussion in this article.

• Certain regional topics are quite interesting, and can be considered as candidates for inclusion in the article. In the Americas, especially in the ethnic melting pots of Latin America, the distinction between socially constructed races and genetics breaks down due to extensive admixture. In the US because of the one drop rule, it is possible for someone to be genetically predominantly European but socially constructed to be African American. In India, there is the subject of "caste and genetics".

Wapondaponda (talk) 15:37, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Genes for different appearance may be different from genes for invisible differences and can become unlinked over generations, so that the latter may be able to diffuse even when social segregation by appearance is in effect. --JWB (talk) 17:53, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Indeed that is true. However two issues. Firstly in the case of the blonde brit with an African y-chromosome, the y-chromosome does not recombine so unlinkage does not apply to the y-chromosome, but would apply to other nuclear genes. The y-chromosome is passed down almost intact(NRY), so that the Briton has virtually the same y-chromosome as his African ancestor. But since he doesn't look African, it tells us that the genes that code for the physical traits associated with race aren't located on the y-chromosome. Secondly we cannot assume that social segregation, as practiced in contemporary times, has always been the norm. For instance, the Africa y-chromosome haplogroup E is frequent in caucasoid populations in North Africa, the Mediterranean and the Balkans. Since this was male mediated, ie African males mating with Eurasian females, it implies the absence of social barriers for African males. When we see admixture profiles in the Americas, we see the reverse in which case many socially constructed, or self identified whites, have African or Native American maternal lineages but not paternal, indicating female mediated gene flow and male social segregation. Wapondaponda (talk) 19:06, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

That is right - very little of anything besides sex determination is on the Y chromosome, so any other African genes were not linked at all to the African Y chromosome and the British carriers should have only 2^-generations of other African genes which is likely to be zero by now. The same applies to those E sub-Y haplogroups that have been traced from Africa to Europe - most of the chain of transmission is likely to be through males who looked little more African or not at all compared to the surrounding population of their time and place. --JWB (talk) 19:25, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the y-chromosome is basically a an X chromosome without one leg due to shrinkage. However Underhill et al. 2007 reports genes linked to infertility may still reside on the y-chromosome. I would say a small amount, but not zero African DNA, because nuclear scans still detect African DNA in European populations. In some cases, if nuclear markers are beneficial, they may even become more frequent than the accompanying y or mtDNA markers. In certain regions of Sicily, the sickle cell trait has frequencies as high as 13%[1]. There are likely to be other beneficial genes that have yet to be identified. In general genetic distances between Europe and Africa are shorter than between Africa and other continents, indicating that some African autosomal markers persist in the European population. Yes at some stage E haplogroup made the jump from a dark skinned population into a caucasoid population, where, how many times and when exactly that took place is interesting topic but has yet to be determined. According to Brace et al. 2005, the inhabitants of the early Neolithic Natufian culture from Israel, were apparently still sub-saharan looking. Wapondaponda (talk) 04:23, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, of course autosomal genes subject to selection can spread without carrying much with them even in the short term but genes close on the same chromosome. Cavalli-Sforza's "120 classical polymorphisms" are likely to be disease-related genes like these and to therefore correlate to proximity, climate, and history of disease and populations rather than earlier ancestral population origin. --JWB (talk) 18:46, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

One solution to thinking about the scope is to note that there are Wikipedia articles about race and (human) genetics already. This article should cover the intersection of those two articles. In reorganizing the material over the last week, this is what I have aimed at. In other words, if topic X is not covered in --- or would not be plausibly added to --- either Race_(classification_of_human_beings) or human genetic variation, then it does not belong here. David.Kane (talk) 18:21, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

That makes sense, however, wikipedia articles shouldn't necessarily be based on other wikipedia articles, but more so on reliable sources Wapondaponda (talk) 19:06, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. I was talking about scope rather than sourcing. David.Kane (talk) 13:36, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) At present, I don't have many complaints about the veracity of the current content. However the article looks very much like human genetic variation not an article about race. In the quest for making a sober article, all the racial stuff has been removed. Race is in many ways a social construct, and that aspect is missing from the current article and that is why it looks like human genetic variation. Social constructs are typically created based on a few visible traits and also on stereotypes. Therefore issues about race need not be rational or even scientific, as most scientist have abandoned traditional "platonic" views about race. This old version has some of, stereotypical and unscientific views on race. Much of the material has been pared down as some of it may have been inappropriate or politically incorrect. Nonetheless, I think there is some useful information that is more directly related to race and genetics than the current content. A lot of the current material focusses on human genetic clustering, but this is not what average Joes think about when dealing with R and G. For instance the following articles deal with the some of the common man's perceptions of race and genetics,

• Do Blacks dominate sports because of Genetics regarding the controversial publication by Jon Entine.

Another issue, which I have raised earlier, regards some of the regional peculiarities of race. For example it is common in Latin America for individuals who identify themselves as white to have African or Native American ancestry.

Uniparental genetic markers in select samples of self identified white individuals from middle class population in some Latin American countries[2]

Country	Amerindian		African
	mtDNA	Y-chromosome	mtDNA	y-chromosome
Brazil	33%	0%	29%	2%
Argentina	45%	9%	ns	ns
Chile	84%	22%	ns	ns
Colombia	90%	1%	8%	5%
Costa Rica	83%	6%	ns	7%

This illustrates that social construction of race is not concordant with genetics. I am not willing to make any changes yet, as I feel that there is a need to get the philosophical argument about what this article should contain. Right now I feel it is heavy on human genetic variation, but light on the social construction of race. Wapondaponda (talk) 19:32, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

My impression has been that this article should discuss information relevant to the intersection of "genetics" and "race". I don't see how introducing discussion of the area where they do not intersect (e.g. discussing components of the popular conception of "race" that have absolutely nothing to do with genetics) is going to improve the article. Unless that is not what you are proposing? --Aryaman (talk) 21:21, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Considering that the mainstream view is that race (the classical concept thereof) and genetics in fact do not really intersect, I see how Muntuwandi's proposal makes perfect sense.--Ramdrake (talk) 21:27, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

No one is arguing otherwise. But if the article were to discuss all those components of the popular conception of race which have no corresponding concept in genetics, then we would basically have an article criticizing the popular conception of race as it appears in racism. That would be fine to discuss at Racism, but we don't need to repeat all of that here. Of course, we could push Ramdrake's point further and say that, since there is so much unscientific flotsam in the popular conception of race, we should actually just delete the article, as it is inherently unscientific. However, I don't see that as a very good option, either. There is some overlap between the two, and this article seems the best place to discuss the findings relevant to that overlapping portion. --Aryaman (talk) 21:53, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

We don't need to discuss "all" components of the popular conception of race, but we need to discuss "some", to explain the mainstream view on race and genetics. And yes, there might be some overlap with Racism. We can address that in due time.--Ramdrake (talk) 21:59, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, what would you suggest, then? I think one of the primary components of the popular conception which has been debunked by genetic research is the notion of "racial purity", i.e. clearly delineated, genetically disparate racial groups. If that's the kind of thing you and Muntuwandi would like to include, I don't see a problem with it. Could you draw up a list of such things for discussion? --Aryaman (talk) 22:20, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

I have informally listed some of the topics that I think are more directly related to race. The above table and corresponding article discuss some of the peculiarities of how race is socially constructed, in the United states some African Americans may have 70% or more European Admixture, but will identify themselves as black or African American because of the one-drop rule, whereas in Latin America, someone with 30% African or Native American ancestry may be identified as white. Many Native Americans have significant European ancestry. There was a recent controversy regarding genetic testing as a means of verifying tribal affiliation because it was argued that tribal affiliation is more cultural than a genetic issue[3]. In this case being native American may be more of a social construct rather than a genetic one.

With regard to the stereotypes of Blacks Athletes. Even Entine states that while individuals of West African descent are disproportionately represented in sprint related sports, they are non-existent in long distance sportes. Whereas East Africans dominate long distance sports but are almost non-existent in sprint sports. Rather it is not all East Africans, but just a few high altitude tribes such as the Kalenjin who dominate marathons. Furthermore other native american groups that come from high altitudes also do well in long distance sports. So it seems that geography or biogeography correspond better with certain stereotypes than race, and this becomes more apparent when actual data is analyzed.

I believe we all agree that many consider race a social construct, and if this article is to be about the intersection of race and genetics, then we must weave into it the social construction aspect. Wapondaponda (talk) 22:59, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Stating that, in those parts of the world where there has been extensive admixture, the popular conception of race has adapted accordingly seems almost obvious enough to be non-notable, but if you can find a reliable source (I'm sure you can) which makes this kind of claim, then present it.

Wasn't Entine's book criticized for the exact same reason people criticize Jensen's work? I have to admit, I have not done any research into the connection between race and athletics, but a brief search produces a surprising amount of information. --Aryaman (talk) 23:15, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

"Considering that the mainstream view is that race (the classical concept thereof) and genetics in fact do not really intersect" Well, I guess that depends on what you mean by classical concept. If you give 100 people ten pictures of random people and ask them to classify the individuals by race, there will be a non-zero correlation between the classifications they pick and the genetics. It won't be perfect, obviously, but it will be much better than random. At the same time, I agree that social classification is important and that it is discussed in the main race article. So, discussion of it here would be appropriate as well. David.Kane (talk) 01:35, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Shared genetic variation

Percentage of polymorphic SNPs unique to a single continental group (diagonal) or found only in 2 continental groups (lower triangle) based on Supplemental material table 2

	Africa	Asia	Europe	India
Africans	6.63
Asia	0.74	0.24
Europe	1.59	0.10	0.15
India	0.62	0.19	0.56	0.0

This article Fine-scaled human genetic structure revealed by SNP microarrays,[4], has some interesting results regarding the structure of global human genetic variation. It is based on the analysis of 250,000 SNPs. A few excerpts include,

The vast majority of SNPs are polymorphic (MAF > 0) in multiple groups, with 81.2% of all loci being polymorphic in the four major continental groups, 89.2% polymorphic in at least three groups, and 93.0% polymorphic in at least two groups. Almost all of the SNPs that are polymorphic in only one group are unique to Africa (6.6%), while collectively only 0.39% of the SNPs are unique to any of the other three continental groups (Supplemental Table 2). There were no fixed differences between continental populations at any locus. Thus, these results support the emerging conclusion that most common genetic variation is shared among major human population groups.

In 1871, Charles Darwin noted in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex: ‘‘It may be doubted whether any character can be named which is distinctive of a race and is constant.’’ Modern studies of genetic variation, including this one, have supported Darwin’s observation, showing that most common variants are shared widely among human populations (Altshuler et al. 2005; Jakobsson et al. 2008). Our data confirm what Darwin believed: We found not a single SNP locus, out of nearly 250,000, at which a fixed difference would distinguish any pair of continental populations

What is interesting is that Europeans share a much higher level of unique SNPs with Africans than any other population in this study, the reasons for this were not stated in this study. Wapondaponda (talk) 20:17, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Self-identified ancestry and genetics

There has been a lot of discussion about the correlation between self-identified race/ancestry and genetics. Apparently a figure of 98% is being suggested. Once again some may be insinuating that this is the "silver bullet" that proves the existence of biological races. I believe this is a bit of a misunderstanding. Some of the forensic genetic databases are able to not just discern what "race" a person is, but they can determine what country a person is from, what city or even what village hamlet etc. At the indigenous level, it would become possible to distinguish a Swede from an Italian 100% of the time. In other words, the correlation between self-identified country of origin and genetics will approach 100% with more detailed genetic databases. Indeed the Japanese are already distinguishable from Chinese at the genomic level, does this mean they are two different races. DNA fingerprinting is able to uniquely identify an individual 100% of the time, does this mean that every individual is a distinct race. I believe this is why most of the mainstream studies prefer to view human genetic variation through the prism of geography rather than race, because "isolation by distance" is the main factor influencing genetic variation. Though genetics correlate with continental ancestry, it is just one of many ways at analyzing the data. If one wanted two clusters, then most likely the split would be between Africans and Non-African, and with just a few markers the correlation between self-identified Africanity and Non-Africanity would be close to 100%, but this doesn't make all non-Africans a single race. Wapondaponda (talk) 20:17, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

The point regarding the extremely high correlation between racial self-identification and genetics was brought up in response to a trend witnessed in several race-related articles regarding the extent to which self-identification needed to be stressed. Some editors were arguing that self-identification (as utilized in health questionnaires, intelligence tests and crime reports) has no correlation with anything relating to genetics, and thus the racial aspects of such data were pseudo- or non-scientific, being based on a purely social construction. The documented 98% figure of correspondence between the results of self-identification and genetic testing was brought up in response to this argument. It was hoped that this would allow us to refrain from repeating "self-identified" every time we mentioned "race" in an article. --Aryaman (talk) 20:42, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

This article will be even better after a thorough review based on reliable sources for medicine-related articles.

This article includes many interesting factual statements from a variety of primary sources. Many of those statements could be put into a more illuminating context, and perhaps reworded for greater accuracy, by checking for reliable secondary sources on this topic. A good place to look for advice on what kind of sources would be reliable for an article like this is Wikipedia's guidelines on reliable sources for medically related articles. Genetics is a fast-moving field, and there are a lot of primary research findings that end up not being replicated. Relying on recent practitioners' handbooks and postgraduate textbooks is crucial for sorting through the cacophony of primary sources to know what the established results are in this discipline. A lot of editors have put a lot of good work into this article already, and meshing together the statements in the various sections into an overall encyclopedic whole will be a good improvement for Wikipedia. Let's look for up-to-date, authoritative sources and make sure that they are reflected in the article. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 14:48, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Here's a source list to get editors started on updating this article and moving its content in the direction of being an encyclopedic presentation of the topics found in reliable secondary sources rather than being original research from now obsolete primary sources. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 03:48, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

One important issue that needs to be addressed is the overlap between the human genetic variation amrticle and the race and genetics article. I suggest that the content in this article should cover what is known about human genetic variation and how this relates to perceptions about race. General discussions about human genetic variation should not be covered in this article but in the human genetic variation article. I have removed the section 'Autosomal genetic distances (Fst) based on SNPs (2009)' because it was Eurocentric and inappropriate for this article. Are Finns, Russians and Italians separate races for them to warrant an Fst table in this article, maybe in Genetic history of Europe. I have replaced the Cavalli-Sforza material with content from an earlier version. These changes are only preliminary as the article needs a major overhaul.

The following are a list of sources that would be useful for a future article. I believe these sources directly address the issue of race and genetics, and therefore avoid the OR problem.

• Tishkoff and Kidd (2004). "Implications of biogeography of human populations for 'race' and medicine". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
• Bamshad; et al. (2004). "DECONSTRUCTING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GENETICS AND RACE" (PDF). {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Explicit use of et al. in: |last= (help)
• Jorde and Wooding (2004). "Genetic variation, classification and 'race'". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
• Torres and Kittles (2004). "The Relationship Between "Race" and Genetics in Biomedical Research" (PDF). {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
• Soo-Jin Lee; et al. (2008). "The ethics of characterizing difference: guiding principles on using racial categories in human genetics". doi:10.1186/gb-2008-9-7-404. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Explicit use of et al. in: |last= (help)CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
• Olson; et al. (2005). "The Use of Racial, Ethnic, and Ancestral Categories in Human Genetics Research". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Explicit use of et al. in: |last= (help)
• Serre and Pääbo (2004). "Evidence for Gradients of Human Genetic Diversity Within and Among Continents" (PDF). {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

Wapondaponda (talk) 07:05, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

From how long ago is the version you just reinstated? Looks like at least a year to me, based on the lack of the chart [5] I remember being there since last October.

I agree the article probably is due for some updates to bring it more in line with current research, and I'd be happy to help contribute. But undoing a year's worth of changes just like that without any prior discussion at all is not the way to do it. We should discuss these changes one at a time instead of making massive reverts without consensus. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 00:21, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

The revert by Wapondaponda enjoys my consensus, because it restored some parts of the article text to a condition based on Wikipedia source policy. It's high time for the articles within the scope of the recent Arbitration Committee discretionary sanctions to be re-edited from the ground up with Wikipedia policies and the best available sources constantly in mind. Of course it would be welcome to go forward with further edits based on very recent authoritative secondary sources. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 01:30, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Like I said, I'm fine with updating the articles. But I really strongly feel like every point of change needs to be suggested on the talk page one at a time and discussed by the editors involved. A full revert to over a year ago definitely does not enjoy my consensus, and I suspect that others who've been involved here would feel the same. Making a huge number of changes at once, without waiting for any discussion whatsoever, does not give other editors the opportunity to offer their opinions on anything being changed. I agree that the article could use some updates, but there's no hurry with it. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 01:41, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

@Ferahgo, Instead of dwelling on non-content issues, maybe you could discuss specific content issues with that revision that are problematic.

@WBB, Instead of reverting it would make more sense to do the redevelopment in user space, with appropriate discussions here. Once sections of the updated article nears completion, the current article can be swapped out piece by piece. This will prompt more localized content centered discussion as the updates occur, which is a good thing.

aprock (talk) 02:17, 10 September 2010 (UTC)