Michael Hunter (University of California, Davis): “Germ-line or Somatic mutations? The pitfalls and concerns for deleting and replacing the concept of race in human genetics”

Abstract: Across the recent history of Population Genetics, there have been a number of calls by historians of science, philosophers of science, social scientists and biologists themselves for dealing with the concept of “race” in Population Biology. Most recently, in the article written by Yudell et al. (2016), the authors advocate that scientific journals and professional societies should encourage use of terms like “ancestry” or “population” to describe human groupings instead of the term “race”. In order to put this into action, Yudell at al. state that a panel of experts from the social sciences, humanities, and biology should be convened so that recommendations can be made so that research in human biological diversity can move past the use of “race” as a classificatory tool.

This talk has a number of aims: the first is to challenge the notion that anything of import will be gained from substituting different terms for “race” in human population genetics (e.g. “ancestry” or “population”); the second is to note that even if there was something to be gained from substituting a different term for “race” in human population genetics, there are deep and important concerns about which values in human population genetics are used to absolve the issues with wildly divergent uses of classificatory terms. In highlighting these concerns, the aim is to have a better handle on what needs to be addressed so that human population genetics will have a viable road map to avoid the pitfalls of its past.

Michael Hunter is a PhD candidate at the University of California, Davis.