Abstract
Noah Rosenberg et al.'s 2002 article “Genetic Structure of Human Populations” reported that multivariate genomic analysis of a large cell line panel yielded reproducible groupings (clusters) suggestive of individuals' geographical origins. The paper has been repeatedly cited as evidence that traditional notions of race have a biological basis, a claim its authors do not make. Critics of this misinterpretation have often suggested that it follows from interpreters' personal biases skewing the reception of an objective piece of scientific writing. I contend, however, that the article itself to some degree facilitates this misrepresentation. I analyze in detail several verbal and visual features of the original article that may predispose aspects of its racial interpretation; and, tracing the arguments of one philosopher and one popular science writer, I show how these features are absorbed, transformed into arguments for a biological basis of race, and re-attributed to the original. The essay demonstrates how even slight ambiguities can enable the misappropriation of scientific writing, unintentionally undermining the authors' stated circumspection on the relationship between cluster and race.
Highlights
In their paper “Genetic Structure of Human Populations,” published in Science in 2002, Noah Rosenberg et al reported that the software program structure was able to assign individuals from diverse human populations into reproducible groupings based on their genotypes at hundreds of loci and, further, that these clusters generally aligned with individuals’ regional and continental origins
I define it as follows: The racial interpretation of “Genetic Structure of Human Populations” (i) takes as the object and primary result of the study the detection of five large clusters in the worldwide sample; (ii) overemphasizes the uniformity and distinctiveness of clusters; and (iii) asserts a direct mapping between these clusters and the five traditionally identified continental races, implying that clusters can serve as proxies for generalizations about skin color or other racial phenotypes
As early as the abstract, the authors seem to identify five continental clusters as the primary finding of the study, observing that “we identified six main genetic clusters, five of which correspond to major geographic regions, and subclusters that often correspond to individual populations” (2381)
Summary
In their paper “Genetic Structure of Human Populations,” published in Science in 2002, Noah Rosenberg et al reported that the software program structure was able to assign individuals from diverse human populations into reproducible groupings based on their genotypes at hundreds of loci and, further, that these clusters generally aligned with individuals’ regional and continental origins. Much of its treatment in the media has been controversial, with some interpreters describing the study as proof of a biological grounding for conventional notions of race, even though the article’s report of clusters approximating the five continents traditionally identified as the origins of the major races is not the only—or the primary—result of the study. The authors, for their part, have declined to suggest any relationship between world-level clustering data and social categories of race.
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