Lysenkoism Watch: Pomo-Prog Gobbledygook In Letters To Nature

Holy crap.

Science is in genuine danger.

Note that they declare no competing interests...which, apparently, includes the search for truth...

CORRESPONDENCE

21 September 2021

Changing the wrapping won’t fix genetic-racism package

Latifa Jackson ,

Krystal S. Tsosie &

Keolu Fox

Nature misses a chance to grant agency to marginalized communities in inviting Alice Popejoy to point out that altering racial classifications will not absolve power imbalances in genetics (Nature 596, 463; 2021).

In 1785, philosopher Christoph Meiners reduced continental-scale diversity to an imperial classification system to subjugate colonized peoples. This system is still used by geneticists, and lingers beyond terms such as Caucasian. New ethnonyms replaced older terms (‘mongoloid’ became ‘Asian’, for instance) but failed to redress underlying racism. And socially constructed categories are used in biologically essentialist ‘race correction’ to model disease risks (see, for example, D. E. Roberts Lancet 397, 17–18; 2021).

To demolish genetic racism, geneticists must defer to communities to self-define their ‘belongingness’ (see, for example, K. S. Tsosie Curr. Opin. Genet. Dev. 62, 91–96; 2020). Any unequal system of classification that reifies race, ethnicity and ancestry for biological insight reproduces the obstacles it attempts to dismantle and does not solve the causes of health disparities.

We advocate empowering communities to label themselves; to undertake ethnographies to contextualize research findings; and to self-determine research they deem beneficial.

Nature 597, 475 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02553-z

COMPETING INTERESTS

The authors declare no competing interests.

   Because, you see, the subordination of science to leftist politics is now basically orthodoxy. "Empowering communities" is much more important. And God forbid that we "reify" race...which, y'know, must be made just real enough to allow 50% of academicians to pretend to study it so that they have an excuse for dressing up their personal political opinions as research...but no realer. It's, like, SUPER-REAL...as a social kind! Because the left has a religious belief that everything is social. Except when its convenient to label some sex thing innate. Like, er, sex--maleness and femaleness--is just social and made up! But sexual preference is totally hardwired into your brain, bigot! As is liking to wear dresses!

   But where was I? Oh, yeah--if you even suggest that races are biological, you're an oppressor, Jack.

   And, as always: why are you worried about this, anyway? Bigot. Political correctness doesn't exist and it's totally isolated to campuses anyway and besides it's impossible to do science without it and the real problem is not their total lack of objectivity but, rather, your continue belief in objectivity as an ideal. Bigot.