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  1. Making populations: Bounding genes in space and in time.Lisa Gannett - 2003 - Philosophy of Science 70 (5):989-1001.
    At least below the level of species, biological populations are not mind‐independent objects that scientists discover. Rather, biological populations are pragmatically constructed as objects of investigation according to the aims, interests, and values that inform particular research contexts. The relations among organisms that are constitutive of population‐level phenomena (e.g., mating propensity, genealogy, and competition) occur as matters of degree and so give rise to statistically defined open‐ended biological systems. These systems are rendered discrete units to satisfy practical needs and theoretical (...)
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  • Strangers look sicker (with implications in times of COVID‐19).Paola Bressan - 2021 - Bioessays 43 (3):2000158.
    We animals have evolved a variety of mechanisms to avoid conspecifics who might be infected. It is currently unclear whether and why this “behavioral immune system” targets unfamiliar individuals more than familiar ones. Here I answer this question in humans, using publicly available data of a recent study on 1969 participants from India and 1615 from the USA. The apparent health of a male stranger, as estimated from his face, and the comfort with contact with him were a direct function (...)
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  • Cultural group selection plays an essential role in explaining human cooperation: A sketch of the evidence.Peter Richerson, Ryan Baldini, Adrian V. Bell, Kathryn Demps, Karl Frost, Vicken Hillis, Sarah Mathew, Emily K. Newton, Nicole Naar, Lesley Newson, Cody Ross, Paul E. Smaldino, Timothy M. Waring & Matthew Zefferman - 2016 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 39:e30.
    Human cooperation is highly unusual. We live in large groups composed mostly of non-relatives. Evolutionists have proposed a number of explanations for this pattern, including cultural group selection and extensions of more general processes such as reciprocity, kin selection, and multi-level selection acting on genes. Evolutionary processes are consilient; they affect several different empirical domains, such as patterns of behavior and the proximal drivers of that behavior. In this target article, we sketch the evidence from five domains that bear on (...)
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  • The use of race in medicine as a proxy for genetic differences.Michael Root - 2003 - Philosophy of Science 70 (5):1173-1183.
    Race is a prominent category in medicine. Epidemiologists describe how rates of morbidity and mortality vary with race, and doctors consider the race of their patients when deciding whether to test them for sickle‐cell anemia or what drug to use to treat their hypertension. At the same time, critics of racial classification say that race is not real but only an illusion or that race is scientifically meaningless. In this paper, I explain how race is used in medicine as a (...)
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  • The Role of Ancient DNA Research in Archaeology.Stephen M. Downes - 2019 - Topoi 40 (1):285-293.
    In this paper I briefly introduce work on ancient-DNA and give some examples of the impact this work has had on responses to questions in archaeology. Next, I spell out David Reich’s reasons for his optimism about the contribution aDNA research makes to archaeology. I then use Robert Chapman and Alison Wylie’s framework to offer an alternative to Reich’s view of relations between aDNA research and archaeology. Finally, I develop Steven Mithen’s point about the different questions archaeologists and geneticists ask, (...)
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  • (1 other version)Racism and Human Genome Diversity Research: The Ethical Limits of "Population Thinking".Lisa Gannett - 2001 - Philosophy of Science 68 (S3):S479-S492.
    This paper questions the prevailing historical understanding that scientific racism “retreated” in the 1950s when anthropology adopted the concepts and methods of population genetics and race was recognized to be a social construct and replaced by the concept of population. More accurately, a “populational” concept of race was substituted for a “typological one”—this is demonstrated by looking at the work of Theodosius Dobzhansky circa 1950. The potential for contemporary research in human population genetics to contribute to racism needs to be (...)
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  • Race Based Medicine, Colorblind Disease: How Racism in Medicine Harms Us All.Ruqaiijah Yearby - 2021 - American Journal of Bioethics 21 (2):19-27.
    The genome between socially constructed racial groups is 99.5%–99.9% identical; the 0.1%–0.5% variation between any two unrelated individuals is greatest between individuals in the same racial grou...
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  • Population-genetic trees, maps, and narratives of the great human diasporas.Marianne Sommer - 2015 - History of the Human Sciences 28 (5):108-145.
    From the 1960s, mathematical and computational tools have been developed to arrive at human population trees from various kinds of serological and molecular data. Focusing on the work of the Italian-born population geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, I follow the practices of tree-building and mapping from the early blood-group studies to the current genetic admixture research. I argue that the visual language of the tree is paralleled in the narrative of the human diasporas, and I show how the tree was actually (...)
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  • Group Categories in Pharmacogenetics Research.Lisa Gannett - 2005 - Philosophy of Science 72 (5):1232-1247.
    Current controversy over whether the Office of Management and Budget system of racial and ethnic classification should be used in pharmacogenetics research as suggested by the U.S. Federal Drug Administration has been couched in terms of realist-social constructionist debates on race. The assumptions both parties to these debates share instead need to be relinquished—specifically, dichotomies between the social and scientific and what is descriptive and evaluative/normative. This paper defends a pragmatic approach to the question of the appropriateness of the OMB (...)
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