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Troublesome Science: The Misuse of Genetics and Genomics in Understanding Race (Race, Inequality, and Health, 2)
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About Troublesome Science: The Misuse Of Genetics And
Product Description It is well established that all humans today, wherever they live, belong to one single species. Yet even many people who claim to abhor racism take for granted that human “races” have a biological reality. In Troublesome Science, Rob DeSalle and Ian Tattersall provide a lucid and forceful critique of how scientific tools have been misused to uphold misguided racial categorizations. DeSalle and Tattersall argue that taxonomy, the scientific classification of organisms, provides an antidote to the myth of race’s biological basis. They explain how taxonomists do their science―how to identify a species and to understand the relationships among different species and the variants within them. DeSalle and Tattersall also detail the use of genetic data to trace human origins and look at how scientists have attempted to recognize discrete populations within Homo sapiens. Troublesome Science demonstrates conclusively that modern genetic tools, when applied correctly to the study of human variety, fail to find genuine differences. While the diversity that exists within our species is a real phenomenon, it nevertheless defeats any systematic attempt to recognize discrete units within it. The stark lines that humans insist on drawing between their own groups and others are nothing but a mixture of imagination and ideology. Troublesome Science is an important call for researchers, journalists, and citizens to cast aside the belief that race has a biological meaning, for the sake of social justice and sound science alike. Review Why do we need another book on the refuted belief that human beings are naturally divided into biological races? Because this myth is recirculating in prestigious scientific journals and popular media, as well as on white nationalist websites, threatening to rationalize and reinforce persistent social inequities. By revealing the unscientific basis for contemporary racial claims, DeSalle and Tattersall leave no excuse for letting this dangerous fallacy continue to masquerade as science. Troublesome Science is an urgent and important defense against the modern resurgence of racial science. -- Dorothy Roberts, author of Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century Troublesome Science provides one of the most lucid expositions in the scientific literature of how taxonomies of human populations have developed―and most important, the authors use this explication to take us on a fascinating 200,000-year journey to demonstrate the flaws in any attempt to use a genetic boundary for racial categories. -- Troy Duster, Chancellor’s Professor at the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues, University of California, Berkeley, and author of Backdoor to Eugenics In Troublesome Science, DeSalle and Tattersall tackle the contentious and important subject of human genetic diversity and its relationship to the definition of human groups. This bold, beautiful, thorough, and up-to-date demolition of the biological concept of race is based on excellent history and the latest science. Think of this clearly written and approachable book as a user’s guide to your own DNA and ancestry. -- Nina G. Jablonski, Evan Pugh University Professor of Anthropology, associate director of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, Pennsylvania State University In the current atmosphere denigrating truth and wisdom, the resurgence of racism is the worst case of rejection of both morality and science. It is a profound relief and pleasure to read this masterful synthesis of data on human biological variation and evolution, melding results on everything from genomics to the anatomical features of living and ancient populations. The result is a powerful and compelling picture of the generation of diversity, the historical migrations of populations, and the continual mixing of human beings that decisively refutes the notion that our species is compartmentalized into rigidly
