Re:Homo sapiens
by beevai142 on Monday July 18, 2016 @02:39PM
(#12117184)
If an idea is obvious enough to occur in an armchair biology discussion on HN, it's likely those who do this sort of thing as a profession have considered it already. Indeed, https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=human+subspecies+taxono... --- the outcome appears to be: "Human 'races' are below the thresholds used in other species, so valid traditional subspecies do not exist in humans.".
[ Parent
| on HN ]
It's also possible their interpretation is shaped by a desire to promote social justice and anti-racism, and oppose harmful stereotypes, taking precedence over strict scientific consistency. This is understandable, and ethical; I'd do the same thing if I thought scientific claims could cause harm. Differentiating humans into biologically distinct groups has contributed to scientific racism and genocides in the last century.
This sort of motivation is not unknown in the social sciences: http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~jussim/unbearable%20accuracy%20o...