Sunday, January 16, 2022

Such paternalism has the effect of keeping "marginalized populations" marginalized

From The Sun Never Sets on the Anglo-Saxons (part 1) by Razib Khan.  An observation and conclusion.

One of the downstream consequences of this British focus on biology is an exceedingly precise and accurate understanding of the population history of the Isles. In the aughts, scientists collected blood samples from all over Britain, assembling a dataset of over 2,000 total individuals, each with all four grandparents born within 80km of one another. With these samples, geneticists created a fine-grained map of contemporary population structure across the island that has no parallel in any other nation. Likewise, the British are early movers in ancient DNA, which grants us a vantage onto gene frequencies over thousands of years. While there is only a single genome from India predating the Common Era, a recent paper on British genetic history was not unusual in matter-of-factly reporting results from a sample of 598 individuals. From the Bronze and Iron Ages alone. 

Just in the past twenty years, advances in applied genetics have illuminated the whole prehistory of Britain. Dual leaps forward in both computing power and cutting-edge genomics technology (sequencing, SNP-array genotyping, ancient-DNA extraction, etc.) stand to benefit research programs of any advanced society. 

But Britain is in a class of its own here, doing things no other nation can yet dream of. Why? Whereas North America might enjoy unrivaled biology know-how, it has a paucity of early samples. Whereas Germany has accumulated a rich patrimony of archeological samples over the centuries, it lags in cutting-edge biology know-how (and since World War II, retains an understandable aversion to examining its people’s genetics). 

Britain alone arrived at this moment equipped to optimize the outputs of these great technological leaps forward. A couple of centuries of enthusiastic amateur archeology laid in a wealth of samples drawn from across the British Isles. And robust institutions nourishing advances in evolutionary biology are at this point centuries old. (Notably, British geneticists have told me privately that while many of their institutes are actually spoiled for choice of ancient human remains from every corner of the globe, the hassle of trying to satisfy professional hand-wringers who stand ready to block any genetic study of non-Europeans on inscrutable bioethical grounds… has the effect of making the Isles’ own prehistoric settlers… the populations of least resistance. It's hard to avoid the implication that such paternalism has the effect of keeping "marginalized populations"... marginal in the race to truly know ourselves and our deep origins.)

An exaggerated and misplaced sensitivity to other peoples possible concerns (while not actually reflecting other people's concerns, see Latinx as an example) is a class signifier which has material costs.  In this example, the cost is a loss of the knowledge that is actually reachable.  

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