You are a perfect example of what I am talking about. That is an obvious lie. Of course it means something scientifically because it refers to a genetic grouping. e.g. black people are much more likely to have the genetic disease sickle cell anemia. Nobody seems to have much of a problem with that statement but if it were a gene related to intelligence you people would lose your minds.
If it isn't a scientifically valid concept, then why did the NIH label the genetic data by race?
Races are not genetic groupings, they are social constructs whose boundaries evolve over time, which is particularly clear when they are formalized in a way which resista change and that formalization drifts increasingly far from the current common usage, such as the way the White racial category in common usage in America currently roughly corresponds to the the subset of the White racial category that excludes the Hispanic ethnicity in the US Census categorization.
The construction of race at any given time and place will tend to have non-zero correlation with genetic frequencies, in part by chance and in part because it is usually largely (but not entirely) drivn by appearance which is to some degree associated with some aspects of underlying genetics.
> e.g. black people are much more likely to have the genetic disease sickle cell anemia.
People with ancestry in sub-Saharan Africa (and within that, even more West Africa), India, the Middle East, and Mediterranean are more likely to have the gene that provides malaria resistance with one copy and sickle cell disease with two than other populations.
While the highest incidence group is also commonly “Black” in most constructions of race, a lot of the American perception of it as a nearly exclusively Black disease is because the population perceived as Black in the US is heavily drawn from West Africa, and the US population also underrepresents other populations in which it is more common than average AND does not include, and may not construct as Black, populations constructed as Black elsewhere in the world where it is not common.
You are 100% correct, but also 100% missing the point. When I say white people are more likely to carry the gene for cystic fibrosis, or black people are more likely to carry genetic risk factors for kidney disease, nobody will reply with a long winded explanation claiming that statement is invalid because "white" and "black" are not scientifically valid because... Comments like yours appear only when the topic of intelligence comes up, so I conclude that the real problem you have with this is the subject of intelligence, and not the categories.
And when the science on race and intelligence came out, the response of the scientific community was not "your categories are bad, and here is my study on intelligence that actually uses scientifically valid genetic groupings." It was "any further science on this subject will not be funded and if you express disagreement it will risk your career."
You mean people are more sensitive on sensitive topics? What? The topic used to justify horrible atrocities over time has a higher bar of scrutiny? What? Why’s that?
And are you sure there aren’t studies on genetic groupings and intelligence? That seems quite a claim.
The problem here is that "black" can mean anybody with dark skin from anywhere in the world.
The sickle cell stuff is likely related to the fact that most "black" people in the US are descended from slaves that pretty much all came from the same small region in West Africa.
My point here is that this problem only seems to be brought up when the research has to do with intelligence. If you talk about genetic differences between "black," "white," or any other racial grouping on any other metric nobody ever brings it up as in my example above. So, while I acknowledge the fundamental weaknesses of the category, I have to conclude that the real objection here isn't the categories, but the topic of the research.
Most of the examples that you've used gain very little from added specificity. It's essentially linguistic laziness. That linguistic laziness is not identically consequential in all contexts.
