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Comment by seydor | Hacker News Reader

I don't know what happened to anthropology but this attitude has indeed ruined it as a science. Asking any question that relates to physical attributes leads to immediate branding as racist. Any talk of genetics is met with a chorus of "epigenetics" , without even understanding how those work. When did it become so extreme that questions aren't even allowed.

An example of such a question: "How has lactose intolerance affected european cultures, and what other historical cultural traits are influenced by genetics"

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When they passed laws that put tribal myths on the same level as western science. Found a 10,000 year old skeleton? Sorry, the Lakota-Sioux say he's an ancestor and you're racist if you want to test DNA to confirm (not that DNA could ever show tribal membership). If you pay big bucks they'll let you test, but the right to do anything with the results will depend on the tribe's assessment of your results. Repatriation laws as they exist are cancer.

Of course, tenured academics have strong incentive to support the paradigm that doesn't require any real work, so there's that.

The thing is, the context of such arguments may be an attempt by some pipeline-laying, mining or real-estate company to put their hands on ancestral native american lands. A lot of incentive to claim "we science-d it up and it's all fine and we can take your land."

I don't buy the argument that, because these other people might abuse the science for political or commercial ends, therefore it's ok for some other people to abuse the science for their own ends. Let's just fight abuse of the science.

I don't buy the way you're constructing your argument! You're saying that both party A and party B wants to "abuse the science for political or commercial ends". But the political ends of party B is to prevent the destruction of their native lands, including the historical artifacts within that land, by party A. One of these is defensive, only abusing the system to prevent destructive abuse, and one is offensive.

>Let's just fight abuse of the science.

We'd all love this, I think. But what about before that? I don't think it's in our interests to not use the rules to our advantage before a new ruleset (that's non-abusive) has been put in place.

I think there's an argument there when it comes to archaeological finds that are identifiably associated with a particular modern cultural group. There's a matter of scale though. 10,000 year old finds, sorry I don't see the argument. The australopithecine finds in Africa are also tribal ancestors.

That's not the argument. The argument is that what might be presented to you as inappropriate conduct by native-american tribes may be mis-represented, or taken out of the context of posturing by interested parties in disputes over land access. So I would treat reports of such stereotypical behavior with more than one grain of salt.

How would testing a skeleton's DNA help a company put their hands on ancestral lands? If a company wants to use the land you throw those bones and artifacts in the trash and never tell.

If you’re open to an exercise in the spirit of intellectual expansion:

Place yourself in the position of an indigenous person who is trying to help decide what the right path is. You don’t recognize the rights of the people asking to come on to your land. You are seeing your community and your way of life continually shoved in to the margins by the systems outside your “borders” and yet while you (now) understand how the capitalistic world works you would be happy to live prosperously off the land not even accepting the concept of money, just as your ancestors did.

Now, from that version of you: argue why your community should agree to the terms. Also: you have an opportunity to change the terms and to change the system that’s sitting at your borders. What changes would you ask for? Which would you stand firm for?

I think there is a substantial fear that any result based on genetics can lead to a result of "therefore these genes are better", at least when taken at the most surface level (the level a typical headline and widely circulated article might take). Nobody wants to be associated with such an article and so anyone involved is extremely zealous in filtering out topics that might lead in that direction.

There is still a shadow of eugenics over any field studying human genetics, anthropology perhaps more than others. Personally I think its because the concepts of race and genetic ability were rejected primarily on moral grounds, rather than a scientific ones.

If some genes really are so much better than others, why not use CRISPR to give more people the best mix of genes? Actually, beyond obvious cases like single-mutation diseases, attempts at finding out which genes are associated with what have not been very successful.

Has CRISPR been successful on mammals yet? Once its widespread enough for someone without ethical constraints to have a try it seems like an inevitability.

I've seen papers where CRISPR was used to modify mouse embryos so the mice grow up to express certain proteins in certain organs (the proteins were useful for modeling disease). The differences between this and human modification are probably that nobody minds losing a bunch of mouse embryos, and that a lot of human traits are polygenetic and thus not a simple matter of adding a single protein. That said, it's only a matter of time until someone unscrupulous demonstrates human gene modification in some poorly regulated polity.

Why even go that far? Why hasn't nature spread them on its own?

Honestly this whole topic reeks of social hierarchies (which are entirely malleable) being applied to other aspects of life. After all, when you are convinced of a social hierarchy, you are going to try to find or manufacture evidence and if it can be explained by genes you have the ultimate excuse for racism.

Archaeologists already use ancient DNA, and so much of folk archaeology has been proven false, and they are fine with that. Anthropologists seem to be outright hostile to empirical methods, which is crazy because they are an empirical science, and an important one. Fear should not lead science, in fact it is the fear of genetics and empirical science that destroys anthropology.

My guess it that archeology does not attempt to link DNA to behavior, and so gets a pass. Ultimately what directs anthropology is fickle, there is no real push for correctness or profitability; its all prestige and arbitrary funding directors.

Archaeology is a subfield of anthropology in the US.

The guy who won the Nobel for ancient DNA (Svante Pääbo) literally runs the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, so I'd say ancient DNA is very much part of anthropology.

If Anthropologists are hostile to empirical methods, anthropology is not a science.

"concepts of race and genetic ability were rejected primarily on moral grounds, rather than a scientific ones."

Ironically, this rejection comes, because they were once introduced on "moral" or rather cultural grounds, disguised as science. Socialdarwinism and co. The Nazis for example did lots of "research" on race, but their concept of research was to proof the obvious truth, that white people and especially the aryans are superior. And then working out all the practical details of heritage and ancestors - for example to decide who is competent for a given job and who goes on the train to the death camps.

I think that mindset is deeply mistaken, even though it may be understandable. If you don't research it you will leave a void that the actual racists can fill with their pseudo-scientific babble, and if you don't do any actual research or have any arguments to counter them because it's all taboo then all you have are ... the racist's arguments, strengthened by a "they're covering it up!"

Everyone can tell the different between bona-fide research for scientific and historical purposes and eugenics. The dangers are strongly overstated: eugenics was used to justify existing racism, it didn't cause it.

Any time you intermingle a religion with science this is what happens.

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