Measuring genetic distance is harder than you’d think

You’ve probably heard or read that most genetic variation is within, not between races. This assertion has led, in my opinion, to unwarranted inferences.

Often bracketed under “Lewontin’s Fallacy”, the basic intuition is that if most variation is within races, then races as a taxonomic unit are without utility or substantive basis. This is disputable. In plain English, though most genetic variation may be within races (i.e., not diagnostic of racial identity), the variation across races is quite systematic because that variation reflects deep population history. In this way of thinking population or racial substructure are simply reflections of the tips of the tree which has been shaped by history.

But these discussions are ultimately predicated upon a statistic, FST, that is quite a bit woollier than you might think.

Read the full, original story: Buddy, Can You Spare a Genetic Distance Statistic?

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