It’s an interesting article that makes a number of good points but I take issue with Kristof when he says:
It's hard to argue that ethnicity is an empty concept when one gene mutation for an iron storage disease, hemochromatosis, affects fewer than 1 percent of Armenians but 8 percent of Norwegians.”No it isn’t. Variations in the distribution of genetic mutations in the human population are to be expected between geographically separated or otherwise isolated groups.
Ethnicity is simply not a meaningful category in genetics. Sociologists might find the term useful in understanding and describing processes leading to the isolation of particular groups within a population but, as Bryan Sykes says in the article, “There's no genetic basis for any kind of rigid ethnic or racial classification at all”.
I had thought this fact was universally acknowledged but Kristof refers to “the raging scientific debate about whether there is anything real to the notion of race”.
I’d be worried if I thought any of those raging debaters were geneticists.
