• Maoo [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    11 months ago

    In terms of non-genetic evidence it’s always been on shaky ground. Not necessarily disproven so much as it wasn’t established as likely in the first place.

    In terms of comparative genetics analysis, the studies are fraught. The more typical hypothesis of origins near the Levant is the most popular and does have decent evidence. At the same time, some scientists, including Israeli ones, have reasonably entertained hypotheses of origins in the caucuses and have some amount of evidence. IMO there have not been good enough studies in general, they need to sample more populations, particularly different ethnic groups, and do proper work testing alternative hypotheses under different (appropriate) modeling methods. This research is also challenging because of the hypothesis being favored by antisemites. I probably wouldn’t work on the topic myself if I were in the field. There’s a lot of potential for negative outcomes without having rock-solid evidence and rock-solid evidence may be impossible.

    • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
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      11 months ago

      I generally don’t think genetic research of ethnicity is very useful, it smells of calipers for mile and entire history already showed us it’s basically completely irrelevant. Culture and language research is much more useful.

      • urshanabi [he/they]@lemmygrad.ml
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        10 months ago

        Yeah, I would not like the precedent it would set.

        The claim for this paper is that it is a necessary consequence of determining the medical nature of a condition which Ashkenazi Jewish people are at risk for. I read about the increased risk before, the author also lays it out well. In class we learned it was called a ‘founder effect’, when a population has it’s size greatly reduced and then there is less variation present.

        The issue is any existing conditions, say an increased risk for a disease, propagate as the population grows and can become ‘fixed’. It isn’t as much of an issue for a large population, since if like, 10 out of 10 000 000 have the increased risk then it’s not too bad. If it’s 1 out of 10 000, that is troubling. When that population grows more and more people will continue to have the condition :(

        Jewish people are discriminated against, that is rather obvious, finding out using diagnostic tools is helpful to anyone who might have an adverse condition and not know about it. Uh, unfortunately, medicine/research sucks and is chalkful of stuff like Tuskegee Syphillis Experiment, whenever ethnicity or specifically people from a given geographic region are focused on…

        Ashkenazi are a population which are studies a lot (there are a ton of population genetics papers, those are the ones I am familiar) because there is an established history and it is fairly accurate.

        Hope this stuff isn’t used by anti-semites (obv it will, I’m hoping the harm is kept at a minimum…)