[bhickey]

Hi. I did my master's in computational biology focusing on androgen independent prostate cancer. After that I worked in an autoimmunology lab. My projects included rheumatoid arthritis GWAS and b-cell phylogeny. To demonstrate that we did case-control matching correctly, I looked at how well self-reported ancestry corresponds to hapmap populations. The mapping is very noisy. "Race" is a social classification, sure it's correlated with biological markers but there are better measures. So, yeah, "race" as such isn't important.

[ChainOfFools]

I don't follow the conclusion that you're trying to draw. It sounds like you're saying that people do not self-report their own ancestry accurately better than chance.

On the surface of it this sounds absurd, because (unless adopted) people do not determine their ancestry by looking at photos of themselves. I can see getting proximal affiliations wrong, confusing or missidentifying oneself as being half Italian when they're actually half Iberian, or or confusing turkic ancestry with Persian. But I don't think people are going to not know whether they are primarily of say East asian, african, or european ancestry.

[Toast_]

>I looked at how well self-reported ancestry corresponds to hapmap populations.

>The mapping is very noisy.

>"race" as such isn't important

Sounds like quite the leap to reach the conclusion that you're trying to make.

[bhickey]

Sounds like you're moving the goalposts after your phrenology ran headlong into expertise.

[Toast_]

Sure thing chief.