Is Biological Race a Myth? Richard Lewontin & The Apportionment of Human Diversity

Welcome to a brand new episode of pplpod! This week, we dive deep into one of the most pivotal scientific papers in evolutionary biology: American evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin's 1972 landmark study, "The Apportionment of Human Diversity".

Did you know that 85.4% of human genetic variation is found within local populations, while only 6.3% accounts for traditional racial classifications? We explore how Lewontin used statistical analysis and 17 indirect markers, such as blood group proteins, to revolutionize our understanding of human genetic diversity and fundamentally contribute to the abandonment of race as a scientific concept.

In this episode, we unpack:

• The Background: The 1960s scientific debates between anthropologists like Frank B. Livingstone, who argued that "there are no races, there are only clines," and geneticists like Theodosius Dobzhansky, who defended the concept of discrete races.
• The Math: How Lewontin famously calculated these groundbreaking findings using a table of logarithms and a hand calculator during a 3-to-4 hour bus trip.
• The Pushback & "Lewontin's Fallacy": We break down the 2003 critique by Cambridge geneticist A. W. F. Edwards, who argued that racial classification could still be inferred if enough genetic loci are examined. We also discuss how later scientists, like Jonathan Marks and Charles Roseman, countered this critique, proving that Lewontin's taxonomic findings remain scientifically sound.
• The Legacy: The enduring impact of Lewontin's work on population genetics, its 50th-anniversary celebration in a 2022 special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, and how modern geneticists continue to defend his findings against co-optation by white nationalist and far-right discourse.

Whether you're studying evolutionary biology, taxonomy, or the history of science, this episode provides a comprehensive look at the genetics of human populations. Tune in to learn why human genetic variation proves we are far more alike than traditional classifications suggest!