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| {{Short description|1972 scientific paper by Richard Lewontin}}
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| "'''The Apportionment of Human Diversity'''" is a 1972 paper on [[Race (human categorization)|racial categorisation]] by American [[evolutionary biologist]] [[Richard Lewontin]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Lewontin |first1=R. C. |chapter=The Apportionment of Human Diversity |title=Evolutionary Biology |volume=6 |date=1972 |pages=381–398 |doi=10.1007/978-1-4684-9063-3_14 |chapter-url=https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4684-9063-3_14 |publisher=Springer US |isbn=978-1-4684-9065-7 |s2cid=21095796 |language=en}}</ref> In it, Lewontin presented an analysis of [[genetic diversity]] amongst people from different conventionally-defined races. His main finding, that there is more genetic variation within these populations than between them,<ref name="Ruvulo & Seielstad 2001">{{cite book |last1=Ruvulo |first1=Maryellen |last2=Seielstad |first2=Mark |editor1-last=Singh |editor1-first=Rama S. |editor2-last=Krimbas |editor2-first=Costas B. |editor3-last=Paul |editor3-first=Diane B. |editor4-last=Beatty |editor4-first=John |title=Thinking about Evolution: Historical, Philosophical, and Political Perspectives |date=2001 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-62070-3 |pages=141–151 |language=en |chapter='The Apportionment of Human Diversity' 25 Years Later}}</ref> is considered a landmark in the study of [[human genetic variation]] and contributed to the abandonment of race as a scientific concept.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Sapp |first1=Jan |title=Race Finished |url=https://www.americanscientist.org/article/race-finished |work=American Scientist |date=6 February 2017 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Long |first1=Jeffrey C. |last2=Li |first2=Jie |last3=Healy |first3=Meghan E. |title=Human DNA sequences: more variation and less race |journal=American Journal of Physical Anthropology |date=May 2009 |volume=139 |issue=1 |pages=23–34 |doi=10.1002/ajpa.21011 |pmid=19226648 |hdl=2027.42/62133 |url=https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19226648/ |issn=1096-8644|hdl-access=free }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Graves |first1=Joseph L. |title=Richard Lewontin: Race Science for the People • SftP Magazine |url=https://magazine.scienceforthepeople.org/lewontin-special-issue/richard-lewontin-race-science/ |work=Science for the People Magazine |date=7 August 2021}}</ref>
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| == Background ==
| | "'''The Apportionment of Human Diversity'''" is a 1972 paper on [[Race (human categorization)|racial categorisation]] by American [[evolutionary biologist]] [[Richard Lewontin]]. In it, Lewontin presented an analysis of [[genetic diversity]] amongst people from different conventionally-defined races. His main finding, that there is more genetic variation within these populations than between them, is considered a landmark in the study of [[human genetic variation]] and contributed to the abandonment of race as a scientific concept. |
| By the 1960s, anthropologists such as [[Frank B. Livingstone]] had concluded that "there are no races, there are only clines" – smooth gradients of genetic variation in a species across its [[Marginal distribution (biology)|geographic range]]. Lewontin's mentor [[Theodosius Dobzhansky]] challenged this, arguing that there are human discrete [[population]]s that can be distinguished by differences in the frequency of genetic traits, which he called races.<ref name=":0">{{cite journal |last1=Kaplan |first1=Jonathan Michael |last2=Winther |first2=Rasmus Grønfeldt |title=Realism, Antirealism, and Conventionalism about Race |journal=Philosophy of Science |date=December 2014 |volume=81 |issue=5 |pages=1039–1052 |doi=10.1086/678314 |s2cid=55148854 |url=https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/678314 |issn=0031-8248}}</ref> At that time the debate was largely semantic, stemming from their different ideas about what race is and how it would be manifested in humans genetics.<ref name=":0" /><ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Kaplan |first1=Jonathan Michael |last2=Winther |first2=Rasmus Grønfeldt |date=2013 |title=Prisoners of Abstraction? The Theory and Measure of Genetic Variation, and the Very Concept of 'Race' |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/KAPPOA |journal=Biological Theory |volume=7 |issue=1 |pages=401–412 |doi=10.1007/s13752-012-0048-0|s2cid=52825769 }}</ref> The evidence that was available to Livingstone and Dobzhansky was mostly limited to [[qualitative data|qualitative]] observations of [[phenotypes]] thought to express genetic variation (e.g. [[skin colour]]).<ref name=":0" /> This changed over the course of the 1960s, as new techniques began to produce direct evidence for genetic variation in humans at a [[molecular biology|molecular level]].<ref name="Novembre2022" /> By 1972, when Dobzhansky invited Lewontin to contribute to his edited volume of ''Evolutionary Biology'', Lewontin felt that there was sufficient data to look at the problem anew, from a "firm quantitative basis":<!-- Lewontin 1972, p. 383 --><ref name="Novembre2022" />
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| {{Blockquote|
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| And so I thought, 'Well, we've got enough of this data, let's see what it tells us about the differences between human groups'. And so I just looked into the literature, and that literature was in books and so on. [...] One day I was going to give a lecture, I think it was in Carbondale, Illinois, or somewhere south. I was working in Chicago at the time. So I took a couple of these books with me and a pad of paper, and a table of logarithms which I needed for this purpose, and a little hand calculator, and I sat on this bus trip for three or four hours looking at the books, picking out the data, looking it up in the table of logarithms, doing a calculation, and writing it down in tables. And when I got back after the round trip I had all the data I needed to write the paper about how much human genetic variation there was, and so I did it.
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| |author=Richard Lewontin
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| |source=in an interview in 2003.<ref name="Novembre2022" />}}
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| Lewontin had been interested in using [[Quantitative biology|quantitative methods]] to assess taxonomic categories for some time before 1972. Over a decade earlier, palaeontologist [[George Gaylord Simpson]] had invited him to co-author a second edition of his textbook ''Quantitative Zoology'' (1960), and Lewontin added a chapter on the [[analysis of variance]]. In it, he illustrated how this approach could be used distinguish geographically distinct races with the example of ''[[Drosophila persimilis]]'', a species of fruit fly. Though the method was similar to that he would later apply to human genetic variation, he reached the opposite conclusion: there was much greater genetic variance between geographic populations than between individual fruit flies, so there was a reasonable basis for distinguishing taxonomic races.<ref name="Novembre2022">{{Cite journal |last=Novembre |first=John |date=2022-06-06 |title=The background and legacy of Lewontin's apportionment of human genetic diversity |journal=Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences |volume=377 |issue=1852 |pages=20200406 |doi=10.1098/rstb.2020.0406|pmid=35430890 |pmc=9014184 }}</ref> Foreshadowing his later work on human genetic variation, he also emphasised that, because there will always be measurable differences between any two populations, it is the degree of difference compared to other axes of variation that will determine whether a grouping is biologically significant.<ref name="Novembre2022" /> "The Apportionment of Human Diversity" was published in an volume dedicated to Simpson, perhaps prompting Lewontin to recall this previous work.<ref name="Novembre2022" />
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| == Findings ==
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| Lewontin performed a statistical analysis of the [[fixation index]] (''F''<sub>ST</sub>) in populations drawn from seven classically-defined "races" (Caucasian, African, Mongoloid, South Asian Aborigines, Amerinds, Oceanians, and Australian Aborigines). At that time, direct sequence data from the human [[genome]] was not sufficiently available, so he instead used 17 indirect markers, including blood group proteins. Lewontin found that the majority of the total genetic variation between humans (i.e., of the 0.1% of DNA that varies between individuals), 85.4%, is found within populations, 8.3% of the variation is found between populations within a "race", and only 6.3% was found to account for the racial classification. Numerous later studies have confirmed his findings.<ref name="Ramachandran">{{Cite book |title = Vogel and Motulsky's Human Genetics: Problems and Approaches |editor1-last = Speicher |editor1-first = M. R. |editor2-last = Antonarakis |editor2-first = S. E. |editor3-last = Motulsky |editor3-first = A. G. |display-editors = 1 |chapter = Chapter 20: Genetics and Genomics of Human Population Structure |last1 = Ramachandran |first1 = S. |last2 = Tang |first2 = H. |last3 = Gutenkunst |first3 = R. N. |last4 = Bustamante |first4 = C. D. |chapter-url = http://gutengroup.mcb.arizona.edu/Publications/Ramachandran2010.pdf |access-date = 29 October 2013 |year = 2010 |publisher = [[Springer Science+Business Media|Springer]] |location = Heidelberg |isbn = 978-3-540-37653-8 |doi = 10.1007/978-3-540-37654-5 |page = 596 |url-status = dead |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20131203115416/http://gutengroup.mcb.arizona.edu/Publications/Ramachandran2010.pdf |archive-date = 3 December 2013}}</ref> Based on this analysis, Lewontin concluded, "Since such racial classification is now seen to be of virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance either, no justification can be offered for its continuance."{{page number needed|date=April 2022}}
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| == Legacy ==
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| Many subsequent studies confirmed Lewontin's main finding.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hunley |first1=Keith L. |last2=Cabana |first2=Graciela S. |last3=Long |first3=Jeffrey C. |title=The apportionment of human diversity revisited |journal=American Journal of Physical Anthropology |date=2016 |volume=160 |issue=4 |pages=561–569 |doi=10.1002/ajpa.22899 |pmid=26619959 |language=en |issn=1096-8644|doi-access=free }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Feldman |first1=Marcus |title=Echoes of the Past: Hereditarianism and A Troublesome Inheritance |journal=PLOS Genetics |date=11 December 2014 |volume=10 |issue=12 |pages=e1004817 |doi=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004817 |pmid=25502763 |pmc=4263368 |language=en |issn=1553-7404 |doi-access=free }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Brown |first1=Ryan A. |last2=Armelagos |first2=George J. |title=Apportionment of racial diversity: A review |journal=Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews |date=2001 |volume=10 |issue=1 |pages=34–40 |doi=10.1002/1520-6505(2001)10:1<34::AID-EVAN1011>3.0.CO;2-P |s2cid=22845356 |language=en |issn=1520-6505|doi-access=free }}</ref>
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| The paper was not frequently cited in the years following its publication.<ref name="Ruvulo & Seielstad 2001" /><ref name="CarlsonHarris2022">{{Cite journal |last1=Carlson |first1=Jedidiah |last2=Harris |first2=Kelley |date=2022-06-06 |title=The apportionment of citations: a scientometric analysis of Lewontin 1972 |journal=Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences |volume=377 |issue=1852 |pages=20200409 |doi=10.1098/rstb.2020.0409|pmid=35430880 |pmc=9019867 }}</ref>
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| Fifty years after its publication, the paper was found to be frequently referenced in [[social media]].<ref name="CarlsonHarris2022"/> In particular, [[Twitter]] users associated with [[far-right politics]] commonly used the term "Lewontin's fallacy" (referencing [[A. W. F. Edwards]]' 2003 critique of Lewontin, "[[Human Genetic Diversity: Lewontin's Fallacy]]") as a rhetorical device to dismiss scientific arguments against biological race.<ref name="CarlsonHarris2022"/> Commenting on the enduring significance afforded to Lewontin's paper in far-right and [[white nationalist]] discourse, geneticists Jedidiah Carlson and Kelley Harris proposed that "rejection of Lewontin's interpretation has become a tenet of white nationalist ideology".<ref name="CarlsonHarris2022"/>
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| In 2022, a special issue of the journal ''[[Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences]]'' was published with the theme "Celebrating 50 years since Lewontin's apportionment of human diversity",<ref>{{cite web |title=Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences: Vol 377, No 1852 |url=https://royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rstb/2022/377/1852 |website=royalsocietypublishing.org |date=2022-06-06}}</ref> and a section of the book ''Remapping Race in a Global Context'' was devoted to discussing Lewontin's paper and defending it against Edwards' critique.<ref>{{cite book |editor1-last=Lorusso |editor1-first=Ludovica |editor2-last=Winther |editor2-first=Rasmus Grønfeldt |date=2022 |section=Part I: Lewontin (1972), 50 Years Later |title=Remapping Race in a Global Context |series=History and Philosophy of Biology |location=New York |publisher=Routledge |isbn=9781138631434 |oclc=1260692842 |doi=10.4324/9781315208893|s2cid=239465657 }}</ref>
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| == References==
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| {{Reflist}}
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| [[Category:Biology papers]]
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| [[Category:Human population genetics]]
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| [[Category:Race (human categorization)]]
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| [[Category:Biology controversies]]
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| [[Category:Taxonomy (biology)]]
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