THIS IS MAKING PHRENOLOGY LOOK RELATIVELY SCIENTIFIC [Updated and moved to top]: Government dictates that biomedical studies include not genetic diversity (which may or may not be appropriate), but “diversity” as dictated by arbitrary government classifications, has entrenched pseudo-science in the research community, to wit: “In a first vote, 11 committee members unanimously said available data on the drug shows that it is effective at treating Alzheimer’s patients at the early stages of the mind-wasting disease. But several advisors noted that more data is needed in Black and Hispanic patients, among other groups.” Exactly how do they think “Hispanic Alzheimer’s” would be different from “non-Hispanic white people” Alzheimer’s?

UPDATE: I’m *for* research on genetic factors in disease and treatment. I’m *against* using the American bureaucracies invented classifications as incredibly crude proxies for genetics. These were never intended to be used as such proxies. In fact, when the current panoply of classifications was created by the federal government in 1978, it specifically came with the disclaimer that these were not genetic or anthropological categories. How could they be when “Hispanics” can be from any mix of continents, Asians include everyone from Indians (Caucasians) to Chinese (East Asian) to Filipinos (mostly Austronesians), the white category goes from Iceland to Yemen, and African America can be anywhere from 2 to 100% African, and Africa is itself a very genetically diverse continent, with many Somali and Ethiopian groups more closely related to Arabs than to sub-Saharan Africans? For more on the topic, see the final chapter of my book Classified.