In her paper, “Can DNA ‘Witness’ Race?: Forensic Uses of an Imperfect Ancestry Testing Technology” Duana Fulwilley writes about a specific case of ancestry testing used in criminal justice. On August 11th, 2004, Derrick Todd Lee was charged with murder … Continue reading Race and Genetics in Forensics — A Real Case
Duana Fulwilley explores race in genetics applied to the workforce, in her review, “The Contemporary Synthesis.” She brings the dangers of wrongly charging innocent suspects to a crime they did not commit due to faulty ancestry testing. In 2004, Mark Shriver, a physical anthropologist, population geneticist, and AIMs expert was working to market a product with a company called DNAPrint Genomics, to allow scientists to figure out an individual’s facial morphology based on their DNA. This project eventually became marketed by Parabon Snapshot in 2014, and continues to be marketed today. The idea, was Fulwilley puts it, was to create … Continue reading Race and Genetics in Forensics — The Creation Process
As a part of my continued interest in race and genetics, I started reading Race and the Genetic Revolution: Science, Myth, and Culture edited by Sheldon Krimsky and Kathleen Sloan. Part I starts with a history of race in genetics by Michael Yudell, where Yudell takes readers through the years from the eighteenth-century to the present. To summarize that history, Michael Yudell first begins with what race means: a way to classify people. He notes that race has been influenced by geography, politics, culture, science, and economics — and this applies to all of human history. For as long as … Continue reading A Brief History of Race and Genetics
“How Science and Genetics are Reshaping the Race Debate of the 21st Century.” Author Vivian Chou brings up a fascinating point in this article, where they explore the effects of Donald Trump’s election as the 45th President of the United … Continue reading Genetics in the Race Debate
History/Philosophy of Science with Gabi 