ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2022
The background and legacy of Lewontin's apportionment of human genetic diversity.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed.
- The apportionment of dietary diversity in wildlife.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Mathematical constraints on a family of biodiversity measures via connections with Rényi entropy.Bio Systems · 2024Article
- Typological thinking in human genomics research contributes to the production and prominence of scientific racism.Frontiers in genetics · 2024Article
- Partitioning variance in reproductive success, within years and across lifetimes.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Population Pharmacogenomics for Health Equity.Genes · 2023Article
- Bridging the gap: returning genetic results to indigenous communities in Latin America.Frontiers in genetics · 2023Article
- Variability in genome-engineering source materials: consider your starting point.Synthetic biology (Oxford, England) · 2023Review
- The Apportionment of Pharmacogenomic Variation: Race, Ethnicity, and Adverse Drug Reactions.Medical research archives · 2022Article
- Polygenic risk, population structure and ongoing difficulties with race in human genetics.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- A geometric relationship ofPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Mathematical constraints onPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Forensic genetics through the lens of Lewontin: population structure, ancestry and race.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- Diversity and its causes: Lewontin on racism, biological determinism and the adaptationist programme.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- How HLA diversity is apportioned: influence of selection and relevance to transplantation.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Celebrating 50 years since Lewontin's apportionment of human diversity.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- The apportionment of citations: a scientometric analysis of Lewontin 1972.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
Abstract
Lewontin's 1972 article 'The apportionment of human diversity' described a key feature of human genetic diversity that would have profound impacts on conversations regarding genetics and race: the typical genetic locus varies much less between classical human race groupings than one might infer from inspecting the features historically used to define those races, like skin pigmentation. From this, Lewontin concluded: 'Human racial classification … is now seen to be of virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance' (p. 397). Here, 50 years after the paper's publication, the goal is to understand the origins and legacy of the paper. Aided by insights from published papers and interviews with several of Lewontin's contemporaries, I review the 1972 paper, asking about the intellectual background that led to the publication of the paper, the development of its impact, the critiques of the work and the work's application and limitations today. The hope is that by gaining a clearer understanding of the origin and reasoning of the paper, we might dispel various confusions about the result and sharpen an understanding of the enduring value and insight the result provides. This article is part of the theme issue 'Celebrating 50 years since Lewontin's apportionment of human diversity'.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.