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The Number of Black Widows in the National Academy of Sciences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Michael Root
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Abstract

Studies in the social and biomedical sciences of racial differences in socioeconomic status or health within a population view the race of members as fixed and look for a difference in the frequency of a trait like average income or disease risk between racial subgroups. But, as I explain in this paper, there are good reasons to allow the race of members to vary with the trait whose variation within the population is to be described or explained. According to such a view of race, racial categories are more scientifically significant if membership in the categories is allowed to vary with differences in scientific interest rather than held constant across a variety of interests.

Type
Race and Science
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 72 , Issue 5: Proceedings of the 2004 Biennial Meeting of The Philosophy of Science Association. Part I: Contributed Papers , December 2005 , pp. 1197 - 1207
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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