Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
Twins separated at birth studies are problematic for multiple reasons.
Studies comparing twins reared together to siblings doesn’t isolate genetics because the environment is different for each sibling cohort.
A whole bunch of claims about genetics rest on these bad studies or claims that these studies don’t strongly support.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoysrR7Adwk
“Mason notes that our ancestors migrated at levels that most people grossly underestimate, leading to far more genetic mixing than people typically assume. She points out that our current understanding of DNA undermines a lot of assumptions that arose from observing external traits, such as skin color, nose shape, and eye shape, since such traits can arise from the same genetic allele but be inherited from entirely different people. Furthermore, thanks to the random genetic recombination that happens with every new generation, 75 percent of your genetic makeup is attributable to only 5 percent of your ancestors. A 23andMe test will tell you about only 8 percent of your ancestors, because they’re the only ones left represented in your DNA today. In fact, it’s possible that two dark South Africans can be more genetically divergent from one another than one of them is from a white Swede.”
https://reason.com/2025/05/25/how-to-end-racism/
“”Luck,” E.B. White once said, “is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.” They worked hard, no doubt, to get where they are. But they also benefited enormously from good fortune, not just in life but in life’s building blocks. A fortunate combination of thousands of slight genetic differences boosted their intelligence, motivation, openness to experience, task perseverance, executive function, and interpersonal skills.
“Like being born to a rich or poor family, being born with a certain set of genetic variants is the outcome of a lottery of birth,” the behavioral geneticist Kathryn Paige Harden argues in The Genetic Lottery. “And, like social class, the outcome of the genetic lottery is a systemic force that matters for who gets more, and who gets less, of nearly everything we care about in society.””
“The Trump administration has started forcibly collecting DNA samples from immigrants in detention and sending that information to an FBI criminal database called the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) for permanent storage. Officials say this is a crime-fighting move. In reality, it is mass surveillance.
In 2005, Congress passed the DNA Fingerprint Act, requiring genetic testing of anyone arrested for a federal crime, regardless of whether they’re eventually charged and convicted. The Supreme Court approved this gross invasion of individual privacy in Maryland v. King (2013), ruling 5–4 that the law did not violate constitutional protections against illegal searches and seizures because the original arrest had required probable cause.
The DNA Fingerprint Act gave the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) latitude to exempt noncitizens from being sampled. There’s a very good reason for that: The vast majority of these folks are detained not because they have committed serious crimes with actual victims but because a harsh Clinton-era enforcement law vastly increased detentions for nonviolent immigration-related offenses. The Obama administration used this latitude to exempt immigrants from DNA sampling unless they were charged with another crime or were awaiting deportation proceedings. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano pointed out at the time that taking DNA from the 30,000 immigrants who were then detained would pose “severe organizational, resource and financial challenges”—not to mention distract from actual crime-fighting.
The detained population has grown larger still, yet the Trump administration is arguing that these logistical concerns are outdated because the collection of DNA samples has become easier and cheaper. Customs and Border Patrol has gone ahead and launched pilot programs at several immigration centers around the country. Government estimates suggest that once the program is fully implemented, such centers will be sending 748,000 DNA profiles to CODIS every year. That’s more than the entire state of New York has contributed in more than 20 years”