Follow the citations: Tracing pathways of "race as biology" assumptions in medical algorithms in eGFR and spirometry.

Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the concept of 'race' as a biological unit continues to persist in various scientific disciplines, notably in the field of medicine. This paper explores the persistence of 'race as biology' in medical research via examining select citational practices that have perpetuated this problematic concept. Citations serve as a cornerstone in scientific literature, signifying reliability and expert affirmation. By analyzing citation threads and historical patterns, we aim to shed light on the creation and perpetuation of false scientific truths and their impact on medical research, training, and practice. We focus on two prominent examples, eGFR and Spirometry, and trace key articles' citational histories, highlighting the flawed evidence in support of racial corrections in medical assessments. The eGFR equation incorporates 'race' as a factor based on the erroneous belief that Black individuals have higher muscle mass than white individuals. Our analysis reveals that key cited sources for this belief lack robust and well-developed datasets. Similarly, Spirometry measurements incorporate racial correction factors, relying on questionable evidence dating back to the Civil War era. Citations serve as a cornerstone in scientific literature, signifying reliability and expert affirmation. They play a crucial role in shaping theoretical positions and validating data and assumed knowledge. Evaluating citation threads and key articles consistently referenced over time can reveal how falsehoods and erroneous assertions are constructed and maintained in scientific fields. This study underscores the need for critical examination of citational practices in medical research and urges a shift toward a more cautious approach when citing sources that support 'race as biology.' The paper calls for a reevaluation of pedagogical approaches and assigned readings in medical education to prioritize an anti-racist perspective in future research endeavors.

Statements by scientific organizations can, and should, shape society.

Statements based on the best current scientific data and analyses that bear directly on societal issues, especially ones that are critical to societal justice, equity, and health, are practical responsibilities of professional scientific organizations. And they often have impact.

Barbary macaques show sex-related differences in body weight based on anthropogenic food exposure despite comparable female-male stable isotope ratios.

As the human-primate interface expands, many nonhuman primate (NHP) populations exploit anthropogenic foods to survive, while some populations opportunistically target them. Though anthropogenic food consumption is sometimes associated with greater reproductive output and survival in these populations, there is a dearth of research on possible health effects. We explore how differential exposure to anthropogenic foods is linked to variation in isotopic compositions (δ13C and δ15N) and body weights in Barbary macaques (Macaca sylvanus) in the Upper Rock Nature Reserve, Gibraltar. We placed monkeys into three categories based on anthropogenic food exposure. We then analyzed individuals for isotopic signatures (N = 147) and body weight measurements (N = 80). Using the lowest exposure category as the comparison, we found body weights and δ15N values, but not δ13C values, significantly differed across key categories. Within categories, we found no significant associations between sex and δ13C or δ15N values, suggesting that individuals within categories consumed similar foods regardless of sex. We found a significant interaction effect between category and sex for predicting body weights. These results suggest that sex plays a role in how anthropogenic foods are accessed and consumed regardless of exposure, which may result in differential health profiles for female and male macaques.

Capacities for peace, and war, are old and related to Homo construction of worlds and communities.

The capacities required for both peace and war predate 100,000 years ago in the genus Homo are deeply entangled in the modes by which humans physically and perceptually construct their worlds and communities, and may not be sufficiently captured by economic models.

Humans are biocultural, science should be too.

COVID-19 is restructuring societies. Loneliness is a global health threat. Large language models are outputting biased health care information, and human-artificial intelligence (AI) interfaces are reshaping how we live. For most humans, technology, biology, and society are hopelessly entangled. Are the sciences prepared to tackle the contemporary human experience?

Environmental violence: a tool for planetary health research.

From climate change to toxic pollution and the interactive effects of multiple pollution streams, human health is under siege. Human-produced environmental risks to health and wellbeing are high and contributing to patterns of global morbidity, mortality, economic inequality, displacement, and insecurity. The implications of human-produced environmental harms to global health are complex just as are their causes. The concept of environmental violence offers a potentially robust frame for engaging this issue. We argue that a more specified and structured framework and definition of environmental violence-focusing on human-produced harms by way of pollution emissions-is both timely and beneficial for engaging the complexities of global public health. To clarify why and how this is the case, we review the literature for publications that use the term environmental violence and we subsequently propose a specific definition focused on human-produced pollution along with a framework for tracking and analysing environmental violence and its constituent components. Finally, we discuss the potential value of our framework for research and policy making regarding human health.

Removal from the wild endangers the once widespread long-tailed macaque.

In 2022, long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis), a once ubiquitous primate species, was elevated to Endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. In 2023, recognizing that the long-tailed macaque is threatened by multiple factors: (1) declining native habitats across Southeast Asia; (2) overutilization for scientific, commercial, and recreational purposes; (3) inadequate regulatory mechanisms; and (4) culling due to human-macaque conflicts, a petition for rulemaking was submitted to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service to add the species to the US Endangered Species Act, the nation's most effective law to protect at risk species. The long-tailed macaque remains unprotected across much of its geographical range despite the documented continual decline of the species and related sub-species and the recent IUCN reassessment. This commentary presents a review of the factors that have contributed to the dramatic decline of this keystone species and makes a case for raising the level of protection they receive.

An Ethical Framework for Research Using Genetic Ancestry.

A wide range of research uses patterns of genetic variation to infer genetic similarity between individuals, typically referred to as genetic ancestry. This research includes inference of human demographic history, understanding the genetic architecture of traits, and predicting disease risk. Researchers are not just structuring an intellectual inquiry when using genetic ancestry, they are also creating analytical frameworks with broader societal ramifications. This essay presents an ethics framework in the spirit of virtue ethics for these researchers: rather than focus on rule following, the framework is designed to build researchers' capacities to react to the ethical dimensions of their work. The authors identify one overarching principle of intellectual freedom and responsibility, noting that freedom in all its guises comes with responsibility, and they identify and define four principles that collectively uphold researchers' intellectual responsibility: truthfulness, justice and fairness, anti-racism, and public beneficence. Researchers should bring their practices into alignment with these principles, and to aid this, the authors name three common ways research practices infringe these principles, suggest a step-by-step process for aligning research choices with the principles, provide rules of thumb for achieving alignment, and give a worked case. The essay concludes by identifying support needed by researchers to act in accord with the proposed framework.

Systemic racism in science: Reactions matter.

Massive amounts of data and countless analyses collected across decades of scholarly research demonstrate unequivocally that bias and inequity based on race (in other words, racism) have occurred and still occur throughout society in the United States (the same can be said for many other nations). American higher education is one of the places where racism has been, and still is, well documented again and again and again. Not unexpectedly, six of the nine justices on the US Supreme Court recently chose to disregard these facts and argue for a "race neutral" approach in college admissions.

Ancestry: How researchers use it and what they mean by it.

Background: Ancestry is often viewed as a more objective and less objectionable population descriptor than race or ethnicity. Perhaps reflecting this, usage of the term "ancestry" is rapidly growing in genetics research, with ancestry groups referenced in many situations. The appropriate usage of population descriptors in genetics research is an ongoing source of debate. Sound normative guidance should rest on an empirical understanding of current usage; in the case of ancestry, questions about how researchers use the concept, and what they mean by it, remain unanswered. Methods: Systematic literature analysis of 205 articles at least tangentially related to human health from diverse disciplines that use the concept of ancestry, and semi-structured interviews with 44 lead authors of some of those articles. Results: Ancestry is relied on to structure research questions and key methodological approaches. Yet researchers struggle to define it, and/or offer diverse definitions. For some ancestry is a genetic concept, but for many-including geneticists-ancestry is only tangentially related to genetics. For some interviewees, ancestry is explicitly equated to ethnicity; for others it is explicitly distanced from it. Ancestry is operationalized using multiple data types (including genetic variation and self-reported identities), though for a large fraction of articles (26%) it is impossible to tell which data types were used. Across the literature and interviews there is no consistent understanding of how ancestry relates to genetic concepts (including genetic ancestry and population structure), nor how these genetic concepts relate to each other. Beyond this conceptual confusion, practices related to summarizing patterns of genetic variation often rest on uninterrogated conventions. Continental labels are by far the most common type of label applied to ancestry groups. We observed many instances of slippage between reference to ancestry groups and racial groups. Conclusion: Ancestry is in practice a highly ambiguous concept, and far from an objective counterpart to race or ethnicity. It is not uniquely a "biological" construct, and it does not represent a "safe haven" for researchers seeking to avoid evoking race or ethnicity in their work. Distinguishing genetic ancestry from ancestry more broadly will be a necessary part of providing conceptual clarity.

Healing Hanuman's Army: Veterinary Care as a Core Component of One Health Principles in a Southeast Asian Monkey Forest.

Wildlife that inhabit urban landscapes face the dual challenge of negotiating their positions in their group while navigating obstacles of anthropogenically modified landscapes. The dynamics of urban environments can result in novel injuries and mortalities for these animals. However, these negative impacts can be mitigated through planning, and onsite veterinary care like that provided by the Ubud Monkey Forest in Bali, Indonesia. We examined 275 recorded injuries and mortalities among six social groups of long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis) brought to the veterinary clinic from 2015-2018. We fit the probabilities of injury vs. death among macaques brought to the clinic using a multilevel logistic regression model to infer the relationship between injury vs. death and associated demographic parameters. Males were more likely to sustain injuries and females were more likely to die. The frequency of injuries and mortalities changed over the four-year study period, which was reflected in our model. The odds of mortality were highest among young macaques and the odds of injury vs. mortality varied across the six social groups. We categorized injuries and mortalities as "natural" or "anthropogenic". Most injuries and mortalities were naturally occurring, but powerlines, motorized vehicles, and plastic present ongoing anthropogenic threats to macaque health. Most wounds and injuries were successfully treated, with healthy animals released back to their group. We suggest other sites with high levels of human-alloprimate interplays consider the Ubud Monkey Forest veterinary office as a model of care and potentially adopt their approaches.

Heritability is a poor, if not unhelpful, measure of complex human behavioral processes.

Heritability is not a measure of the relative contribution of nature vis-à-vis nurture, nor is it the phenotypic variance explained by or because of genetic variance. Heritability is a correlative value. The evolutionary and developmental processes associated with human culture challenge the use of "heritability" for understanding human behavior.

Global importance of Indigenous Peoples, their lands, and knowledge systems for saving the world's primates from extinction.

Primates, represented by 521 species, are distributed across 91 countries primarily in the Neotropic, Afrotropic, and Indo-Malayan realms. Primates inhabit a wide range of habitats and play critical roles in sustaining healthy ecosystems that benefit human and nonhuman communities. Approximately 68% of primate species are threatened with extinction because of global pressures to convert their habitats for agricultural production and the extraction of natural resources. Here, we review the scientific literature and conduct a spatial analysis to assess the significance of Indigenous Peoples' lands in safeguarding primate biodiversity. We found that Indigenous Peoples' lands account for 30% of the primate range, and 71% of primate species inhabit these lands. As their range on these lands increases, primate species are less likely to be classified as threatened or have declining populations. Safeguarding Indigenous Peoples' lands, languages, and cultures represents our greatest chance to prevent the extinction of the world's primates.

An expanded "staying alive" theory (SAT) underplays complexity in Homo sapiens.

The target article takes myriad human female patterns and aligns them as a unit emerging from an expanded version of "staying alive" theory (SAT). Females and males do differ, however, to treat the complexity of human response to threats as an explicit, evolved sexually dimorphic package is not reflective of current knowledge regarding health, sex/gender, and behavior in Homo sapiens.

First survey on seroprevalence of Japanese encephalitis in long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis) in Bali, Indonesia.

Background and Aim: Japanese encephalitis (JE) is a zoonotic infectious inflammatory brain disease caused by the JE virus (JEV). Considerable research into the seroprevalence of JE in domestic animals has been conducted, but there have been no reports of its occurrence in wild animals, including long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis). This study aimed to estimate the seroprevalence of JEV infection and its determinants in long-tailed macaques in Bali and the prevalence of mosquito vectors. Materials and Methods: Blood samples (3 mL) were collected from a population of M. fascicularis (92 heads) inhabiting a small forest with irrigated rice field nearby (wetland area) in Ubud, Gianyar, and from two populations in dryland areas with no wet rice field (Uluwatu, Badung, and Nusa Penida, Bali Province, Indonesia). The collected sera were tested for antibodies against JEV using a commercially available enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay kit (qualitative monkey JE Immunoglobulin G antibody kit). The seropositivity of the antibodies was then compared based on different variables, namely, habitat type, age, and sex. Results: The seroprevalence of the JEV antibodies in all the samples tested was found to be 41.3%. The seropositivity of the monkey serum samples collected from the wetland area was 46.4%, which was higher than the seropositivity of the sera samples collected from the dried field areas (1.25%). Monkey sera collected from the wetland areas were 6.1 times (odds ratio [OR]: 6.1; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.71-51.5, p>0.05) more likely to be seropositive compared to the monkey sera collected from the dried field areas. Meanwhile, female monkeys were 1.79 times (OR: 1.79; 95% CI: 0.76-4.21; p>0.05) more likely to be seropositive to JEV than males. Similarly, juvenile monkeys were 2.38 times (OR: 2.38; 95% CI: 0.98-5.79); p>0.05) more likely to be seropositive against the JEV than adult monkeys. However, none of these differences achieved statistical significance. Regarding the JEV mosquito vector collection, more Culex mosquitoes were found in the samples from the wetland areas than from the dried field areas. Conclusion: The study confirms the existence of JEV infection in long-tailed macaques in Bali. There were patterned seropositivity differences based on habitat, age, and sex of the monkeys, but these were not significant. The possibility of monkeys as a JEV reservoir and the presence of the mosquitoes as the JEV vector are suggested but require more study to confirm.

Centering the relationship between structural racism and individual bias.

Cesario misrepresents or ignores data on real-world racist and sexist patterns and processes in an attempt to discredit the assumptions of implicit bias experimentation. His position stands in stark contradiction to substantive research across the social sciences recognizing the widespread, systematic, and structuring processes of racism and sexism. We argue for centering the relationship between structural racism and individual bias.

Cohort dominance rank and "robbing and bartering" among subadult male long-tailed macaques at Uluwatu, Bali.

Robbing and bartering is a habitual behavior among free-ranging long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis) at a single site in Bali, Indonesia. The behavior consists of three main elements: (1) a macaque takes an item from a human; (2) the macaque maintains possession of the item; then (3) the macaque releases or hands off the item after accepting a food offer from a human. In this paper, we analyze data on individual variation in robbing and bartering among subadult males in relation to dominance rank. Using focal animal sampling we collected 197 observation hours of data on 13 subadult males from two groups (6 from Celagi; 7 from Riting) at the Uluwatu temple site from May 2017 to March 2018, recording 44 exchanges of items for food from 92 total robberies following 176 total attempts. We also measured dominance rank using interaction data from our focal animals. Dominance rank was strongly positively correlated with robbery efficiency in Riting, but not Celagi, meaning that more dominant Riting subadult males exhibited fewer overall robbery attempts per successful robbery. We suggest the observed variation in robbing and bartering practices indicates there are crucial, yet still unexplored, social factors at play for individual robbing and bartering decisions.

Getting genetic ancestry right for science and society.

We must embrace a multidimensional, continuous view of ancestry and move away from continental ancestry categories.