Gone for a long time... sorry.
Didn't mean to leave this for so long. My apologies.
I noticed when I'd got back that Chuck had got off on quite a tear about the scientific value of race and mentioned a number of examples... later on in the forum we got back to some old tried and trues like IQ. Let me address these seperately because I think Chuck's biz has more merit.
Chuck;
Look here guy, I wasn't saying it was a social construct. I agree that different people are different and that you can probably prove that they are. What I'm saying is that individual variation is probably wide enough to defeat any kind of standardized "race" test in the long run.
Forensic genetic testing in the US (of the type you're talking about) compares the DNA in question to several series of pre-tested individuals who supposedly represent normalized racial groups - the idea being that if enough people of a similar background are put together they will form a sort of racial average against which an individual can be tested to see if s/he belongs or not. This is somewhat different from the sort of DNA testing people usually think of which compares two individuals. As a result there is rather more risk of false results from the wide testing than from the individual one, because the very decision as to whether one person's genetic profile is enough like the average to fit them into a group is sort of a judgement call.
As for your chance of inheriting a tendency to have a disorder or be susceptible to a pathogen... that's great for groups, but the genetic background is made up of groups of INDIVIDUALS.
As an individual you're either susceptible to the pathogen or not... either you have the disorder, or you're a carrier, or you don't. You don't inherit a tendency; that's garbage. If you know what the specific allele is, then you can be tested for it. If you don't, you can't. If you come from a group of people that have a "tendency" to have a problem, which means that more of them than usual verifiably have the problem, then you should probably be tested for the problem. If you can't test for it, then I guess you're out of luck, and you can try and take preventative treatments or not as the apparent risk and your personal inclination dictates. However, it is perhaps helpful to note that in most hospitals genetic testing for a disorder is only routinely performed on people who have some ancestor with that disorder.
I categorically refuse to discuss the levels of testosterone or any other hormone in human beings. Much of the research related to hormone activity that I've been directed to in the past were studies of creatures like spotted hyenas. Generally these studies drew NO correspondence between the action of that hormone in the animal and its action within humans. Those correlations were made later in response articles, which generally contain no findings of their own and are conjectural rather than solid research.
Now, with respect to advantageous alleles becoming fixed in a relatively short time; that's nice, but all that it means is that once an allele has come into the pool, it'll tend to become fixed if it's advantageous and disappear if it's not. You have said nothing about the frequency with which new alleles (that is, viable ones with some kind of phenotypic expression that represents a selective advantage) appear spontaneously in populations. So let's drop that one, since all that it seems to say is that if you put two groups of people together they will quickly become the same.
Also, any fact or tendency that has been demonstrated in other organisms, be they fruit flies, plants, or green ankled flibber fish, does not necessarily (or even probably) commute to human beings. That's why, after all of our research into curing cancer in mice, we can now cure almost any kind of cancer... in mice. We're still kinda stuck with humans. I'm not criticising cancer research, mind you, only your present line of reasoning.
Ahem.
So, I'm not saying that all of these examples that you've mentioned don't relate to some kinds of physical phenomena, but rather that people's interpretation of the results can vary widely for the same physical occurrence (witness, for instance, the many things that serotonin is blamed for). It does not matter whether it is the fault of the scientists themselves or the giant mob of sociologists and cultural anthropologists who try to use each new scientific study to bolster their screwy pet theories; most of the science that we see in the news is vastly misinterpreted.
As such believing that genetic/racial profiling produces "true" results is foolish, because they only relate to statistical tendencies in the numbers that people choose to pay attention to;
Believing that a disorder is related to your background by anything other than isolated similar parentage is a bad idea, because the disorder itself is not passed on as a member of a group of traits - each allele is passed on individually, and so you might inherit the disorder but little else from your parent's phenotype;
Believing current conventional wisdom on human hormones is largely putting your faith in unproven sociological theory;
And believing that the population genetics of flies has anything to do with human physiology (as with Nature's "gay flies" article) is not a good idea unless you have some kind of supporting proof.
