An ‘unprecedented’ analysis underlines profound failure to study African genomes

It has become the geneticist’s version of, “What, me not inclusive? But I have a black friend!” In the case of modern studies of DNA, researchers called to task for studying mainly European populations often defend themselves by pointing out that they included some Yoruba (or Khoisan or Bantu or other African) DNA in their analysis, too.

Research presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) on Tuesday and Wednesday shows how “woefully inadequate” such tokenism is, said Dr. Neil Hanchard of Baylor College of Medicine, who