Thread by @crimkadid

The position of European populations onto a genetic PCA mostly conforms to common sense racelore, but a major exception is that two populations that are usually lumped into the "Northwest" category but don't deserve to be: Austrians and Finns. gen3553.pagesperso-orange.fr/ADN/K15.htm

Depending on the PCA you use Austrians are either about halfway between Hungarians and other Germans or possibly closer to the Hungarians. Recent East European ancestry is very common: Schwarzenegger's mom had the Czech name Jadrny, Christoph Waltz's mom was named Urbanicic

While Austrians could be argued to be sort of NW European mulattoes, Finns clearly do not belong in the cool kids' club and yet here the public disconnect is really striking: even 23andme labels Finns as NW European.

It turns out the social construction of race is real and even 23andMe researchers are susceptible to ignore PCAs in favor of common man definitions of genetic clusters. Hence, Finns are mistakenly classified with the English and Germans because they are also competent.

You know what's funny, though? In the one way in which NW Europeans are most distinctive, their lactose tolerance, Austrians and (especially Finns) appear to strikingly different from their East European neighbors in a NW direction. These figure represent lactose malabsorption