<p>It’s true that most of the top sumo wrestlers <em>train</em> in Japan, where the big sumo money is, but many of the top champions come from places other than Japan and/or Asia - Eastern Europe and Polynesia being a particular sumo hotbeds. The point that was being refuted is that Asians are somehow not good at contact sports. Japanese and other Asian sumo wrestlers enage in a very high degree of sporting contact and do just fine whether wrestling their fellow Asians or non-Asians:</p>
<p>To make an example of how competitive of other races in contact sports other than asians: Sumo wrestling is less popular in USA than Football in Japan. But we produced Sumo wrestling champions nontheless. Did Japan or other East Asian countries ever produce a starter of NFL championship team? In fact, there is no East Asian starter in any NFL team. To do well, East Asians need strategy, tactics and technique to offset their physical weakness. The bone study in the article I provided is actually one of the many studies demonstrating lower bone density and thinner cortex of long bones in East Asian. It is genetics.</p>
<p>There’s probably a reason why this guy is ‘harvardfan’ not ‘harvardstudent’ :P</p>
<p>All kidding aside, this is a great achievement for any basketball player. Let’s not discount it using racism/any other -ism to justify pettiness.</p>
<p>As a Lakers fan, I still find this very exiting. Especially his Asian ethnicity and elite Harvard background–Lin is definitely an anomaly. I wish him the best and wonder how much he will excel given success in the summer league. </p>
<p>Asians do succeed in sports, its just not stressed in the culture. </p>
<p>what’s with the racist posts against Asians ?</p>
<p>ronpaulftw: boxing is more a technique than force. Asians have quickness. They may do well in lightweight boxing. But they seldom do well in heavy weight category. </p>
<p>To those who like to dismiss science evidences that are not politically correct, you could choose to be a willful ignorance. It is your choice. There are plenty of other studies there corroborating the results in the article.</p>
<p>Not that I agree with harvardfan, but no one is talking about “superiority” or “inferiority” here. And you provided no evidence to suggest that harvardfan’s evidence is “misused,” other than your own assertion that it is. Weak argument.</p>
<p>Ron: The bone study implicates that Asian bones sustain less stress. Such vulnerability will be magnified in bigger impact force such as heavy weight boxing or MMA whatever. It explains why Asians do OK in light weight but not in heavy weight fighting. In contact sport where there is no limit in bodyweight, Asians can be easily out classed.</p>
<p>Sure he is. Read his posts. He is saying that Asians are physically inferior to other races - weaker and unable to stand the stress of contact sports.</p>
<p>He misuses science by citing some nebulous “scientific” studies but provides no references for the original studies so that we may judge their merit and decide for ourselves whether they actually support his assertions. He provides only a link to a pay site log-in. He claims there are many other studies proving his racist assertions but provides no evidence for this.</p>
<p>The sorry list of “scientific” studies purporting to prove one race better or worse than the others is a very shameful episode in the history of science. The results of this sort of junk science and pseudo-science have been used for generations to oppress people and place artificial limits on their prospects and their place in society. And it will be a sad day when Harvard or Harvard people promote this sort of thinking.</p>
<p>I’m not an Asian and thus not the target of this particular notion, but I can still tell when someone has made up their mind in advance about a whole race - the very definition of racial prejudice. And it’s not pretty.</p>
<p>I wish that everyone would jus tbe happy that Harvard produced a Star Athlete heading to the NBA instead of talking about race. Honestly, it seems thats what everything in CC comes down to–if its not AA its oversimplified generalities made about races. Why cant we just accept that individuals are individuals and EVERY race has SEVERAL gifted individuals?
~pax</p>
<p>Am I not supposed to be able to read the article without having to pay $32 for it? </p>
<p>I can’t locate exactly how adjustments were made in age, bone length and body weight, so I will question the compete accuracy of these results. In my understanding, these results are in context of “old age” as evidenced by the first sentence “The structural basis of racial and sex differences in femoral neck (FN) fragility in old age.” Also, are you insinuating that results compiled from 829 “Healthy Chinese” are supposed to apply to all 1.6 Billion “East Asians”? And results no less, which are limited in scope to where the hip meets the femur, are supposed to doom the future NBA career of Lin? Um, I think not.</p>
<p>I say again, props to Lin for making the NBA. There are many many more Summer League players looking for any sort of pro career, be it D-league or overseas. As a member of the Harvard family I wish him the best, I just fear that he will fall prey to obscurity that befalls many a player in the NBA.</p>
<p>Crimsonfuture: I am glad that you try to dig into the article. You need subscription to get into the article from the web. I advise you to go to a Medical School library nearby and to analyze the original data from the paper. The analyses in the paper are age and sex adjusted. The reason for focusing the analysis on femural neck is because it is the most vulnerable segment of the bone. It is a population survey analysis (sampling). Here are some more readings for you on this issue:</p>
<p>Walker, Marcella D; Novotny, Rachel; Bilezikian, John P; Weaver, Connie M. Race and diet interactions in the acquisition, maintenance, and loss of bone. J Nutr 138: 1256S-60S, 2008.</p>
<p>A.J. Sun • S. Heshka • S.B. Heymsfield • J. Wang • R.N. Pierson Jr. • D. Gallagher. Is there an association between skeletal muscle mass and bone mineral density among African-American, Asian-American, and European-American women? Acta Diabetol 40 Suppl 1 S309-13, 2003.</p>
<p>M. A. Marquez, L. J. Melton, III, J. M. Muhs, C. S. Crowson, A. Tosomeen, M. K. O’Connor, W. M. O’Fallon and B. L. Riggs. Bone Density in an Immigrant Population from Southeast Asia. Osteoporos Int 12:595–604, 2001.</p>
<p>To those accusing my comment racism, I am no more racist than Obama to black or Sotomayor to hispanic, since I am an ethnic East Asian. Areal low BMD in Asians was found in 50’, way before my time. I cannot take that credit. </p>
<p>If Lin succeeds in NBA, it is not because of his ethnicity but in spite of it. This concludes my involvement in this thread.</p>
<p>^^This kind of nonsense is exactly the sort of misuse of science in the service of racism that I’m talking about. I looked up these papers and all three of them deal with bone mineral density (BMD) as a risk factor for fractures in the event osteoprosis develops - a disease primarily of women past the age of menopause. They say very little about men and absolutely nothing about the fitness of young Asian men for a career in the NBA.</p>
<p>Indeed, the paper by Walker. et al specifically makes the point that even though the BMDs are on avarage lower in Asian women, they actually suffer fewer fractures than whites, indicating that this measurement that Harvardfan is putting so much store by is actually a very poor predictor of actual bone strength in the real world. Here is the relevant quote from the Walker paper:</p>
<p>“For example, despite low bone density, Asian (25) and Asian-American (23,26) individuals have relatively low rates of hip fracture, while vertebral fracture rates in most studies are similar to that of American white populations (27,28). Recent data from the National Osteoporosis Risk Factor Assessment study also indicate that Asian and African American women, 2 groups with markedly different BMD, share a relatively low risk of forearm osteoporotic fractures compared with American white, Hispanic, and Native American women (3).” </p>
<p>I don’t know whether Jeremy Lin can make it in the NBA or not. But if he can’t it won’t be because he can’t play a contact sport very well because elderly Asian women have lower bone readings that don’t correspond very well to their actual bone strength.</p>