Diversity in psychiatric genetics is needed to achieve unbiased science

Over the past 5 years, there has been a heightened emphasis on addressing racism and discrimination and enhancing diversity in nearly all human endeavors. A series of cataclysmic events shone a spotlight on racial injustice and the need for anti-racist policies in all spheres of life, including scientific and biomedical research. This symposium begins with a historiographic account of geographic ancestries and their relation to racial categories. Modern advances in molecular genetics, population genetics, and archeology over the past 30 years have focused on the genetic features of geographic ancestry to conclusively demonstrate that there is no biological or genetic basis to race. Science has been used and misused to justify racist ideologies. Indeed, race categories are a purely social construct contrived by Western colonial powers, which were endorsed by prominent scientists. In the second presentation, we report on monumental efforts to build diverse samples for psychiatric neurogenetics research by ENIGMA and other international groups focused on collecting samples in India, Pakistan, Japan, Korea, Iran, and many other underrepresented ancestries. In the third presentation, we focus on transformational changes in sampling diverse populations throughout Africa by H3Africa. The final presentation will showcase capacity-building efforts to develop a cadre of diverse scientists through the Global Initiative for Neuropsychiatric Genetics Education in Research (GINGER). This program and other similar programs exemplify the burgeoning efforts to train a diverse new generation of neuroscientists who can have a seat at the table, address the legacy of underrepresentation, and promote the study of diverse populations. While objectivity and lack of bias is a central dogma of science, lack of diversity creates a biased sample, which means the resulting inferences reflect a distorted version of the truth. Adherence to scientific tenets of objectivity demands an abiding commitment to observations in diverse ancestries that reflect the full range of human biology.