# Contested concept: spectrum

_**What you are reading**: one contested-concept page in Deliberus's deliberation graph. Deliberus maps human reasoning — including claims that are contested, mistaken, or extreme — so that disagreement can be examined precisely. A claim's presence here is not an endorsement: the graph records that someone argued it, how it connects to other reasoning, and how far scrutiny has gotten. The metadata on this page describes the state of that scrutiny, not the truth of the claim._

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- **Contestedness**: semantic
- **Diagnosis**: This masks a disagreement over whether human variation is best represented as a smooth, bell-curve distribution (spectrum) or a mixture of distinct, overlapping groups (biotypes). If it's a 'methodological artifact,' the spectrum is an illusion; if it's 'real,' the biotype theory is false.
- **Canonical**: `/concept/spectrum` (data: `/concept/spectrum.json`)

## Senses in use
- **A continuous, noisy distribution that appears smooth only because distinct groups are measured together (a methodological artifact).** — used in 2 claim(s)
- **A genuine, continuous genetic model of human variation where traits blend into one another without discrete biological breaks.** — used in 2 claim(s)

## Claims using this term
- [A purely continuous genetic model of human variation would predict more mixing between biological groups than is currently observed.](/claim/claim_588a83102415.md) _(sense: A genuine, continuous genetic model of human variation where traits blend into one another without discrete biological breaks.)_
- [Humanity may consist of at least two distinct, heritable biotypes that are currently being measured as a single group, which creates the il…](/claim/claim_8d089e63007c.md) _(sense: A continuous, noisy distribution that appears smooth only because distinct groups are measured together (a methodological artifact).)_
- [A purely continuous genetic model of human variation would predict a significantly higher degree of independent mixing and assortment of bi…](/claim/claim_c4357baaaeed.md) _(sense: A continuous, noisy distribution that appears smooth only because distinct groups are measured together (a methodological artifact).)_
- [The scientific model treating humanity as a single, continuous spectrum of traits is a methodological artifact resulting from the aggregate…](/claim/claim_cb21b4c641fc.md) _(sense: A genuine, continuous genetic model of human variation where traits blend into one another without discrete biological breaks.)_