> And the next step after finding a correlation with race

No one is studying genetics and heritibility of traits using race. It's an outdated model that is broken. We look directly at genes now.

> That's irrelevant.

It's not. You claimed species is a social construct. And then can't provide any categories constructed by society.

> you are assigning meaning to genetic similarity

The only meaning I'm assigning is that we have proven cause and effect with genes and traits. It's simply how things really work. We know that genes result in traits. We can point out the exact genes that make someone tall in a specific genetic population. <-- That's important.

Now let's reverse that to contrast it with a social construct. A social construct would be calling all tall people a grouping. The tall race. And that's scientifically wrong. Because we already know that the genes for being tall in one genetic population can be different from the genes for being tall in another genetic population. The tall people grouping was a good first attempt. But it's a broken model once you have better tools and can look at reality and true cause and effect. Now we can correctly group people: tall people with the X set of genes - common in Norway. And tall people with the Y set of genes - common in central China. Why would you go back to the broken model of saying all tall people should be grouped together as one race when you can see that the cause for tallness is unrelated between the groups? That wouldn't make any sense to insist on a grouping that does not reflect reality.

> If species were truly a natural kind there would be no exceptions.

There are exceptions to which methodologies can help us identify species. The methodology is still based in biology, even if there are exceptions. The methodology does not involve society deciding what is and is not a species. Just because a scientific methodology has exceptions to when it is useful does not prove that it is not rigorous or not based in biology.

> So you're claiming, "an example of this specific political influence doesn't exist in the sciences, therefore political influence doesn't exist in the sciences". Is that your argument?

No that's not my argument. My argument is that you can't show where politics and ideology have resulted in miscategorization of species. Because species, unlike race, is not a social construct and society has no or little influence over how scientists categorize species.

With race it's the opposite. You could come up with a massive list of where someone's race has been decided due to politics, ideology, and power dynamics, and where the underlying biology was never considered for even a second.

You cannot show the same for species. People who categorize species are very interested in the biology and will fix a wrong categorization given better information.

> And yet, plenty of correlations have been found.

So what? Correlation is not causation. That's a fundamental basis of science. We know what causes certain traits in humans. We can look directly at the genes. It's not that "racial studies should be allowed". What you seem to be missing is that we are actually studying genetic populations, genes, and what causes certain traits. We are just using a far better and more accurate model than race. The better model can prove causation. Race can't. Why would you use the broken model for science when you have a better one? Scientists don't use race not because they aren't allowed. They don't use race because it's a wildly inaccurate grouping that was decided by society. Society continues to use it because it is useful to society. Often in bad ways, but still useful.