User talk:Wobble/archive14

African IQ AfD

Just saw that although you explained your reasoning, you didn't put down a position (!vote) in your AfD [1]. You may wish to do so.--Ramdrake (talk) 15:45, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

mild to moderate mental retardation

I should add that my intention was to argue that a person with an IQ as low as 50-70, in the cases where their IQ is not the result of an underlying chromosomal or genetic abnormality, would not be obvious distinguishable unless you had a non-superficial conversation with them. There's nothing to keep them from doing lots of things that we value in people. But they would be almost entirely incapable of contributing to a modern economy. --Legalleft (talk) 07:39, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

This may give you a chuckle...

Found on the GeneXpression blog:

I believe that the caucasian IQ spread is wider than the east asian. The caucasian spread is about 15 standard deviations, the east asian about 10 SD. That means that although east asian average IQ is slightly higher, caucasians have a higher number of very high IQ's than east asians. This is why average IQ is misleading.

Or: no matter what, Whites are still smarter, but all wrapped up in pseudoscientific pretense (where's the evidence for his supposition?). Not sure if I should laugh or cry.--Ramdrake (talk) 15:15, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

The image gallery on the "Black people" page.

The only reason for which I removed the image of the Yolngu traditional dancer, that you added, is that I wanted to preserve the symmetry of the gallery, its rectangle shape. When I created the gallery, I thought of 12 people from different fields of activity, that had/have an important contribution to society, just to keep the gallery small and simple, but i guess another row could be added, meaning 4 people. Alexemanuel (talk) 17:36, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

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Re: English People

You know, that wasn't my line. Here was the original: -

>>> "Some of these more recent migrants have assumed a solely British identity, losing even knowledge of foreign ancestry, "

I just tried to change it to something that would make more sense. As for the other point. I don't see how changing origins to racial origins is racism.

The dictionary definition of race has as it's first entry

1. a group of persons related by common descent or heredity.

This is exactly what the section is discussing, so I don't see where the racism fits into all. It's just a more specific headline. No need to balk at the word 'racial' here whatever it's history is. (NovaTabula (talk) 20:13, 13 September 2008 (UTC))

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Sub-Roman Britain

Can I please ask you to take the dispute you have to the article's talk page if you feel the current content is wrong? Thanks. Doug Weller (talk) 10:55, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I've asked the other editor to as well now. His edit summaries are OTT. Doug Weller (talk) 13:03, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Minor comment. Going back and adding to/changing an edit on a talk page is not a terribly good idea because people may have read (and even replied to) the original before you change it. If you have written something you now disagree with, strike through it. If you want to add to or change something, do it in a new edit. I've ended up very confused before replying to something that got changed. Doug Weller (talk) 06:09, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

White people

Why do you refuse to allow example photos to be included in the white people article??? If you have any better sugestions please say but I cannot understand why you see the article as being better having no photos at all. Usergreatpower (talk) 17:42, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Um,the gallery was removed already by i believe a rogue admin/user, which i was in favor removin the gallery anyway but not without a disscusion first but it seems there are a few nordicist trying to enforce a new so called "EXEMPARY WHITE PEOPLE GALLERY"in other words take down the old gallery to pick new pics that are more in toe with nordicism, oh yeah and thanks a bunch for your support on the article talk being you knew that im a regular contributor to that article and not a problem editor--Wikiscribe (talk) 14:36, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes i am for having no gallery, but i thought it would be appropriate to give some time to discuss the matter first instead of the rush to remove even editor Ramdrake showed the same concern and he is a established editor that i have not always seen eye to eye with but he thought there was to much of a rush to remove ,i mean its not like it was vandalism we were parseing,i mean some of the complaints for the immidiate removal were kind of lame like it was slanderous to say the Indian women was white, also why is was so apprehensive was because the editors who were so hungry to take it down were than in turn suggesting doing the same thing that was done already pick arbitrary pictures but with the twist of only picking people who are "Exempary White"when people start making statements like that it gets hard to assume good faith and sounds like a nordicist view--Wikiscribe (talk) 15:29, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

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Language Use, Culture and Genetics in Wales

Here is what I was alluding to in the relation between genetic frequencies in Wales between populations which are predominantly ethnic Welsh (in the NW and SW) and that which has much more influence from other groups in SE Wales:

I am also curious about the accuracy of this map you created. According to your map, the frequency of "R1b" in Norfolk is over 50% yet according to the study, the AMH+1 frequency (which I know represents R1b) in Norfolk is only 37%. I do not know which of the other Haplogroups are part of R1b, but the only figure which would give R1b higher than 50% in Norfolk would be R1xR1a1, but I thought this resembled Haplogroup R1a. How can more than half of the sample from Norfolk (in your map) have R1b when this isn't mentioned in the study ? Your study makes it look like there is no part of England where R1b is less than half, is this accurate ?

Epf (talk) 17:22, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Rosalind Franklin

"Lynne Elkin's improvements to the article made yesterday

I think Lynne has made some very useful changes and additions to the REF article; I would hope that anyone who disagrees with any of them will with good reason discuss them here* before deleting/reverting?" [* on the Rosalind Franklin Discussion Page, that is.] Martin. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nitramrekcap (talk • contribs)

The edits were excellent, unlike some I could mention. Alun (talk) 14:51, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

I know they are "excellent", that's why I encouraged her to do them! I was thinking of you yesterday while I was in Swansea, WALES by the way. Do you know anything about Crick's letter to Monod from 1961 [below] which will have to be incorporated into the Francis Crick article?

1. ^ Crick’s 31 December 1961 letter to Jacques Monod was discovered in the Archives of the Pasteur Institute by Doris Zeller, then reprinted in Nature Correspondence 425, 15 on the 4th of September 2003.

Martin 91.110.135.22 (talk) 13:01, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Ashkenazi intelligence

I am having some problems with this article, care to have a look and say what you think?·Maunus·ƛ· 06:03, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

I had a quick read through. I'm not really familiar with this work, but the article seems to rely very heavily on a single study, and the hypothesis proposed by that study. What are the specific problems you are having? Some of the claims in the article seem to be close to a synthesis and there are examples of what appears to be some editors pov-pushing without citing sources. Here are wht I think are the more obvious problems that should be addressed:

• First sentence of the section "Psychometric findings"

I'd try to avoid weasel words, it would be good to find a review article about research into high Ashkenazi intelligence, that way we have a ready made synthesis of the available data, and of course we can't synthesise the work ourselves. If no review article exists then it would be better to cite specific studies. One thing we need to do is avoid citing primary sources. So I'd avoid just citing a paper that has a list of IQs by ethnicity that simply places the Ashkenazi results at the top, but that does not make any specific comments about this result, ideally papers that specifically attempt to address the reasons for high Ashkenazi test results would be preferable.

• Second paragraph in the section "Psychometric findings"

This whole paragraph appears to be unsourced, though it does give specific IQ scores from studies. Are these scores derived from "IQ and the wealth of nations"? I think if they are it should be explicity stated, this work is exceptionally controversial. On the other hand the fact that 50% of the population of Israel are of Ashkenazi descent should mean that Israel still has a relatively high mean IQ result, because these so called "high IQ genes" will be concentrated there in greater amounts than they are in say the UK. Ideally we need a source that uses the data from Israel to specifically refute the argument for a high proportion of "intelligence genes" in Ashkenazis.

• Cochran et al.

This paper seems to be the basis of the article. It does beg the question: does a single paper warrant a whole article? Is the paper specifcally notable? The paper doesn't seem to have been particularly well recieved. Eugenic theories are generally discredited, and we need to ask ourselves if a single paper, based on discredited eugenic ideas, deserves a whole article to itself? Or in other words just how notable is this?

The sentence that starts with "Some of these diseases" could be considered something of a synthesis. Do Cochran et al. specifically claim that these diseases are associated with high intelligence or with high neuronal connections? If not it looks suspiciously like trying to link two unrelated papers together to make a synthesis that supports a specific point of view. What we need is an overt claim by a reliable source that these diseases may have been selected for in Ashkenazi society in Europe because they contribute a high intelligence. On the other hand it is clear that individuals suffering from debilitating genetic diseases are unlikely to leave behind larger numbers of offspring than their healthy counterparts, even if they are more financially successful, unless of course heterozygote advantage has been postulated. It's far more likely that these diseases are sinly due to inbreeding depression, genetic bottleneck and genetic drift. On the whole the bulk of evidence will probably be against biological determinism, and the article should reflect this, rather than portraying both points of view as equal.

• Environment.

The article should at least be equally ballanced by environmental hypotheses. Do Ashkenazi people provide better and more stimulating environments for their children? What could be the reasons for this? Why do Ashkenazi people not perform so outstandingly in Israel? These are not given equal time in the article. It could also be mentioned that in the 1920s in the USA new Ashkenazi migrants were given "intelligence tests" and found to be much less "intelligent" than the "white" US population, it was one of the reasons for restrictions being placed in immigration from south and central Europe by the USA in the Immigration Act of 1924 and supported by Madison Grant. This is well historically documented by anthropologists, so how did Ashkenazi people go from being considered intellectually inferior a mere eighty years ago, to being considered an intellectual elite today? That's certainly not a genetic change.

• Sources

There appears to be a very high proportion of what I would consider fringe sources for the article. Richard Lynn, Charles Murray and The Bell Curve represent 50% of the sources cited, but I don't think any of these can be considered particularly reliable sources, they are more notable for their radical beliefs in biological determinism than for the quality of their work. If we include the Cochran paper, which seems to promote an eugenic point of view, then we have 67% of the sources as fringe science. Eugenics must be considered fringe science, and as such it should not be presented as anything like an academic consensus.

That would be the basis of my criticism of the article, but these sorts of articles are a magnet for pov-pushers, both those who want to support the genetic basis of super-intelligence for Ashkenazi people, and those trying to discredit it. I have been quite scarred by my participation in these sorts of articles, so I hope you don't mind if I don't get too heavily involved. All the best. Alun (talk) 12:27, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

A couple of other points. When a gene produces more than one effect, we say it is pleiotropic. If a gene that causes a serious genetic disease also causes a high intelligence, then it is incorrect to say that this is an eugenic effect. Obviously an environment that produces a population that contains a high rate of genetic disease cannot be said to be a healthy environment. Eugenics is predicated on the idea of a "natural" environment producing healthier individuals. Any environment that artificially prevented a sub-population from fully participating in society can't really be called "natural", and if this environment produced a disproportionately high number of individuals with severe genetic disease, then that's not an eugenic effect. There's also the question of selection, what's the evidence that there is selection at work? Why would people with genetic diseases be more likely to produce offspring? Is the rate of these diseases greater in Israel? If so why doesn't Israel display the same high rate of intelligence? These are serious questions, and any serious scholar should have investigated them. Alun (talk) 14:17, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

If no one speedy deletes it by Wednesday, could you put it up for deletion with a concise case? Thanks, Slrubenstein | Talk 16:47, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

The Speedy Delete template has been removed with the claim that non-notability is not sufficient grounds. Let's nominate it for deletion. Craft a concise and clear proposal and let me know, Slrubenstein | Talk 22:50, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

nor

I just made three proposals at WP:NOR - feel free to comment, Slrubenstein | Talk 01:06, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

FRANKLIN

• The People's Archive: Sir Aaron Klug - see part 2, stories 12/13/17/18 re. Rosalind Franklin and:

[2] Work at Birbeck and meeting REF (12)

[3] Work with REF (13)

[4] REF and the discovery of the structure of DNA. (17)

[5] REF's death and joining the MRC's LMB in Cambridge (18)

Martin 91.110.239.137 (talk) 20:26, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

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Hey

Hey mate, what does one mean by convalescent time of a haplogroup ? Hxseek (talk) 23:33, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

I've never heard of it. What context have you heard the phrase in? As a guess I might hazard that it has something to do with the time between one haplogroup being founded and one of it's sub clades being founded, e.g. the time between R1 being founded and R1b being founded. Or it might be the time between a haplogroup is founded and when it becomes established. Obviously each haplogroup is founded by a single man, for a long time only a few men will carry the mutation, it'll take time for the haplogroup to become well established (it might be that one very fertile man can pass the haplogroup on the many male children and establish it), and so not subject to easy extinction (genetic drift). That might be the convalescent time? I'm just guessing though. Let me know where you heard the term and I'll take a look. Alun (talk) 08:41, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

OK. Eg this article uses it. Sorry I meant to say coalescent. See under discussion and results for Haplogroup I1b [6].

Also RE: the genetic history of Europe, I agree with such proposals. I found the article by Dupanloup interesting. They use "Y chromosome binary markers". I presume that is different to the conventional 'named' Y chromosome haplogroups ? Hxseek (talk) 23:27, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Ok, got you. The coalescent time is an estimate of how long ago two Y chromosomes diverged (or to put it another way how long ago two haplogroups coalesce into a single haplogroup). So two chromosomes with a series of SNP mutations that are identical have a recent coalescent time, especially if they have very similar STR haplotypes. On the other hand the coalescent time of a Y chromosome with the M89 mutation (haplogroup F) and one without this mutation is much more ancient. When geneticists date these things it's based on a whole series of assumptions that may or may not be true. The most important assumption is the rate of mutation of DNA polymerase, but scientists also take things into account like how globally widespread the mutation is etc. For Y chromosomes we can know the order that mutations accrue along the DNA molecule (because there's no recombination), so we know the sequence that these mutations occurred in. So very old mutations have lots of sub-groups and are geographically widespread. If we again take the example of the M89 mutation that defines haplogroup F, this must be a relatively old mutation because it is the most common mutation in all non-African populations. The assumption is that this arose relatively soon after the initial AMH migration out of Africa ~50-100,000ybp. But it's still interesting to observe that in many non-African populations non-haplogroup F Y chromosoems still exist, indicating that there has either been recurrent migration out of (and back into) Africa (likely), or that this transition occurred long enough after the African migration that non-F haplogroups were already established (also possible). Whatever happened, the man who first carried this F mutation is the direct paternal line ancestor of the majority of the world's population. But we shouldn't get too excited, because there were many individual men alive when he was alive, also involved in non-African populations, who were not haplogroup F, who are still our ancestors, it's just that their Y chromosome haplogroups didn't survive, probably due to historical contingency, there's a very high extinction rate for Y chromosome haplogroups and it's dangerous to assume that because we can follow the migration routes of a few Y chromosome genetic markers, that this gives us a comprehensive view of how the world was populated and how different populations relate genetically to each other. There are likely to have been many more such migratory events that we simply do not know about. That's what I was trying to say to Jan, migration and gene flow are processes that are ongoing and have always been ongoing, they were not historical events that occurred a single time. Autosomal analyses are starting to indicate that we are all much more mixed up genetically than we might imagine from Y chromosome analyses.

BTW a binary marker is the traditional way that haplogroups are defined. It can be a bit confusing because there are technically two ways to describe a haplogroup. We can call it by it's name, say R1b, or we can call it by the mutation that defines it, in this case M343. At some point in the past DNA polymerase introduced an A into the DNA sequence of an R1 Y chromosome when it should have copied a C. Now there are two different R1 Y chromosomes, the one with this new A and the original that contains the original C. That event marks the distinction between R1 and R1b. We call the mutation M343 and chromosomes that have it R1b chromosomes, sometimes it's written R1b-M343. This is a binary polymorphism because either a chromosome has this mutation, or it does not have it, there are only two possibilities. Chromosomes that have it are R1b. Chromosomes that don't have it are all other chromosomes. Alun (talk) 07:19, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Cheers. So this paper Dupanloup et al. (2004) uses binary Y-chromosome markers, mtDNA and a few autosomal nuclear DNA loci. I am confused as to which Y-chr and mtDNA markers it actually uses ? Does it use the so-called Hg J2, I2, R1a, etc ?

The study chooses extant Near eastern peoples as representative of Neolitihic migrators, and Basques as European Palaeolithic representatives, and then attempts to quantify the proportionality of their relative contributions to modern Europeans. It seems to suggest, that when using admixture analusis, there is strong evidence for the Neolithic demic diffusion, with contributions of 80% in the Balkans to 20% in the British Isles. THis contrasts to the findings of Semino et al 2000, because he looks at isolated frequencies the major Y-ch haplogroups.

But does it truly represent 'contribution' or current similarities between geographically contiguous peoples? For, how do we know that the modern geographic make up of Near Eastern people really represents that of the Neolithic peoples. I.e. can we be sure that the Neolithic revolution even resulted in a demic diffusions within the Near East itself, let alone into Europe ? Hxseek (talk) 07:17, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Ah well, now you're asking a highly relevant question. It's all about the assumptions scientists use when they want to make an hypothesis. How do we know that Basque people represent a population isolate that can be assumed to be more representative of paleolithic Europe than other regions? Well we don't, it's an assumption, usually justified by claiming that (a) The Basque language has no known related languages. Because it's a language isolate many linguists think it may represent the remains of an ancient paleolithic language that was superceded in most of the rest of Europe by indo-European, and (b) that the Basques live in a very inaccessibly mountainous part of the world which means that it's population has not done much "mixing" with incomers into Europe over the millenia. Are these assumptions correct? ho knows. The same applies to the Near Eastern populations, we just don't know whether it's fair to assume that these represent a good source for a "parental" neolithic population. For example if one were to draw the most parsimonious conclusions from this paper, they are not necessarily about a neolithic demic diffusion, the conclusion would simply be that people in south-eastern Europe are more genetically like Near Eastern people, while those in south western Europe are most dissimilar to Near Eastern people. That's hardly "revolutionary", it's simply saying that people who live near each other are genetically more similar to each other than people that live a great distance from each other. What is interesting is that when we look at northern Europe, then we certainly see both western and eastern southern Europeans represented in the gene pool, so there is clearly more mixing going on in northern Europe, and this is probably a product of the migrations northwards that occurred during the paleolithic/neolithic. But the truth is that the sort of analyses that are done with autosomal genes can't really give us any time depth, so we can't know if the cline we see from south east to north west Europe is due to demic diffusion during the neolithic, or if it has been there longer, or if it is of more recent origin. Some scientists even think it's got nothing to do with demic diffusion, and that the cline is just as likely to exist with or without a demic diffusion during the neolithic (Currant and Excoffier (2005). This question of demic diffusion vs cultural diffusion is the biggest argument in European genetics. Basically Y chromosome and mtDNA seems to be saying that Europeans are mostly of paleolithic origin, autosomal research might indicate it's not that simple. On the other hand, the Y chromosome and mtDNA work is not that convincing because we know that it does not represent a fair sampling of our ancestors genes, we know that mtDNA and Y chromosome types are subject to genetic drift, what we don't know is how many lineages have been lost over the millenia. Some researchers believe that looking at ancient DNA might give us a different idea about how much the neolithic affected us, see Levy-Coffman (2006).

What I'm trying to say is that when we include the conclusions of any genetic research here in Wikipedia, we need to be careful that we note that these conclusions are based on the acceptance of the assumptions used by the researchers. To be fair, most researchers will acknowledge that their conclusions are highly dependent on the validity of their assumptions. Unfortunately many editors don't take these warnings into account, and simply accept the conclusions of the researchers as "fact". For example Dupanloupe et al. (2004) clearly write "Several tests suggest that probable departures from the admixture models, due to factors such as choice of the putative parental populations and more complex demographic scenarios, may have affected our main estimates only to a limited extent." They are obviously aware that the choice of their "ancestral" populations has a big effect on their results, and they clearly say that the ancestral populations are popularly assumed to be "correct" but that there's no proof for this.

one other thing that I forgot to mention about the article Genetic history of Europe, we also need to include information regarding Neanderthal and AMH hybridisation. There's currently a great deal of speculation about this. Most scientists really think the evidence supports no hybridisation between neanderthals and AMH, but it's also true that mtDNA is not the whole story. Recently there were a couple of nice papers that presented the results of sequencing Neanderthal genomic DNA. Oddly one seemed to suggest some hybridisation between AMH and neanderthals, while the other strongly rejected it. It looks like the DNA from the paper supporting hybridisation was probably contaminated with modern human DNA, hence it gave results that seemed to show that moderns and ancients have similar DNA. Shouldn't the article mention that it's human genetic history, rather than say the genetic history of all living things in Europe? Just a thought. Alun (talk) 10:53, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

So whilst Y-DNA and mtDNA may represent today's genetic lineage, they do not complrehensively reflect the true 'ancestry' becaue they only contain a few signatures, making it appear as if that Europeans are descended from a handful of Y-lineages. They do not truly reflect the total diversity suggested by autosomal DNA. Yet autosomal DNA cannot indicate the direction of flow, nor the age of any change. The question is: if there are only a few Y-DNA and mtDNA HGs, do they correspond to autosomal DNA/ Ie are they linked in any way? Obviously mtDNA are trasmitted maternally, but can the difference in patterns of autosomal DNA inheritnce be compared/ contrasted to y-DNA, in terms of heredity issues ?

Another issue is: if a Hg , eg Y-DNA J2, is dated to have originated in the Neolithic, it does not necessarily mean that it spread into Europe during this period., does it ?

I note that in the talk page of G.H.of E. you state, for eg, that the Tat C Hg may indicate bi-directional flow between Eurasian and North E.E. However, clearly the age estimate would suggest a net flow from Asia to Europe. i agree with all your suggestions re: the article Hxseek (talk) 05:33, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

• Yes you are right. What makes Y chromosomes and mtDNA so useful is also the same property that can make them misleading. They are useful because there is no recombination. That gives us the chance to see how mutations accrue along the molecules, we can infer the sequence that these mutations arose in. But because they don't recombine each acts as a single gene when it is transmitted from generation t generation, so what we are really seeing is not a comprehensive history of human migration and gene flow, we are effectively seeing the migration and flow of a set of alleles from a single gene. Obviously Y chromosomes are part of our nuclear genome and are similar to other chromosomes in many respects. The real difference is that the sort of information we can get from Y chromosomes and mtDNA is different, due to this property of non-recombination. So obviously Y chromosomes are linked to autosomes in the sense that their mode of inheritance is identical, but they contain a different sort of population genetic information.

I recently saw a paper that used a small fragment of the X chromosome that had a very low recombination rate (Santos-Lopes et al. (2007)). This means that we can think of this small region as a sort of mini non-recombining portion of the X chromosome, such that this portion of the X chromosome would also contain all of the information accrued along it's length, it effectively forms a lineage just like Y chromosomes and mtDNA. But it's better in one respect because it can be transmitted both paternally and maternally. The only drawback is that it was quite small (47kb), so the amount of information it can hold is quite limited (one Alu insertion and four microsatellites, all in complete linkage disequilibrium). Also because it's on the X chromosome it is not transmitted equally to male and female offspring, boys can only get it from their mum, but girls can get it from their mum or their dad. I suggest taking a good look at figure 1, it shows just how much sharing there is between human groups for this haplogroup block at least.

• As for haplogroup J2, I think the theory is that it spread to Europe during the neolithic. J2 probably arose in the Fertile Crescent and so could possibly be associated with the discovery of farming and it's spread.[7] Dating and spread of a haplogroup are usually estimated by the amont of variation within that haplogroup. Like this, the longer a haplogroup stays in a single region, then the more variation that accrues within that haplogroup. So we find that R1b is far more diverse in Spain than it is in Ireland. That probably means that it has been hanging around in Spain for many millenia with new variation developing all the time. On the othe rhand it has probably been in Ireland for only half that amount of time, and the founders in Ireland probably only represented a small sub-set of the Iberian variation that existed at the time of migration. So we see much less variation in Ireland, and so conclude that R1b has existed in Ireland for less time. We estimate that a haplogroup arises in the region where we see the most variation within that haplogroup. It used to be claimed that R1b arose in the Iberian LGM refuge, but we know that the greatest variation of R1b is actually in eastern Europe (though it doesn't exist there at particularly great rates). So now the theory is that R1b arose in eastern Europe, probably before the LGM and moved to Iberia to settle there over the LGM. Then it moved up to Ireland and Great Britain. It's younger there than it is in Iberia, and it's younger in Iberia than it is in eastern Europe. It is essential to remember that these date estimates are very sketchy and must always be treated with scepticism. On the other hand we do know the order that mutations have arisen on the Y chromosome, and that's probably more important that actual dates, better to think in terms of a range of possible dates. Personally I'm very, very wary of geneticists that try to equate any specific marker and/or migration with any specific cultural transition. It's simply not good academic practice to claim, as some have, that "the Kurgans introduced R1a1 into Europe", in fact I'd claim it's fraudulent to make such claims. Not only can we not possibly know this sort of thing (obviously cultural transitions are not always associated with migrations or population expansions), but it's quite incorrect to think that in the past all male members of a particular ethnic group belonged to the same haplogroup. Members of ethnic groups would have been as varied with regards to their haplogroups as they are today. What I mean is this, we know that J2 spread into Europe during the neolithic expansion, but we must also assume that other haplogroups also did, even some that were already present in Europe during the paleolithic. We must also not try to claim that we know that J2 carrying males introduced farming, we can't possibly know this. Archaeologists are the experts in ancient cultures, not geneticists, often the assumptions of geneticists regarding ancient cultures are just plain wrong. For example archaeologists in Britain have been very angry that geneticists have claimed "evidence" for mass "Anglo-Saxon" migration. Archaeologists have been arguing for years that no such mass migration occurred, geneticists, who have no real understanding of the archaeology, based their assumptions on very old, Victorian era theories of the origins of the English ethnic group and it's relationship to "Anglo-Saxons", a relationship that archaeologists had been deconstructing for some decades. Geneticists just came along in their arrogance and reinforced an antiquated and chauvinistic view of the population history of the British Isles, leading to absurd and dangerous headlines like "English and Welsh are races apart". To be fair Stephen Oppenheimer does his best to ameliorate the arrogance of the original researchers.

• Ah, I wasn't trying to claim that N1c (formerly N3) provides evidence for bi-directional gene flow. What I was trying to say is that gene flow is a process and not an event, the movement of the M46/Tat mutation into Europe from Central Asia is probably part of this process, or if you like, this is a single event within a dynamic process that has probably been ongoing for tens of millenia. It may not have been constantly ongoing for all this time, there are likely to have been periods where gene flow was restricted, e.g. during Ice Ages, but on the whole it is probably true that gene flow has been the norm rather than the exception. Generally I'm sceptical of much of the Y chromosome work. It's extremely biased in favour of the European population. Think about it for a minute, the overwhelming majority of named haplogroups belong to populations outside of Africa, and the vast majority of new markers that define sub-groups are derived from Europe. Look at the detail for the R1b haplogroup, they are down to R1b1b2a1b6c.[8] But we know that the vast majority of genetic diversity exists in Africa. If scientists were really interested in science rather than making money, they would be investigating African Y chromosomes first, these will have the greatest diversity, and will probably require the greatest number of branches on the tree, but they go neglected. That's because scientists are interested in making money from, mostly Americans, who want to know where they "come from". Besides, the fact is that Y chromosome analysis cannot tell anyone that, so it's really something of a confidence trick. Is it a coincidence that the majority of Eurasian haplogroups move westwards into Europe? Or is this simply because we haven't looked hard enough for movement the other way because there's no money to be made by more thoroughly investigating Asian (and other non-European) Y chromosomes? So much energy has been put into looking at European's ancestry, and so little into looking at the ancestry of other groups, we certainly have a massive ascertainment bias here. Take a look at McDonald's world haplogroup map, amongst Uyghurs there is a relatively high proportion of R1b, that indicates west-east gene flow. I wonder how much of this is missing from the biased sampling that is going on? I'm much more interested in population genetics that genealogy, but I think genealogy is biasing this work dangerously towards an eurocentric model. Alun (talk) 08:06, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Back to the binray markers. How do they differ to Y -STRs ? 202.59.27.214 (talk) 08:58, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Hey, did you forget to log in? No matter. So binary markers are basically Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms. That's pretty straight forward, it's when DNA polymerase inserts the wrong nucleotide, but it happens extremely rarely. DNA polymerase has an amazingly high fidelity, or else we would all be in extremely big trouble!!!

STRs on the other hand are Short tandem repeats, it's when a short sequence of DNA, say four nucleotides long is repeated in tandem for a given number of repeats. So if the sequence is say AGTC, it might be repeated three times like this AGTCAGTCAGTC, you can write this like (AGTC)₃, but usually these are simply given the name of the locus and the number of repeats. So for example let's take DYS388, that's the name of the locus, it repeats the sequence ATT. In human males this can vary anywhere between 10-16 repeats. So normally you'd just be told the number of repeats at a given locus e.g. I know that I have 14 repeats at DYS388. So the locus is DYS388 and my allele is 14. Here's a List of DYS markers. DYS markers are not therefore binary, the allele can be in many different states. Even when the allele mutates it is a stepwise mutation, it can lose a copy (i.e go from 14 to 13 in my case) or it can gain a copy (i.e. go from 14 to 15). Indeed it's possible for one of my sons to be DYS388 15 and another to be DYS388 13. Because of this Y-STR markers don't form very easily defined trees, it's not obvious what the ancestral state is for a Y-STR marker. A list of the allelic states for a series of Y-STR markers on a person's Y chromosome is called a haplotype (not a haplogroup. That's because we can't nest these mutations, and that's because the mutation is not unidirectional. Remember that an SNP mutation is effectively a unique event, it is extremely unlikely to be reversed by a random event, sometimes these are actually called Unique Event Polymorphisms (UEP). Y-STRs on the other hand are bidirectional, a mutation can reverse to it's original state. But the thing about STRs is that DNA polymerases get really confused when they encounter a series of short repeats, it's almost as if they lose count. Mistakes in copying STRs are far more common than mistakes in copying SNPs. The other thing about STRs is that they are always assumed to be a Neutral mutation. An SNP may not be neutral. Because Y-STRs have such a high mutation rate, and SNPs have such a low mutation rate they have different utilities. STRs are useful for genealogical research, it's likely that you are very closely related to someone who you share YSTR haplotype with, given enough loci (say 27). But you may not be closely related to someone who is in the same haplogroup as you. Likewise Y-STRs are useful for infering recent population genetic events, SNPs are better for events that occurred in deep time. One can get a good idea of their haplogroup by knowing their haplotype, Whit Athey had produced at least two excellent haplogroup predictors. Alun (talk) 16:35, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. It's very interesting stuff. So the Y-chromosome has both STR alleles and binary markers (ie the "named" haplogroups). If STR mutations are not unidirecitonal, how can they reliably be used for predicting recent genealogy. I.e. how can we know which are 'ancetral' STRs. If we used Y-STR analysis to search for a 'parent' or origin group, would we rather have to rely on something like an AMOVA to find which group lies 'in the middle' of a relatively homogeneous cluster ? Hxseek (talk) 08:06, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Well it's possible to infer relationships between haplotypes, but it's more difficult to know what the ancestral state is. We can calculate genetic distance between haplotypes and infer relationships between clusters of haplotypes. Actually phylogenetic trees inferred from haplotype data usually show a strong similarity to the trees derived from binary markers. So that's nice. Alun (talk) 14:25, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

A final thing. Eg the paper by Rosser et al, 2000 states "Principal components (PC) analysis of classical gene-frequency data reveals clines within Europe, and the first principal has been taken to support the demic diffusion hypothesiscomponent, which indeed has a Near Eastern focus". This idea has been taken from Cavalli-Sforza into correlating the genome of European's genome into 5 "principal components'. His work based on autosomal' DNA and protein markers (such as blood groups and HLA alleles), right ? Hxseek (talk) 05:23, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Right. Y chromosome and mtDNA analyses do show a movement of people into Europe from the Near East at about the time of the neolithic revolution. The question is the extent of the movement. Y chromosome and mtDNA originally indicated a small Near Eastern contribution. Hence all the journalistic articles about Europeans overwhelmingly being descended from a small number of men during the paleolithic.[9] that came out in about 2000. But autosomal data, such as those from Cavalli-Sforza and more recent work, indicate a much stronger Near Eastern contribution. The thing is that the autosomal data don't have any time depth. One explanation for the much closer genetic similarity between Europe and the Near East in autosomal markers compared to paternal or maternal line markers is a large demic diffusion during this time. But it's not the only explanation. As Current and Excoffier say, there are other explanations for this cline that may have nothing to do with a neolithic demic diffusion. There's also some conflict about the spread of indo-European languages. There is some idea that they spread during the neolithic and were brought by farmers. Linguists are much less likely to accept this idea than archaeologists and geneticists though. I have an open mind. I'm happy to accept that the demic diffusion model explains the cline, but I also accept that there could well be other explanations. I don't think it's important if demic diffusion is "true" or not, so much as the data are used fairly to support or not any given theory. It's interesting to speculate that the neolithic introduced a massive change in Europe. There must have been a huge population explosion. It's interesting to speculate how this explosion affected European population genetics. Alun (talk) 14:25, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

What do Current and Excofier suggest ? is there a link ? BTW, I am struggling to find good articles on mtDNA in Europeans. The sources from the G.H o. E article on wiki deal with more peripheral issues such as gene flow from Africa to Iberia. Do you know of any good, pan-European studies about mtDNA patterns ? Hxseek (talk) 04:25, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Current and Excofier don't really have any alternative hypothesis, their point is that the observed cline in Europe can be explained by means other than a demic diffusion during the neolithic. One of their claims is that a cline is equally likely when demic diffusion occurs or when cultural transmission occurs, so the cline doesn't necessarily support a demic diffusion of Middle Eastern peoples during the neolithic. Obviously they are not saying that no one came to Europe at all, some neolithic invaders must ahve come to introduce farming, and there is evidence of founding Y chromosome and mtDNA European lineages of probable Near Eastern origin at this time. So their argument is that the cline doesn't represent evidence of a neolithic demic diffusion. They think the cline (AFC in their paper) could even be a statistical artifact due to non random sampling of alleles (Ascertainment bias). Their model implies that if the paleolithic contribution to modern Europeans is less that 50% then it means that there must have been virtually no genetic contact between the paleolithic population and the neolithic population. Effectively they think that any reasonable scenario of genetic exchange between the paleolithic population and the neolithic incomers must result in an overwhelming paleolithic contribution. So Current and Excoffier are well in the paleolithic camp. Of course this again rests on the validity of their assumptions and model. Current and Eccoffier is quite a difficult paper to read, I've found it quite difficult to follow. The debate about neolithic demic diffusion vs. cultural diffusion is alive and well. Personally I tend to think that this could go either way, I don't think there's a scientific consensus one way or the other.

For mtDNA papers there's Richards et al (1996) (most mtDNA papers are a bit older) and McEvoy et al. (2004) is excellent, though mainly about the close genetic and cultural relationships between the various groups of the Atlantic Facade of Europe over an extended period of time.

MtDNA analyses tell us much by their lack of discrete geographic partitioning. One of the things about Y chromosomes is that they produce very clear geographic signals, but this can be misleading, it's probably because of things like a very reduced male effective population size compared to the female effective population size. That means that a few men produced lots of children, while most women produced some children. So we get reduced diversity in the male line markers. This has been put down to polygyny by men of high social rank, reducing the effective male gene pool. But because mtDNA analyses don't produce such nice and easily interpretable results they've been somewhat overshadowed by Y chromosome research in recent years. That's unfortunate because it gives a somewhat distorted view of the relationships between geographically close populations. In other words it can make us seem more genetically distinct than we really are. Alun (talk) 07:12, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes. I agree. I think we have a pretty good databank of reference papers and knowledge now to, at some point, update the GHoE page. By the way, please don;t delete this discussion, coz I am slowly going through all the referenced on it. BTW, both the links above go to the Richards paper. Cheers buddy Hxseek (talk) 09:41, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Ok, McEvoy link is now correct. I had both open in my browser and pasted the wrong URL. Appologies. Alun (talk) 10:21, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

That's great mate This article http://www.pnas.org/content/98/1/22.full provides an interesting explanation about genetic lineages. Eg it suggests that the genetic dating of an mtDNA does not necessarily equate with the timing of a population fission and movement. Ie if two lineages apparentyl split prior to the Neolithic period, it does not mean that the populations necessarily split prior to the Neolitihic. I don't 100 % understand the middle section experiment about the 10, 000 people population splitting. Maybe you can make better sense of it. Hxseek (talk) 23:52, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Basically they are saying that they think that there was a neolithic expansion and that mtDNA evidence supports it, even though in the past mtDNA evidence has been used to support a mainly mesolithic expansion. It's right of course that dating when a haplogroup arises doesn't tell us much about when populations divide or merge. mtDNA data are probably the more interesting that Y chromosomes data. Currently Y chromosome data are in vogue because they are geographically discrete and easy to interpret. MtDNA data are much more diverse and spread about, and probably show us just how much of our genes we share between human groups. Y chromosome data give a false sense of distinctiveness between populations. Nice paper though. We certainly have enough material to discuss both neolithic dd and neolithic cd. We can also discuss mtDNA and Y chromosome data and what they tell us about population movements. There are also some papers that do clustering analyses on DNA from Europe, and a couple that do PC analysis on data from Europe. These two sets disagree with each other. There's definitely enough material for a far better article than we have now. Alun (talk) 09:42, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Indeed. Well done Hxseek (talk) 23:58, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Greetings. I thought i'd exercise the interpolated data on the Neolithic Europe, Genes section. When you have some spare time, feel free to check it out. I'd welcome your opinion Hxseek (talk) 11:39, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

I finally got around to reading your series of edits. Very nice, gives a good broad overview of the evidence for and against a neolithic mass migration. I might do a bit of a copy edit in an attempt to precis it down a bit, and maybe include a few more cites, depends if I get time. It occurred to me that this and this might be of some use here? They are based on the maps inside the front and back covers of Oppenhiemer's book Origins of the British. My Wiki time is very restricted at present, and may be for some time. I have been looking at your maps and think they are excellent. I've had a go at making some maps for Wikipedia, but my artistic skills are non-existent, I usually simply add a few pie diagrams to maps and leave it at that. One thing I am thinking about at the moment is producing an animation of Y chromosome haplogroup movements over time. This could show where and when new haplogroups arise, and where they migrate to. I'm still thinking about this, but was inspired by this. I've never done any animation before, so I'm learning how to do that as well. I found that I can generate .gif animations using The Gimp (originally I was making Scalable Vector Graphics images using Inkscape). I've had a go at making a simple animation that explains how mutations define haplogroups in mtDNA and Y chromosomes. I wondered what you though of this little project? I appreciate your opinion. Cheers mate. Alun (talk) 07:39, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, i know its the busy time of the year. I might have a go of making some Oppenheimer-like maps too. unfortunately, using paint.net is a computer-literate i get, lol. but you're little animation looks cool.

PS: I should include the levy-coffman paper too; 'we are not our ancestors'.

Hxseek (talk) 23:08, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

race

I liked this comments a lot. Do you think these views are already adequately expressed in the article itself? Is there anything from this comment that can be cut and pasted into the article itself to constructive effect? Slrubenstein | Talk 15:57, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia Weekly Episode 66

Hey! Wikipedia Weekly Episode 66: Searching High and Low has been released. You can listen and comment at the episode's page and, as always, listen to all of the past episodes at wikipediaweekly.org. WODUPbot 07:58, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

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Please Don't

Please don't revert my edits and tell me I have an obsession with Marilyn Monroe simply because they are one of the people in the pictures I added to the White people article. The article was devoid of pictures of the very subject which it is supposed to be about, hence I felt the need to add some. The fact I chose which ones were added is a simple fact of no one else has been bothered to add any examples, mainly because people like you have pressured them not to contribute because of a few editors' sensitivities over who exactly is white, hence I added pictures of people who are undisputably white, and so resolving the dispute. Lastly, I see no reason why my contributions to articles should be held accountable to you, so please don't try state they are. P.S. Rather than spending your efforts reverting contributions by editors maybe you could contribute images to the article which you see preferable, instead of leaving it without examples. Usergreatpower (talk) 06:48, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Welsh Scientists

Any chance of you looking at a list of Welsh contributors to science for me please? Did you know for example that Sir John Maddox, husband of Brenda Maddox was born in SWANSEA?

R.S.V.P.!

Martin 91.110.229.4 (talk) 16:35, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

If you like I will, though I'm no authority on Welsh scientists. I didn't even know that Alfred Russel Wallace was born in Wales until quite recently, though I don't think that this necessarily qualifies him as Welsh. Alun (talk) 06:06, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Alun, I have passed on Wallace for starters and will let you know the reaction from Rhodri!

Martin 91.110.227.82 (talk) 21:42, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia Weekly Episode 67

Hey! Wikipedia Weekly Episode 67: Fundraising Interview has been released. You can listen and comment at the episode's page and, as always, listen to all of the past episodes at wikipediaweekly.org. WODUPbot 06:57, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

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Perutz letters re Rosalind Franklin

Regarding the recent reversions, I agree that the content is not viable as written. However, personal letters can be considered verifiable even though they aren't published in the traditional sense. However-however, they can only be used to support their individual content. So I agree with your reversions, but for an even more important reason: "he felt the need to [...] answer them all" (cited to the collection of letters, emphasis mine) is WP:SYNTH and WP:OR. Would need specific letter in which he (or some scholar) documents this reasoning/analysis of his actions. DMacks (talk) 12:40, 15 December 2008 (UTC)