Managed to log in, always a good feeling. Iain and I have discussed these matters quite frequently through the years and we often disagree in a good-humoured way. It's not long ago he tried to convince me Mr L151 sailed in an open boat from the Volga across the Baltic Sea.?
Having just finished my first novel, I have now started writing my own phylogenetics book, which is how 75% of the the men born in Northern/Western Europe are descended on the paternal line from 3 men who lived around 3000 BC. First stop is of course the vast expansion of L151 from the Elbe, how did Mr L151 get there, where did his descendants? go and how did they become Beakerised, why should he have such an enormous advantage over the other 12 million men or so alive in Europe at the end of the Neolithic??
I haven't been through Iain's piece yet but a few points come immediately to mind
- I think it's a mistake to call our work "pseudoscience". As long as it is said people will believe it. One might just as well call the whole of phylogeography pseudoscience - it collects heavily biased sparse data based on pet theories, uses doubtful uncalibrated methods and has produced more totally wrong published papers over 15 years than you can shake a stick at. You wont hear any of them calling their work pseudoscience.
- I have never had a problem with the administrative data from FTDNA we use. Through a good part of my (day) career I have worked extensively with administrative data. got results no-one else could and loved it. You just discard the inconsistent, weight for collection bias and voila. It is true that positivist researchers hate admin data, but so what.??
- in particular the USA data doesnt bother me. Sure, when they ran out of space in Europe they took over the new world but so what, it's just more space. Yes, Virginia/NC colonial data is useless but I just mark it or ignore it. I compare all those who have said "Unknown", "USA" or "Great Britain", look at the distributions and they are always pretty much identical.?
- what does bother me a lot more is the heavy Jewish bias. For example, I have been told there is no native Romanian data at all, it's all Jewish. You can see it everywhere throughout the timelines. It's very difficult to correct for and makes a mess out of East-Central Europe, J, E, and even R haplogroups.
In general I have opposed the idea of giving me "Advanced" permission. From the start I have been concerned about the legal implications, you might be accused of all sorts of things. So far so good; there have been no cases, but nevertheless...
Best to all, Season''s Greetings
Joe Flood
