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Maps

Please free to edit any info you see missing (or tell me if you want me to do it), I used common stats from DNA studies. Its not 100% precise (afterall these are just samples) it just gives a general idea, I usually use +10% +20%. I prefer if we use the same map & update data each time we get a new study.Cadenas2008 (talk) 04:43, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

I usually spend update the aps with any new study that comes up (not original research!). I don't like adding all the studies as source because they make the map cluttered.

This is for R1a

. Cadenas2008 (talk) 08:01, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Hello, I hope the two of you don't mind me jumping in here. I am also very interested in this subject. I respect the comment very much that contour maps make assumptions. But (as you say) this includes all contour maps in the literature. Obviously contour maps are a standard tool for this type of subject matter, so in your opinion when can they ever be acceptable? On the other hand, I could raise a specific example about your concern: the R1a map contours end up putting a high population centre right through the Himalayas. It is obvious why a computer program would do this base on the articles which exist. It is also obviously wrong. It is a bigger assumption than usual. Perhaps my more general question would be better .--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:32, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Hi Andrew & Wobble,

That 50% was supposed to be Tajik-Kyrgiz-Kashmir a region with ~+50% R1a frequency (North Afghanistan 68%, Tajiks 64% & Kyrgiz 64% Wells et al.) (Kashmir 72% Sharma et al.) (Pashtuns 45% Firasat et al.)

I am not satisfied with the way it looks either...I am planning to make an updated version. If you think you can improve the map or make a more detailed map please go ahead. Just make sure there is an R1a map :) Cadenas2008 (talk) 05:40, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

I certainly do not claim to have the skills at the time. I see what you mean now about the 50% area. So this means the Ganges is not included, which I believe also has a high concentration. I think you get my general point about things like mountain ranges and valleys though. I realize this is an inherent difficulty of course.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:49, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Andrew I think I need to clarify what I said. I'm not concerned with contour maps per se. I'm concerned with original research. You ask when can contour maps be justified? It's obvious that they can be justified when a reliable source uses them. We can then redraw the map from the source (being careful to comply with any copyright law) and cite the source. We're not concerned that the reliable source might be "wrong", Misplaced Pages is concerned with verifiability not truth, remember.

(Warning: an old saw.) I always understand this as a practical rule, and not a statement of intentions. The most important rule is to make Misplaced Pages better, right? So if you make Misplaced Pages wrong, you break that rule. Verifiability is a good rule if it is seen that way, and not as an end in itself. Anyway, down to practical stuff, I agree that copying a published contour map gives concerns for copyright reasons, and making your own gives concerns for Verifiability reasons (because of the filling of gaps where there is no data, which is also a problem in published articles, but anyway...). Is this a correct statement of your position?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:00, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

No I think you are wrong about verifiability, the very first sentence of the policy states explicitly "The threshold for inclusion in Misplaced Pages is verifiability, not truth—that is, whether readers are able to check that material added to Misplaced Pages has already been published by a reliable source, not whether we think it is true" I think that couldn't be any clearer. Verifiability is about citing sources, sources give different points of view. The way we write is to provide all relevant points of view and verify them, this leads automatically to a neutral point of view. The reason it's not about truth is because Misplaced Pages doesn't recognise the truth, it only recognises that different points of view exist, and that we should include all of those points of view and allow the reader to form their own judgment. I have certainly included information in Misplaced Pages that I believe is "wrong", but as long as we say who's point of view we are giving, and also provide the opposing points of view, then we get neutrality. More importantly we're not here to engage in original research, we're an encyclopaedia, that means we try to provide the points of view of reliable experts in any given field, we are not here to conduct our own research, or give our own opinions or points of view. I don't think there is any problem with re-drawing maps derived from published material, I don't think that is an infringement of copyright, as long as the re-drawn maps are not just reproductions of the originals. If they are different enough in artistic style, but convey the same information, then I think that's fine wrt copyright. My only concern is with OR. But then I've already said that. Alun (talk) 19:37, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

OK, I'll philosophize, on the grounds that it is not even all that relevant to the practicalities here anyway, and I find it an important subject. "Threshold" is not the same as "aim", so the sentence you quote does not disagree with what I said. And saying that Misplaced Pages tries to report different opinions means it is logically impossible that Misplaced Pages is uninterested in the truth. It must be interested in the truth about different opinions, right? How could Misplaced Pages be so worried about defining what types of verifications which are best, if there was no higher goal than mere verification. It is clear truth, or call it quality, is the aim behind the rule of thumb of verifiability? But OTOH, I think it is fair to say that this is a discussion which will always exist on Misplaced Pages while it is recognizable. It should be argued over and over from both sides so that everyone keeps thinking about the balancing act being performed. I do not know enough about copyright of maps to address what you say about it.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:43, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes I think it's important as well. I especially think it's important to have frank discussions about these things, they serve to clarify our understanding. Of course threshold is not the same as aim, but that's irrelevant. I want to include maps that have been properly verified, that is we can say that "these data come from this source" and anyone can go to that source, look at it and see that the maps are based on reliable data. That's verifiability. If the data are not verifiable, then we can never know if they are the product of OR or not? They are not reliable. The reason we say "verifiability not truth" is because we are here to discuss what experts in any given subject say, and not discuss the opinions of editors. Likewise we have a reliable sources guideline.

Up to there I agree. And in practice that is most important. Your definition of truth is really a theoretical problem (like any definition of truth), as shown by the humorous article you referred to. Claiming to have the truth is problematic, but aiming at the truth is what verifiability is all about. To try to get to the truth is to try to get to what is most convincing, but the humorous article you refer to takes the cases of someone who sees it as something else which I would feel the same way about. So when you say "truth does not come into it" fine, if you only mean it in this limited respect. But I would see it as a word game to go too far beyond that, because everything you just said shows that truth, or at least the attempt to be closer to truth than mistake, "comes into it". How can you define terms above like "reliable data" without such a concept as truth? How can you define an "expert"? The way you define verifiability and truth are according to a jargon which is evolving on Misplaced Pages and getting further and further from normal English. (Which is not to say that I am against that jargon. It is useful like any jargon.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 23:21, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

How do you figure the truth is always "most convincing"? Who decides what is most convincing? I don't think that's a very convincing point of view. When we look at some of the mainstream theories in theoretical physics they don't look very convincing at all to the layperson, most people simply can't get their head around things like wave particle duality, and maybe there is no such thing, possibly this is just a crude model to try to explain something complex and it will be replaced with a better model sometime in the future. That doesn't make it "the truth".

I agree to here. Except that you can go beyond just saying that a very complicated subject might not be convincing to a layperson when discussed by an expert. Lay people and experts are people who know more or less about something. Lay people can become experts sometimes. And so on.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:42, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Wel all experts were lay people at some pint in time. The point is we don't accept that someone is an expert simply because that person asserts their expertise. We demand a standard of expertise that includes publication in a mainstream source that has at least some credibility. This usually demands some fact checking, such as an academic journal that is peer reviewed, or publication in a book that is published by a credible publisher. You can't simply claim ssomeone is a expert simply because they claim it. For anyone to be considered an expert on Misplaced Pages they need to be published in a reliable source. Alun (talk) 21:21, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Claiming that what we write is "the truth" is like denying that our understanding of the universe will ever improve, it denies progress. I don't think there is any "truth".

If you see what I wrote before, I have no problem about the humourus article which is against claiming to possess the truth. What I said is that the attempt to get close to the truth, or call it quality, or call it verifiability, is what Misplaced Pages is about. --At least if you translate away from the jargon. Verification and verify are English words with Latin roots, both referring to the attempt to confirm is something is true.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:42, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Semantics doesn't cut the mustard. Verifiability doesn't mean "it's the truth", we are interested in the veracity that a reliable source makes this claim and not the veracity of the claim itself. You seem to have misunderstand our use of the term. Verifiability simply means that when we include a specific point of view, it is attributable to a reliable published source, we're not interested if the source is "true" or not, only that our assertion that a reliable source has made this claim is true. As I say, if you want to re-write out policies, then don't come complaining to me, go and discuss it on the policy talk page. Alun (talk) 21:21, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Semantics might not cut anything, but it is what this conversation is about. The sentence I objected to, if you go right back, went far beyond saying that Misplaced Pages is not about demonstrating the truth. It said Misplaced Pages is not at all concerned with the truth. It is of course very concerned with the truth, although the ways it works on it in practice are indirect so to speak. Terms like reliable, expert, quality etc, are all acceptable Wikipedian terms which refer to types of information more likely to be true. My reply was couched in terms which I had hoped made it clear that I saw this as a side discussion about semantics (starting with yours) and not a disagreement about substance. Sorry for any misunderstanding.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:01, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Verifiability not truth. If you don't like it take it to Misplaced Pages talk:Verifiability. You can claim there that this statement is an oxymoron and argue that we should only be interested in publishing things that have been "proven" to be "true". It won't be an encyclopaedia though. Alun (talk) 08:42, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

We're discussing an encyclopaedia here, and we don't deal with "truth", we're not here to promote any truth, only to provide explanations for concepts that mainstream expert opinion has published.

What they truly published? I mean, a lot of the debates on Misplaced Pages are now about what is true about what has been published, right? To say Misplaced Pages is not about what is true, is, umm, unverifiable :) (at least if you do NOT use "truth" to mean in the way used in Misplaced Pages sometimes as a word basically defined to contrast with verifiability, which is not normal English). But I do understand that in Misplaced Pages policies truth and verifiability are contrasting jargon terms drawing people's attention to the difference between claiming to have the truth (not a good argument), and showing that the work has been done (experts, publishing, peer reviewed, etc) in order to TRY to be close to the truth.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:42, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I don't understand the first two sentences you wrote. Maybe you could rephrase them, their meaning is absolutely opaque. I mean when you say "what they truly publish", what do you mean? As opposed to what they falsely publish? When a reliable academic publishes a serious point of view, it has nothing to do with truth, and everything to do with a serious academic point of view and/or explanation/theory. You seem to be saying that some of these are not worthy of inclusion in Misplaced Pages because you personally don't consider them the "truth". Secondly a lot of the debates on Misplaced Pages have always been about "what is true about what has been published", usually these debates are between pov-pushers who simply refuse to accept that any point of view has any validity other than their own personal one, these pov-pushers brandish their sources as if any source with an opposing point of view is automatically "wrong" and should never be considered reliable. There are always pov-pushers. The serious editor recognises that there are often several serious and reliable points of view, and that these should all be included, these several points of view will all be verifiable, but it will usually be impossible for all to be The Truth. Actually it is totally verifiable that "Misplaced Pages is not about what is true", and it can be verified by simply by taking a look at our verifiability policy, which states plainly and simply "The threshold for inclusion in Misplaced Pages is verifiability, not truth". So now you're claiming that a policy that even borderline competent editors know well, is not verifiable. Thats' just a bizarre thing to write. Alun (talk) 21:21, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

You write: "You seem to be saying that some of these are not worthy of inclusion in Misplaced Pages because you personally don't consider them the "truth"." Not at all. It was just another way of saying that Misplaced Pages is concerned with the truth, as shown by analyising any debate. I've already explained how verifiability and truth are insperable concepts. I've never said I disagree with the verifiability policy. Sorry for any misunderstanding.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:01, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Sometimes the theories and models they deal with predict what is observed by experimentation, and sometimes they don't. When a model predicts an outcome well, then we are not going to reject it out of hand, but we might have to refine it. When a model is poor at predicting an outcome many scientists may reject it, but some may not, and may come up with refinements to the model to compensate for the experimental result. But what is truth? In science there is no such thing, in science we only ever reject a model, we never accept a model as "proved", that is not part of the scientific process. Some models may be so well accepted that that are universally accepted by scientists, but most scientists would be loth to claim a theory or model is "proven", or the "truth". We deal with evidence and not absolutes. Truth is a concept for philosophers and not scientists. I don't think I have defined verifiability at all, I think I have used the standard definition that Misplaced Pages uses. If you don't like it then please go and discuss it at the Misplaced Pages talk:Verifiability. The same applies to our understanding of "truth". Frankly, if you don't like the way Misplaced Pages deals with these issues then the answer is not to complain to me, but to go and make the case for changing how we deal with these issues. Wikipedians certainly do have their own way of talking, and we certainly come to have a sceptical a way of looking at things, we nearly always demand that anything that is included has demonstrable merit. That's important for quality. I'm happy with that. Alun (talk) 08:04, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

I do not think you distinction between science and philosophy holds water. It is a bit like your distinction between genealogists practicing science, and science. I don't like the distinction at all, but if I accept it to a certain point then the scientists you refer to are practicing philosophy. Truth is an every day concept, at least in the normal sense of the idea that there is a reality we can know more about if we try. So to discard it is philosophical so to speak - just as problematic as claiming to HAVE the truth, which is certainly something Misplaced Pages and science and philosophy all indeed have problems with. I am agreeing with you, but also keep in mind that not all scientists have the same opinion about this. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:42, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Firstly I didn't make any "distinction between genealogists practicing science, and science", you made the claim that I had made a distinction. I rejected you claim. Secondly I don't really care if you think that the distinction I make between science and philosophy "holds water". Philosophers may be interested in the nature of truth, scientists are not. If you don't accept that then it probably means you don't know much about science. Alun (talk) 21:21, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Scientists do not all have the same philosophy. This is the second time you have responded to a reasoned remark by implying I must be ignorant (first about statistics) without any grounds for that except that I disagree with you. That seems a little unfair. What you above is give your POV about the philosophy scientists should have about truth. It is the one established by Francis Bacon. It would be a fair comment to say that all modern science is guided by the debates he and others once had, even if they do not know it. But that is not your point. The original proponents of this idea would also have been a bit more careful (although they were strong willed men) to say that they had really created a science that avoided any philosophical concerns. They would have said they were arguing that science can get on with work to some extent without all scientists really understanding the assumptions being made. If you are arguing that Misplaced Pages works on this same principle which has worked in modern science I would agree. But for a scientist or wikipedian to actually state that they are no longer even concerned with the truth is a very philosophical statement which is at least controversial.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:01, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Everyone is ignorant sometimes. I have absoutely no idea of knowing how much science you know, or how much statistics you know. Some of the comments you have made imply to me that you are not trained in science. I'm happy to admit that I'm not following all of your arguments about verifiability and truth. I have had this experience many times before on Misplaced Pages, where editors with different educational backgrounds simply don't understand what each other are saying, because they are ignorant of the language of the discipline of the other. I find that often you have missed my point, or appear to understand it only to later show that you have misunderstood it. If you know about statistics then just tell me. If you work as a scientist then just tell me. I certainly do get the impression that you lack an understanding of ststistics and science, and I did say that, so what? It's not an insult you know. For me, one of the most excellent things about editing here is that I have learned so much about subjects that I was totally ignorant about before. Often that has been by engaging with other editors on talk pages. I'm not afraid to admit my ignorance, on many subjects. I don't understand why you are so defensive abut it. If I'm wrong just tell me I'm wrong. Alun (talk) 08:42, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I have no problem admitting ignorance, but I find it a poor method of discussion to continually suppose that anyone disagreeing with you is ignorant.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:25, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

But truth doesn't come into it, it's clear that if we say that "expert a" has published "theory b", we need to verify it, but "theory b" may not be the dominant theory, it may be considered antiquated, or just plain wrong by most experts, that doesn't mean that we should not include it because it's "not truth". On the other hand verifiability is not really about "truth", it's simply about us showing that "expert a" really did publish this theory, and we have evidence to say so, and anyone can go and check that evidence and see it's not us here making it up. If a map uses data from several sources, then at the very least the creator of the map should cite these sources properly in the map description page over at the commons. If not then I think we should not allow the map to be shown here on Misplaced Pages, because it's content is not verified. The map may be "true", but it still needs to be verified, if we don't know the origin of the data used to prepare the map, how can we know the map isn't just the personal opinion of it's creator? That's why verifiability not truth is so important, and is more than just a guideline. Alun (talk) 11:50, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Does "really" not mean the same as "truly"? Does "verify" not mean "confirm the truth of"? Cocnerning the map discussion here please don't loose sight of the fact that my opinions about what words mean has not been the basis of any disagreement concerning the contour maps - at least as far as I can see. I said that I think in practice we have the same position, but that I thought it OK, with some reluctance to repeat my "old saw" about what I consider to be a way of stating Misplaced Pages policy which can lead to bad results and misunderstandings.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:42, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Does "real" mean the same as "true"? Where I come from it doesn't, a lie can be real, but obviously it's not true. If Verify means "confirm the truth of", then you have to ask yourself what we are confirming the truth of. When we verify on Misplaced Pages, we are not verifying the truthfulness of the assertion, we are verifying the truthfulness that this assertion has been made by a reliable source. If you don't understand that distinction, then you'd better learn it, it's important. Of courrse many people believe that Misplaced Pages is about presenting what they believe is the truth, they are usually called pov-pushers. Alun (talk) 21:21, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Alun, this particular response is a bit misformed. You changed my words and then made an example where the words real and true are referring to two different things (the existance of the lie, and the content of it). Anyway, to repeat, nothing I am saying should be interpreted as arguing that POV should be allowed. I registered objection to your particular way of wording the verifiability rule. Nothing else.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:01, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

It is perhaps important, but everyone uses the terms differently. In the end the rule is helpful on average, but it creates many misunderstandings too.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 23:21, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

This is one of our core content policies, it's not negotiable. If we were to start saying that sometimes WP:V is only a guideline, then we would cease to be an encyclopaedia, ans we would become a repository of an and all crackpot information. I agree that sometimes people see things differently, q reliable source to one person might not be reliable to another, that's why we have talk pages, no? But that doesn't affect our content policies. Alun (talk) 08:04, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

True and real. But that does not disagree with anything I said. Core policies can be disagreed over. See WP:IGNORE--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:01, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Well I think that if you are saying that we should apply WP:IGNORE to our core content policies then that does amount to "arguing that POV should be allowed", even though above you say you are not. Besides if we apply WP:IGNORE then we are just back to a repository of the useless opinions of a collection of self appointed "guardians" of The Truth again. We cease to be an encyclopaedia. Our WP:NPOV policy says about our core content policies "The principles upon which these policies are based cannot be superseded by other policies or guidelines, or by editors' consensus. Core content policy pages may only be edited to improve the application and explanation of the principles." I don't know how you square that with the circle of WP:IGNORE. But if you are suggesting that it's OK to introduce biased or uninformed povs into Misplaced Pages because WP:IGNORE means we use any old hearsay and don't strive for neutrality, then I can't agree. Alun (talk) 08:42, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I think the verifiability policy is written in a complex way, and that why it can and should be debated over. That's why we see editors quoting it at each other. When people turn it into "not concerned at all with the truth" I believe they take it just a little further that it needs to go. There has to be careful balancing on this policy.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:25, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

So if a reliable source draws a contour map, we can cite that source and draw a contour map as well. Conversely if a reliable source does not draw a contour map, then we are possibly engaged in OR if we do draw a contour map. I think it's even more like OR if we are compiling data from lots of different sources and creating a synthesis. As I said it's not really about the maps per se, but more how we avoid making decisions that involve original research on our part. Different studies rely on different sampling strategies, they test for different SNPs, can we justify pooling these data? I can think of a good example. In the 2002 paper "Y Chromosome evidence for Anglo-Saxon mass migration" the researchers genotype for M17 and 92R7, that gives the haplogroups P(xR1a1a) and R1a1a, but they don't genotype for R1 or R1b. In "A Y chromosome census of the British Isles" the researchers genotype for M173 and M17, giving haplogroups R1(xR1a1a) and R1a1a. Even though the haplogroups P(xR1a1a) and R1(xR1a1a) must have a very high degree of overlap, they are clearly not equivalent groups, and they are clearly not the same as R1b.

Good example. But of course there are many cases where studies test exactly the same UEPs. What about those? If you are saying that adding numbers together is OR or Synthesis that seems quite extreme to me.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:00, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Andrew I'm not saying anything of the sort. I'm saying that when we make these sorts of decisions this should be uppermost in our minds. Even when different sources genotype for the same SNPs it may still not be accurate to collate the data due to different sampling strategies. What if one study simply randomly picked men from a town on a Saturday afternoon and asked "are you from here?", and if the answer was "yes", collected a sample, but another group demanded that all eight great grandparents of a person be born within a 50km radius of the town as a requirement to be considered? Then we are comparing one set of samples that may contain a high degree of recent immigrant individuals, with another that may be composed of an extremely biased sample because many perfectly good candidates have been excluded. Even if these studies genotyped the same SNPs they are not using the same sampling strategy, and that means that the samples can't really be compared to each other. I am not saying that it's OR to do these things, but I am saying that we should think about whether it might be OR. I think it's a discussion well worth having. Personally I'm ambivalent. The scientist in me says that it's wrong to compare apples and oranges, but I know that this is done routinely by people who conduct meta-analyses (such as Oppenheimer in Origins of the British) Alun (talk) 19:37, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't really see the point you are making but I suspect that in a practical example we'll come to the same conclusions. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:43, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't know how much more clearly I can put it. Basically if two studies use different sampling strategies, then they are going to produce different results that cannot necessarily be compared to each other. If I go to Cardiff and select men on the basis that they were in the pub on a Saturday night, I will get a different sort of result than if I go to London and select men based on the fact that they were in a Mosque on a Friday evening. Now within a study this may not matter, the same criteria are imposed on all populations within the same study. So if my study measures the Y chromosomes of men in Mosques on a Friday evening all over Great Britain and tries to draw conclusions about their relatedness to each other, that might have some meaning. Likewise for men drinking in pubs all over Britain on a Saturday night, the sampling strategy is consistent between groups within the same study. As soon as we start to compare these groups with groups selected with different sampling strategies, we might be in all sorts of trouble. It's apples and oranges. Do you think it is then fair to compare the Y chromosomes of the London Mosque men to those of the Cardiff pub men? Do these populations both represent a fair sample of their communities? More importantly can we fairly compare these Y chromosomes and draw sensible conclusions about the relationship between the male London population and the male Cardiff population? Obviously I have used an extreme example because I am trying to explain my point. But even less extreme differences in sampling strategies can lead to sampling bias and ascertainment bias that can mean that some results are simply non-representative. Let's say we go out and collect samples from men randomly, but ask those men where their paternal grandfathers were born, we aren't interested where our sample was collected, only in the grandparental birthplace as the "origin" of the Y chromosome. We can generate a pretty good map from this strategy. Let's say a different study goes to several towns and villages, and only collects samples from from men who live in those villages who can prove their paternal grandparents were born in those towns and villages. This strategy has a much greater chance of selecting a biased sample of the population. Then let's assume a third study collects samples from towns, but only from people who can prove that all four of their grandparents were born in that town. That's an even more biased sample. Are the samples from these different studies equivalent? Can they be fairly compared to each other? Does each set of samples represent an equally unbiased sampling of their respective populations? These are a fair question to ask. More importantly is it OR to simply combine data from very different research papers, that may be seeking to answer different questions, and therefore have used very different sampling strategies, and assume that each set of data is an equally fair representation of their originating populations? As I say I don't know, but I think I have every right to ask this question, and I think it's a reasonable question to ask. Alun (talk) 11:50, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, what you have repeated is extremely clear. But it sounds like nit picking, because the examples are so obviously artificial and exaggerated. In other words, trying to imagine a realistic example, it sounds very close to saying that adding two numbers together is OR or synthesis. I think that as we do not have a real example we are disagreeing upon, no purpose is served by debating overly artificial examples. It was already agreed pretty early that some studies might use different methods. But many are obviously extremely similar in their methods. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 23:21, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Why do you do this? You claimed not to understand what I was saying, so I deliberately gave an exaggerated example to make my point more clear. They you take this example and claim that my point is not relevant because it's so exaggerated. I did actually say that it was deliberately exaggerated, and I did actually say that "even less extreme differences in sampling strategies can lead to sampling bias and ascertainment bias that can mean that some results are simply non-representative." But you were so keen to try to dismiss my example that you ignored the broader point. And no it's not "nit piking", it's called science.

What I mean by this is that your extreme examples should at least be realistic enough to have some relevance to the map subject which is under discussion. Nothing more. I am not complaining about the example as such, just wondering if they truly are relevant here.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:42, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

You claimed not to understand. I wanted to provide an example where my point was obvious. In order to do this I had to use an extreme example. Then you dismissed my example because that was the easy thing to do. Indeed my example was relevant, I discussed sampling strategies of males in the UK. I just used an example of a sampling strategy where we might expect the sampling to be non-representative. Alun (talk) 21:21, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Sorry once again for any misunderstanding, but I was not asking for more examples etc. I said I did not see your point. In other words, what practical actions etc are implied and how is what you said relevant. You've apparently read it differently, I now realize.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:01, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

I am assuming by your response that you're not very familiar with statistics. The fact is that sampling strategy is one of the most important aspects of any sample collection scheme. But here's the rub, it depends what the study is trying to determine. If a study is a population genetics study, then their sampling strategy will be deliberately different than say if a study is for medical genetics.

I have no problem with this. But if you for example look at Henn et al. (2008) and Hassan et al. (2008) and Cruciani et al. (2004) and Cruciani et al (2007) you have teams of people who are basically just publishing new articles every few years, adding data for new regions, trying to follow similar procedures. Why not comine those for example?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:42, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't know. The point isn't that it is necessarily valueless to combine data. The point is that that is a judgment, it's a decision that absolutely is OR, because no one knows how sampling strategies can affect the outcome. It's all very well to claim that for a certain set of papers this should be allowed, but it is still basic research to do such a thing. It's certainly not what we can consider an obvious deduction. That doesn't necessarily mean that we should not allow Wikipedians to do it, but it is fair, I think, for me to ask whether it might be considered OR. Alun (talk) 21:21, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

OK, now you are making a strong claim. Previously you implied I was exagerrating about your supposedly extreme examples and you claimed that you had never stated an objection against possible cases of adding together data from different studies. Adding two numbers together is now being called "valueless" by you, because it is a type of data combination. I have a bit of a doubt about your statistics now. If you have extremely little data for Africa, and a person connected to a particular research team who had done Ethiopia and Egypt now publishes a bit more data this time on Sudan, the statistical effects of such things as geographical spread between testees is basically zero. The biggest problem is simply that there is very little data. This problem so outweighs all other effects and makes them un-noticeable. On balance, I think your position is exagerrated.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:01, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

• Andrew, read what I wrote. I wrote "The point isn't that it is necessarily valueless to combine data" (or in other words combining data can be of value). That does not say that it is valueless to combine data. It says that sometimes it might be, and sometimes it might not be. It depends on the sampling strategy. It is very difficult to have a sensible conversation when you take what is a nuanced statement, and pretend it is an absolutist statement. But the point I am making is that when we do combine data it may be OR because it may require some sort of judgment, for example how do you know the sampling strategies are designed to measure the same thing? You may not, and if you assume they are, then you are engaged in a form of OR. One paper might be an anthropological paper (such as Capellie et al. and Weal et al.), another might be for forensic analysis. In that case the anthropological study might be seeking to exclude recent population movements, while the paper for forensic use may be seeking to measure the population as it is constituted in the present day. These differences are not to be taken as lightly as you seem to think. Indeed I'm a little annoyed that you are again deliberately misrepresenting what I am saying. Indeed when we look at it from a scientific point of view, it is you who are basically saying that you believe that these samples can be combined because you believe there is no biased sampling and that that it is statistically valid. But you offer no evidence for that belief, I am supposed to accept it. Your only argument is to attack what I say by constructing the straw man argument that I am saying 'Adding two numbers together is ... "valueless"'. That shows that you don't understand that often it is meaningless to add two numbers together. You might as well claim that adding 2 grammes to 5 inches is "Adding two numbers together". If you know that there is a difference in sampling strategy between two papers (e.g. Weal et al. (2002) and Capelli et al.(2003)), and are therefore aware that the sample sets are biased in different ways, what is the justification for pooling them? Simply saying that it amounts to "adding two numbers" is not correct, these are not abstract numbers, they are a measurement of a specific population in a specific way, and the specific way the populations have been measured varies between the studies often because those studies want to measure different things about a population, therefore data sets from different papers won't necessarily represent the same type of measurement. So you can't say that it's the simple addition of two numbers. Alun (talk) 08:42, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Very sorry. I misread you totally there.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:25, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

• So what can we call an obvious deduction? You can make the case that combining the data from a series of papers, published by the same research team, using the same sampling strategy and analysing the same SNPs, is an obvious deduction, and I agree with that as long as it is obvious, by that I mean that this is stated explicitly in the papers themselves (many research papers will cite a previous research paper for some of their methods, e.g. "for sampling method see Bloggs et al.) and we should also include this info in the description page of the image. I can accept that this is may not be not OR. But that's not the point I'm making, and I don't necessarily disagree with you when you say that you should be allowed to combine these data sets, but you do need to make a case, and that's what I've been saying. And clearly what applies to this set of data doesn'r apply universally to all data sets. So we need to make a good argument for combining data sets on a case by case basis. Alun (talk) 08:42, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

• Part of the problem is for "house effects". Let's take the example of Weal et al. and Capelli et al.. Both of these studies sample from Llangefni, and let's assume that we can make the case that these papers are trying to measure the same thing, i.e. the Y chromosome landscape of the British Isles prior to the Industrial Revolution (because they think this will tell us something about Anglo-Saxon mass migration). The thing is that if we accept this premise, then we could argue that we can combine the data sets from Llangefni to make one big data set for Llangefni (for the SNPs typed in both studies). Indeed we could argue that this is good because we are evening out "house effect" bias. On the other hand this is the only location where both studies sample from. The "house effect" bias is not evened out for the other locations. The point is that just because two studies are claiming to measure the same thing, we just don't know how sampling will bias the result. So if there is a difference between Abergele and Haverfordwest is this due to a real difference in these populations, or is it due to the difference in sampling strategies between the two papers? We cannot know that. Alun (talk) 08:42, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

• This problem is not about sample size. Even if the samples from Abergele only amount to 18 it doesn't matter, 18 is easily enough to get an accurate picture of a population if our sampling strategy is robust. Alun (talk) 08:42, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

• So what criteria are to be used when combining data sets? When should we accept that it is valid to combine data sets, and when should we not combine data sets? I want to have a discussion about that, but you want to say that what I am saying is wrong. Well it's not wrong, it's a legitimate question, and any scientist who has engaged in sampling from populations would acknowledge that. Alun (talk) 08:42, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I never said you were simply wrong. Sorry if I gave that impression. I agree with what you are saying now that I see the nuance I missed last time around.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:25, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

And yes apparently small differences in sample gathering strategies can lead to very different conclusions. If you want an example take another look at the "Y chromosome evidence for Anglo-Saxon mass migration" and "A Y chromosome census of the British Isles", these studies draw very different conclusions. Weal et al. sample from only a transect of central England and northern Wales. Their sampling strategy was biased and they concluded mass migration of Germanic tribes into England during sub-Roman times. Their conclusion was drawn from the fact that their English samples had very significantly higher levels of haplogroup I compared to Welsh samples. Incidentally, of their Welsh samples, those from Abergele had very high levels of E(xE1b1a) (38.9%), which is clearly not representative of Welsh samples generally. But as Catherine Hills says in her book Origins of the English, their English samples were all derived from regions of England known to have been settled by Danes during the period of the Danelaw, none of their samples were derived from regions outside of Danish settled regions. She goes on to state that these samples were derived from regions with a distinctive archaeology, and that they may not be representative of England as a whole. Likewise it's clear that Abergele is not representative of Wales as a whole. Possibly the Abergele result is due to extremely stringent sampling criteria. The towns selected are very old market towns, and are mentioned in the Domesday book, they choose towns that are less likely to have had recent migration. Samples were only aquired if both the donor and the donor's paternal grandfather was born within 30km of the market towns. They also collect samples in Friesland and Norway, but don't say if the same criteria are used for selecting samples from these control groups, so apparently their control groups had more freedom than their English and Welsh samples (personally I think that's sloppy, it's not a true control then, but that's just my opinion). Can we be sure that samples from men who have been born within 30kn of their paternal grandfathers represent a fair and unbiased sampling strategy? This could be the reason for the high E(xE1b1a) from Abergele? Who knows? Their sampling strategy did have a point though, they were specifically interested in the most stable population they could sample in the present day, and so they selected a very stringent criterion for sampling. Now Capelli et al. had a completely different sampling strategy. They chose their towns not on the basis of them being old market towns or being mentioned in the Domesday book. They simply placed a grid over the island of Great Britain, then they sampled the nearest town to the grid intersections that had a population of between 5-20,000 people, they also included other towns that they considered important that were not on the grid. They were not concerned with whether recent migration (e.g. during the industrial revolution) to the town had occurred. Then when they selected individuals from these towns they chose them on the basis of the individuals paternal grandfather having been born within 20km of the town (except for Midhurst which was 40km), it does not seem to have been important if the individual themselves was born within 20kn of the town. You may ask if the method of selecting the towns can have any bearing on the result? You may ask if the different strategies of selecting the participants can have any bearing on the result? The answer is no one knows, what might appear to be the most spurious difference in sampling the same population might produce a big result, all statisticians (and scientists) know this. Oppenheimer uses both of these data sets in his book Origins of the British. That's his prerogative, he's allowed to conduct OR. But it's not correct to claim, as you have, that concerns about having equivalent sampling strategies are "nit picking".

No, I did not really intend to claim that. My remark had a context. I specifically said that I know there are cases where there are very different sampling methods. I agree that the examples from British studies is a better example of the problems. But actually the biggest problem of all is that all the studies are so small. All the other problems are far less significant. I see that you mention that only below after having emphasized other issues. Abergele involved 18 people I think. (And by the way, the 19th century censuses show that even then many people living there were born in places like Liverpool and Manchester. This again reminds us of how much value there might be in trying to get more genetic genealogists to "practice science" and to try to get published in a more verifiable way - especially for Britain.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:42, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Personally I am of the opinion that the best data set we have for any study are those of Capelli et al. (2003). The reason for this is that in this paper we see an attempt to sample a geographical region using a relatively unbiased grid. Usually samples are collected by so called "ethnic group", and that's a biased way to sample. I'm not really interested in genealogy, though I'd say that haplogroups are totally irrelevant to genealogy generally speaking, one cannot deduce recent familial relatedness from knowledge of one's Y chromosome haplogroup, and that's simply a fact. I'm more interested in population genetics, and that is the power of Y-SNPs, they tell us, to a limited extent, how populations are related to each other. But the weakness of Y chromosome studies is that what they tell us is so limited. Y chromosomes are really only a single locus, are so much prone to drift, seem to have a very small effective population size due to polygyny, that really they give a distorted impression of our distinctness as populations. I'm concerned that so many people are fetishising this area of research. Some of the claims have become the fundamentalist belief systems of the "true believers". I ahve been trying for some time to counter an editor here at Misplaced Pages who wants to all but claim ont he English people article that English people are really just identical to Spanish people because he apparently believes that Y chromosome studies "prove the truth" that the overwhelming ancestry of England is from LGM Iberia. That's just daft, I keep pointing out that there was no such thing as English until about 1000AD, and no such thing as Spanish until 1469. But apparently that's irrelevant, the English are Spanish as far as this guy is concerned, and Y chromosomes "prove" this. Some of these people are just scary. Alun (talk) 21:21, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

I think we share some similar concerns in reality here. But, playfully, here is an example where the verifiaility discussion above might really have an implification in practice. Let's say one author was worried that a quotation from the literature gave the impression that populations were much better understood than they really were. Of course if the other author quotes directly that can't be easily deleted. But let's say the sceptical author decided to put in a remark that somehow tried to inject some doubt about how much data was really tested - for example by mentioning that a study was based on 20 people. (Of course they would have to avoid say "only" 20 people unless another author had published about this already.) Let's say the other editor then objects that this remark is unnecessary. ETc. If you look through the history of the E1b1b article you'll see some frustrating debates.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:01, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Statisticians worry about these things all the time. It's simply not as easy to get an unbiased sample as you might think. The best example I can think of was during the recent US presidential elections. There was a huge amount of variation between opinion polls between different polling companies, and much of this difference was believed to be due to differences in sampling strategy. Take the youth vote as an example, some of the polling firms believed that the youth is more likely to not vote, and so they had a series of questions designed to eliminate a certain proportion of the youth vote, others thought the youth vote was being underestimated due to the "cell phone" effect, i.e. that youngsters are much more likely to have mobile phones and no land-line, US pollsters normally only poll using land lines. They call this consistent variation between polling companies across may polls a "house effect". The youth vote, and how to reliably poll it was a big cause for concern amongst pollsters. Sampling strategies are important, and we do need to think about how they are used in different studies. Now these samples are in the hundreds and sometimes thousands, and yet there are problems with unbiased sampling, no DNA studies have such huge data sets, so we must assume some bias, there must be equivalent "house effects" between different research groups. I do think it's OR to take the P(xR1a1a) haplogroup from Weal et al. (2002) and call it R1b. I do think it's OR to call the Capelli et al. R1(xR1a1a) R1b. I do think it's OR to claim that we can pool these samples and say that they have equivalence. If someone else does it and publishes, then we can cite that source, but I think we are engaged in OR when we take it upon ourselves to make these decisions. When I made my map File:Europe Y semino.png I had intended initially to combine the data from the Semino et al. (2000) paper with those from the Rosser et al. (2000) "Y-Chromosomal Diversity in Europe Is Clinal and Influenced Primarily by Geography, Rather than by Language". On reading the papers several times and thinking about the best way to combine them, it soon became apparent to me that this would indeed constitute OR. So I stuck to producing a map from Semino et al., thinking I would also make a similar map with the Rosser et al. paper (something I've not got around to). I even worried that converting the Semino et al. data into the modern day equivalent haplogroups based on the SNPs genotyped might constitute OR, but decided that it was an obvious deduction. I did not combine the data from these studies because I am interested in producing a reliable map that anyone can look at and see that it accurately reflects the research. I did not want to produce something that I could not claim is a fair representation of what the source shows. Alun (talk) 08:04, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

I have gone through very similar doubts about contour maps, as I mentioned. Until now I've not done any. That's why I was interested in this discussion.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:42, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Well primarily I'm concerned with the quality of the work I produce. My map might not be as pretty as many of the contour maps. It might not include lots of the most recent papers as some of the other maps. It might only use pie diagrams and a very old version of the tree. But if I'm honest I'm very pleased with my map. It's honest, the data are reliable, and I even included the tree, so anyone could see how these groups relate to each other. Many of the groups are paragroups, and that's a shame, but it's the product of so few SNPs being available back in 2000. Frankly the modern ISOGG tree is hardly accurate. The clade with the greatest number of subclades is R1b. By any objective measure, one would conclude that this must be the region with the greatest genetic diversity, and therefore the origin of our species. But he fact is that Africa has the greatest genetic diversity. There must be thousands of new clades and subclades in Africa, haplogroups A and B (and to a lesser extent E) are almost certainly the clades with the greatest number of subclades, variation and diversity. But there is no money to be made genotyping African DNA. So we're left with a distorted tree and the fetishisation of a few "European" haplogroups. We will probably never know how much diversity there is in Africa. One thing I do know, it's ludicrous that only A and B are given to Africa, while everything from CF onwards is non-African. That's distorted because we know that the greatest genetic diversity of our species belongs in Africa. But this research is all about money and not really science. That makes me angry because in reality I'm more interested in molecular anthropology at the moment than anything else. Alun (talk) 21:21, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

The ISOGG is perfectly accurate as far as I know. It only claims to summarize what has been found so far. That you think researchers are biased is not relevant to this. Your remark also makes a slightly illogical distinction (in my opinion) again between older mutations and recent ones. Eventually all or nearly all men will be able to be seperated by UEPs, including brothers. So areas with higher populations will have just as many mutations to find, one day, but on average they'll tend to be more recent (and genealogically relevant by the way) than what we'll find in Africa.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:01, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Well of course it's accurate for the populations that have been sampled. Maybe I didn't explain myself very well. I meant that our understanding of the Y chromosome tree is absolutely imperfect and distorted, and that it is imperfect simply because most of the information we have is from people with an European ancestry. The tree is just not a very good representation of the diversity of Y chromosomes. Obviously researchers are biased by any objective analysis, it's my opinion, but it's also obvious. I am also a little confused by your claim that I am making a distinction between older and newer mutations. I don't mention any such difference. I simply point out that the greatest diversity for our species in in Africa, so Africa is where we will find the greatest diversity of Y chromosomes. I don't think that's controversial. If you want to deny that our species arose in Africa, and remained in Africa for more than half it's existence on the planet, leading to about twice as much of our diversity exosting in that continent, then that's your prerogative. But mosy biologists and anthropologists do think the RAO model is the one that best explains our species' history. Maybe you prefer multiregionalism? Alun (talk) 08:42, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

The recent/non-recent distinction is implicit in what you say, and comes from what I presume to be your interests. You have to remember that perhaps even within a few years we may be able to test for UEPs so easily that we will be able to distinguish EVERY man, or almost, so then the number of clades will be approximately the same as the male population. Therefore highly populated areas will be shown to have many (recent) UEPs. OF course to population geneticists, this is uninteresting. They want to study the old UEPs which divide humanity up in broad outline. But the logic of the subject gives us no black-white distinction between population genetics and genealogy. They are merging. Of course this is a side issue here, but eventually as this field develops I guess all of the known sub-clades of E-M35 will need their own article, and this process will repeat again and again. At some point, Misplaced Pages will need to work out how much detail it should allow. For example, for an old family like the Calhouns, what makes them different in kind from a "clade"? If it is just the lack of an SNP, then this will not last long.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:25, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm also not sure I agree that contour maps are standard. Most published research papers don't use contour maps, they use pie graphs, that's because they want to show the distribution of haplogroups is applicable to a specific population, and we simply don't know what exists between these populations. Some research papers do include contour maps, but I think it's still a minority.

Possibly correct. It is a significant minority though, and there is no doubt that people like them. I agree about the problem of filling the gaps of course. I am open to the idea that contour maps are something we need to be careful about.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:00, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, and I think contour maps are getting more popular. Alun (talk) 19:37, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm mostly concerned with the burgeoning set of maps showing Y chromosome distributions that we have here that have no sources and are completely unverified.

Yes, I understand I hijacked that conversation. But no-one disagreed with you on that. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:00, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Good. Alun (talk) 19:37, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm also concerned that there are no guidelines for producing such maps on Misplaced Pages. I think it might be about time we had a go at producing a set of guidelines that can be followed so our maps do not contain original research. Probably the best place to go and have a discussion about that would be Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Human Genetic History. Cheers. Alun (talk) 13:07, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Good point!--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:00, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

I see your point Alun, but published genetic maps are outdated fast. For example in 2004 we didn't know that J1 frequency was high in Dagestan/Southern Arabia. If you look at the famous "published map" from 2004 (still used by many) it shows the center of J1 in Sinai & a low frequency both in Dagestan/Southern Arabia simply because there was no studies done there yet. Cadenas2008 (talk) 06:01, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

So? I am not suggesting that we should not include new data in our articles. If you reproduce a map from a reliable source, you can cite that map as reliable for the parameters of the source used. You can also say explicitly in the text of the article that more recent research shows a high frequency of this haplogroup in other regions. Ideally we should be citing review papers rather than research papers, but that's difficulty, I know with a field that is producing new data all the time. Personally I'm sceptical of using haplogroup designations at all, haplogroups change constantly, they are not fixed entities, they are simply the best expression of the tree as we know it at any given period of time. Haplogroups are constantly being redefined, the SNPs that are used to define haplogroups are continually being shifted to define different clades. A couple of years ago I was in haplogroup I1a, now I'm in I1. Not long ago M17 defined R1a, then it defines R1a1, now it defines R1a1a. I tend to think it would be better to have a series of articles that discuss the SNPs themselves rather than trying to have articles about something as transient as a haplogroup. But i know that suggestion is going to be a non-starter, give the level of resistance I'm getting simply for asking that we stick to our verifiability policy and try not to have trivia sections in haplogroup articles. Alun (talk) 11:50, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

I see where you are coming from Alun. We should have an intro on haplogroups so readers can understand what this means & don't use it as literal science. we will not be 100% sure until we sample the whole population of the planet. Cadenas2008 (talk) 09:32, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

I (Y-DNA)

Not Perfect, but a bit better than the older version. Cadenas2008 (talk) 09:50, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Its a nice looking map, but it might be better to seperate the subclades, given that hey have different demographic histories and, therefore, mean different things. Furthermore, as far as the balkans are concerned the peak frequency of Hg I (ie I2a1) is in Herzegovina and Dalmatia, not Slovenia, as depicted on Cadenas' map.

See:

Hxseek (talk) 15:38, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I think I have the peak the same? the darkest color is in the center of Bosnia-Herzegovina

No. Peak is in coastal BiH. Further south and on the littoral Hxseek (talk) 06:41, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

I was still working on I2 & I1. BTW nice map I use ancient Adobe 3 to draw the maps, so they don't come out as cool looking as the one you made :) Cadenas2008 (talk) 05:48, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

replied on your T.P.Hxseek (talk) 06:41, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

You should add some sources for the map, as some people are on patrol and questioned my I1 map. --AJH (talk) 19:48, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Seasons Greetings

Merry Christmas

It is very nice to have a new input on Y haplogroup articles! I am sorry I misread you on at least one occasion so far and hope it has not created too much of a negative effect!--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:26, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

No problem Andrew, it can be difficult to get one's point across here, after all we are dealing with lots of people from lots of different social/cultural/educational backgrounds, coupled with the fact that we are communicating by the impersonal medium of posting messages, there are bound to be misunderstandings. I got a bit frustrated there, sorry. I think we probably do need to have a discussion about guidelines for creating maps etc. for these articles, and I think this should include some discussion about when it is and when it is not permissible to pool data from different samples. I think we should, at least, expect editors to cite the sources of their data correctly (WP:V) in the image information, and also expect that when data sets are pooled this is justified on a case by case basis (WP:NOR). But my talk page is not the place for that, it should probably be done at the project talk page. Hope your midwinter was excellent. Cheers. Alun (talk) 06:45, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

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E1b1b article

You write: "Andrew seems to want to ignore our normal core content policies, for what reason I don't know, so he can include the claims of any individual who has any hair brained theory that they want to post on what amounts to a blog. I can't accept that." Alun can you please justify this remark to me? I think I made an argument that I was following Misplaced Pages policies and norms. You've come back from a break and gone on the attack a little too hard I think; rather than addressing what has been written in reply to you.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:41, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that can be construed as an "attack". It's a simple statement of how I see the state of play.

Hare brained?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:58, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, anyone can post a hair-brained theory on one of these sites, and you want to treat them as if they are reliable sources. That's not an attack, it's a statement of fact. Look I am called Parsons, and I am TU3Z3, I could join a family group and claim to be the son of Gram Parsons or something. How could anyone prove I was wrong? There's no fact checking. Or on a more realistic note, I might belong to a family that had a myth that we were related to Albert Parsons (appropriate for me), it might be something I believed to be true, but it might be totally wrong. As far as I know I am not related to either of those people, but there would be nothing stopping me claiming that on a web forum. So these are not reliable sources because they are not fact checked. So you are basically saying that any hair-brained theory from someone belonging to one of these groups, which is not fact checked or reliably published in any way, should be allowed on Misplaced Pages. That's what you want, it's not an attack, but a statement of fact. Alun (talk) 18:40, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Alun, I am glad you have made your point this way. Yes, information can be faked. But this is not just a problem with webpages, and in fact webpages are often considered reliable sources on Misplaced Pages. What you have to argue is that surname projects are a type of website which is unverifiable, and that is where there is a problem. The information cited in any genealogy is quite easy to check. The word is "verifiable". Other indicators that we should be cautious with a webpage would be some sort of motive for making a story up that would be quickly spotted by Parsons from all around the world. Google is very good for checking such things. The reality is that surname projects are generally organizations with hundreds or even thousands of people, and are recognized not by one, but by several competing companies. They are also recognized by bigger organizations with other motives such as ISOGG and haplogroup projects and Scottish clans and genealogical organizations. Can you still fraudulently get past all this? I have no idea, but the case is always relative. Fraud even occurs under peer review. Question: are you seriously accusing anyone of fraud. No. Are you saying it would be easy? I don't think so. The organizations you are referring to are large and respected and referenced. They are subject to a lot of scrutiny. I know that professional geneticists who know anything about the subject respect them also. If you insist, then you can always stick your feet in the sand and ignore all of this, and just say that it is not good enough for you personally. But don't ask me to agree with you.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:48, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Webpages aren't "often considered reliable sources on Misplaced Pages". Whatever gave you that idea? Some sources that publish online are considered reliable. That does not mean that webpages are normally assumed to be reliabel untill proved otherwise. Quite the contrary. For example the Guardian is a reputable newspaper, it's web pages are considered reliable. Likewise the BBC is a reputable organisation and it's web pages are reliable. The reliablility of thes epages derives from the fact checking that these organisations undertake, and it is that fact checking that makes these websites reliable and trusted. I find your arguments quite sophistic. Alun (talk) 06:25, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

To me your idea of "verifiability" is to include links to clearly non-reliable sources, and then to claim that these should be treated as if they are as reliable as a peer reviewed journal, or a book published by a reliable publishing house. In fact you seem to be claiming that for these articles we should ignore any normal content policies and not be bothered with the reliabilty of our sources. And you don't even try to answer the real concerns, rather you try to change the argument, for example you say that "It is being claimed that research "has to" be validated by a third party to be allowed in Misplaced Pages," Well I have never said that, my argument is, and always has been, that sources should be reliable and published. You say that "No argument is being given for the debatable assumption that Surname projects are "primary" sources rather than "secondary" sources." Well they are neither primary or secondary sources, the argument is that they are unreliable and not that they are primary sources. Even so, primary sources need to be reliably published and we should concentrate on the conclusions of reliable sources, i.e. we are looking for the synthesised opinions of experts in the field, so the conclusions of research papers, secondary sources such as review articles and tertiary sources such as books are most preferable. But the published haplotype of any individual is a primary source. It's OK for us to include primary data in Misplaced Pages, as long as we don't try to interpret it ourselves, but that's a different story. I find your arguments unconvincing because at root they are an attempt to circumvent our core content policies. I've been here on Misplaced Pages for some four years, I've always been interested that we are fair and that we need to verify information from proper reliable sources. Even when I want to make edits that I think are obvious I always ensure that I cite my sources, and that my sources are reliable. Nowhere before have I found anyone on Misplaced Pages who has claimed that original research conducted online by amateurs with no fact checking should be considered reliable or acceptable. It's certainly not acceptable according to this That's just what you are saying, with your only justification that "this is a special case". Sorry I can't accept that. I really don't know your motivation, I assume that it is because you believe that this is important. I assume that you believe that this is true. I assume that you believe that what you are including is encyclopaedic, I disagree, it looks to me more of trying to create something like a web resource for people interested in genealogy, something that Misplaced Pages definitely is not. I am prepared to assume good faith and that you don't mean to damage the credibility of Misplaced Pages, but essentially I can't help but feel that that is exactly what you are actually doing. The credibility of Misplaced Pages is dependent upon the reliability of the sources used. What the sources you link to say, may well be correct, but they have not been fact checked. Alun (talk) 16:47, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

What you have never done, is go through the hare brained sources I quoted and explain the problems with each one. Until you do that, you should be less harsh in your tone. The types of sources I used are defensible. If you want to go through them, fine. We can do that on either the article talk page or the Wikiproject talkpage.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:58, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean by "defensible", in fact the defensibility or otherwise of the sources is irrelevant. As I say we're not interested in the truthfulness of the content of these sources, we're interested in the quality of these sources. I do know that these sources do not come close to meeting our criteria for inclusion. Our core content policies exist to maintain the type and quality of information in our articles. You have a duty to use better quality sources. Because you can't you are trying to claim, without any justification, that these poor quality sources are somehow equivalent to reliable sources. I don't think that's correct, but I'll be more than happy to ask for community input at the Misplaced Pages:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. Alun (talk) 18:40, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I simply don't see how you can equate "defensibility" with "truth" and then contrast both with "quality". By saying something is defensible I am saying it can be explained in whatever the necessary way is which in this case equates to Misplaced Pages policies etc. How can that be irrelevant?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:48, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

You also write: "I don't agree that several paragraphs of biographical detail can compare to the single word "President", which is not actually used in the title of the paper you link to in any case." Were there several paragraphs of biograpical information really? (This was a question raised before you went away, but apparently you missed it - but you were asked politely to explain what you meant, and certainly no-one objected to the point of principle you raised about having too much biographical information.) Please note, most of what you have removed are pictures and sourcing information, plus of course all mention of hockey. Poor hockey. None of those actions seem obviously connected to any policy in Misplaced Pages. I think the whole discussion comes down to taste, in other words "point of view". In that respect, the only option is that editors convince each other to change their mind or else we agree on the minimum - that is a reality which is sometimes not for the better. But I think your high horse stance of being a defender against hare brained theories and policy violators is uncalled for. I put in a famous people section because the Wikiproject and the public wanted that. I only put in people where I could find convincing genealogical and DNA information, for people well-known enough to have a Misplaced Pages article. Arguably it seems your main complaint is that I made the section too interesting, offending your own personal ideas of how a scientific article should look. You can hardly claim I had an agenda though. A famous people section was not really something high on my own list of priorities.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:16, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I haven't "removed" anything from Misplaced Pages. I put the information where it belongs, in the relevant biographical articles. I changed the sections about the putative members of this group to a list. Whatever you believe it is not about taste, it is about relevance. I don't know what you mean by "because the Wikiproject and the public wanted that", who says? Who is the "public" in this case? If standing up for an article that contains relevant information that is not cluttered by tangential and irtrelevant factoids is a "high horse stance of being a defender against hare brained theories and policy violators" then I accept that as a compliment and not the insult you clearly meant it to be. Thanks.

No, it is a sentence which looks like an insult because it contains reference to your term "hare-brained". --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:58, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I though it was the term "high horse stance" that made it an attempt at an insult because it means An appearance or sense of smug superiority, which is not a complimentary thing to say, and I didn't add that. Alun (talk) 18:40, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

High horse stance is a pretty nice way of describing your sentence. If someone has tried to argue a case then it is unfair to write as you did.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:48, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes it's a way to insult. Alun (talk) 06:25, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

As I have said before, the information included was at best tangential to the haplogroup article, just like information about famous people from a certain place is tangential to the actual place. A list more than suffices. I did not remove the claims made in the section, even though they are not properly verified. I think the place to go from here is the Misplaced Pages:Reliable sources/Noticeboard where we can get input from the wider community. Alun (talk) 16:47, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

• "your main complaint is that I made the section too interesting"

Where did I make that "complaint" then? I have no recollection of ever claiming the section was "interesting". That statement smacks of self pity Andrew. Alun (talk) 16:50, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

The main changes you have made were to remove pictures and mention of hockey. The second biggest change was to remove sourcing information, which by the way you did not replace with better sourcing information. The third biggest change, the only one you discussed, was removing the tiny amount of biographical information. Those are the facts. Everything else you mention above is about "relevance" and what is "tangential". These are words which refer to things no policy can be written for, "taste", or "point of view".--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:58, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

No, the main changes I made was to remove the information from an irrelevant article to a relevant article, see here, here and here. When I did this I kept the sources intact. I placed a link to these articles in the E1b1b article. So what I have done amounts to moving the information to a more appropriate article and then placing a link to that article from the E1b1b article. Because the information is cited in the article about the individual in question, it does not need to be cited again in the E1b1b article. The section about the hockey family seems to be so totally non-notable that it does not even have a Misplaced Pages article of its own, as such I don't see how their family genetics can be notable when the family itself is not notable enough to have a Misplaced Pages article. I just noticed that I forgot to move the information about John C. Calhoun to his article, that was merely an oversight. I have not removed any information from Misplaced Pages. I am still concerned that this information is not derived from reliable sources, but I am happy to wait and see the communities feelings about the reliability of these sources at Misplaced Pages:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. On the other hand I'd point out that just a short while after I added the information to the William Harvey article, someone removed it with the edit summary Removing unverified material of questionable relevance to this particular biographical article, and I find I agree with the editor 100% Alun (talk) 18:40, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I believe the Savards did have Misplaced Pages articles. Please check again. It is really great to see that someone you don't know deleted information after a few seconds. What a victory. You must feel so happy. For sure they must have been watching our discussion and they considered everything and they agree with you. Whenever people delete new material that appears on their favorite Misplaced Pages article then it is always like this. Not. Anyway, I guess that means that the bullet in E1b1b is no longer sourced. So please fix that at least with a footnote? Whoever wants to question the source should explain the question. The source in this case was a published book and the administrator of the Harvey DNA project who is also a respected moderator on the E-M35 phylogeny project, an organization of >1000 people. I think it is clear that people interested in Harveys might want to know his opinion even if he is wrong, so by all means make sure that the sourcing information insists that this is "only" his interpretation.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:48, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

• If the source is a published book, then why isn't this book cited? All I see are cites to internet sites.
• The questionability of the sources has bee explained to you again and again. It is a bit rich to ask again for an explanation about the why the reliability of the sources is in question. Trying to pretend that no one has actually asked why we should consider these sources reliable is not a valid way of arguing your case. As I said before, we are at an impasse. These sources are totally unacceptable in my opinion, this is because they are unreliable, they are not peeer reviewed (as we normally expect for scientific journals) and they are not fact checked (as we expect for newspapers and books). You can huff and puff all you like, but that is the crux of the problem. I've explained this to you over and over again. You keep pretending that this problem has not bee brought to your attention. I would have thought you would be keen to get this reviewed at the Misplaced Pages:Reliable sources/Noticeboardso we can resolve this. But you seem strangely reluctant to get greater community input on this. I reckin it's because you know that these are not reliable sources, but that they are the only sources that you can use to promote your edits. Alun (talk) 06:25, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

You are exaggerating again, and it really does not help. All of your remarks so far about the unacceptability of the sources has been in general and lately in emotive terms, often obviously wrong, for example the several times you referred to them as blogs. It sounds increasingly like you never really checked them at all. There were two published books referred to as well as a pedigree on SMGF, which is not a surname project, but a foundation which employees geneticists and genealogists. Can you please slow down and calm down? Look at the exact sources given please. I have no problem discussing the sources, but you do not appear to want to get into that. I fear that the path you are now on will be to post more and more extreme distortions of the issues. This is apparently because you personally have a general issue which mixes sourcing concerns with other concerns about "trivia" (stuff that is "not population genetics"), and that is making it very difficult to have a calm and practical conversation. If you would accept that information about recent E1b1b sub-lineages is also relevant to the E1b1b article, then you might actually think in a more reasonable way about what kinds of sources exist which specialize in studying those. They are called surname projects. Surname projects exist for exactly that purpose, and they bring together experts working in an area, and/or are recognized by them. By the way there is no blanket ban on using all website sources or considering them all the same as "blogs". The reasons that most blogs and many other online resources are considered dubious sources are quite specific, and you should read them. You have to consider whether the sources are anonymous, moderated, recognized, one person, notable, etc. All of these criteria are ones which were met. Have a look at some of the examples posted on the Reliable Sources Noticeboard.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:55, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

RfA thankspam

		Thank you for your participation in my recent RfA, which failed with 90/38/3; whether you supported, opposed or remained neutral. Special thanks go out to Moreschi, Dougweller and Frank for nominating me, and I will try to take everyone's comments on board. Thanks again for your participation. I am currently concentrating my efforts on the Wikification WikiProject. It's fun! Please visit the project and wikify a few articles to help clear the backlog. If you can recruit some more participants, then even better. Apologies if you don't like RfA thankspam, this message was delivered by a bot which can't tell whether you want it or not. Feel free to remove it. Itsmejudith (talk), 22:56, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Denbot (talk) 22:56, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Need your opinion

Please take a look at the contribution history of User:Hogg wild here. I'm almost certain this is yet another one of Jagz' sockpuppets (same interests, same baiting technique, same feigned offense when one points out his SPA-like, troll-like behaviour). However, I'd really appreciate a second opinion if you could manage to take a look at it. Thanks in advance! And sorry for being silent for so long, but a 3-week stint in the hospital will do that to you. All the best! :)--Ramdrake (talk) 19:58, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Hey Ramdrake. I'm not so sure. I don't remember Jagz being particularly interested in the dysgenics article. I took a look at the talk page section and it doesn't appear that the new editor has any particular point to make. Seems to me like they want to change the definition of the subject of the article. As long as they have a reliable source that says that the current definition is inaccurate then they can include their alternative concept. Of course that doesn't disqualify the current conceptual definition. But the editor is being evasive. I think you need to ask the editor to be more specific about how they think the current lead is not a realistic, and they need to be explicit about how they want to change it, i.e. they need to be specific. General complaints do seem to be a Jagz habit, but it's quite inconclusive. If the editor in question becomes tendentious then by all means ask for checkuser if you're suspicious. But I'd assume good faith up until that time. We all need to justify our edits here, that's the power of community editing. Keep asking for specifics. If you only get vague generalisations on the talk page then ask for specifics, don't be drawn into general debates about the subject (OMG that's me saying that, what a hypocrite I am). Remember talk pages are for improving articles, vague comments such as "this is wrong" are not helping to improve the article. Keep focusing on WP:RS reliable sources and what they say. Take care mate. Alun (talk) 22:39, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

THANK YOU

can you please fill my page with templates like Atheist and I support the independance of Scotland thanks so much see you ! IslandShader (talk) 06:10, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

THANKS FROM THE BOTTOM

THANK YOU SO MUCH MY FRIEND.IslandShader (talk) 07:12, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Again please

That I've visited Netherlands, Slovakia, France, Spain, Northern Ireland, Lettonia (Latvia), Bulgaria, Morocco and I wanna visit (hope) Iceland and Albania. IslandShader (talk) 07:26, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

are you working on my requests ?

About previous section IslandShader (talk) 07:41, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

templates about previous requests please

templates about previous requests pleaseIslandShader (talk) 08:40, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

help?

I would like to ask a favor of you. it is a big favor but it means a lot to me.

i have been avoiding edit wars and cranks by rewriting the formerly attrocious article on "Culture."

I have just written the section on physical anthropology and the evolution of culture. It is hard for me to keep things focused on "culture" rather than talking about "anthropology," especially while there are serious debates among anthropologists.

Also, I have just had my head in journal articles and what I have produced is not well-written. Long quotes that should be paraphrased, areas that need more expanation, the organization sucks.

I am too close to this and need a break but it still needs a lot of work.

I am not asking you to do any research (and if i wrote anything that doesn't make sense to you ask me and i will try to clarify).

But i am asking you to go over it and edit it - revise for clarity, reorganize, whatever.

I am asking you to do this over the next week or two. You could spend a whole weekend working on it. My hope is that if you just spend a little time on this every day or every few days until you feel good about it, you can spread the work over a couple of weeks and it will not be too difficult.

here is the link:

It is part of a much larger article but i am asking you to look only at this section (I feel better about the others, this is the one that need help!!)

I hope you don't mind my asking, I really appreciate the help. Ask me if you are unsure of the research but otherwise i trust your judgement especially here, a topic bridging the life sciences and the human sciences, and the challenge of writing about technical research for a general audience. Best, Slrubenstein | Talk 03:03, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Can you e-mail me? Slrubenstein | Talk 23:53, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Apology spam

Crossposeted from User talk:Elonka

Abject an instaneous apologies. I had not even the slightest intention of being sarcastic. I've sat here for several minutes staring blankly at the screen, trying to think of another way to say "I'm sorry." I quote back as a manner of course in normal speech, but now that you've raised it I'll certainly be more cautious about doing so in the future. And, I must say, you handled getting your back up very well. (See, I almost put quotes around that. Bad habit.) You stated how you felt clearly and without stooping to my level.
brenneman 12:46, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages Weekly Episodes 69 and 70

Misplaced Pages Weekly Episodes 69: Sixth Sense and 70: Under the Microscope have been released. You can listen and comment at their pages (69, 70) and, as always, listen to all of the past episodes and subscribe to the RSS feed at wikipediaweekly.org. – wodupbot – 06:29, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

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race and stuff

KC passed this on to me: "have you seen this? Its a blog entry, but links to a reviewed paper." The blog is indeed interesting and the article looks valuable. Perhaps it can be insered into the article on race or racism. I have to focus on my own rwork right now and pass this on to you for your consideration. Slrubenstein | Talk 00:31, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages Weekly Episode 71

Misplaced Pages Weekly Episode 71: We have no shame has been released. You can listen and comment at the episode page, and, as always, listen to all of the past episodes and subscribe to the RSS feed at wikipediaweekly.org. WODUPbot 05:31, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

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Labor / Worker's Rights project

I recently drafted a proposal for a Worker's Rights & Labor Issues WikiProject ... I thought you might be interested, since you are working on the Anarchism project ...

Cheers! Jrtayloriv (talk) 05:04, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

You good with maps?

Since you made this:

Are you interested in these: for Genetic history of Europe and maybe for Ethnic groups in Europe ? Phoenix of9 (talk) 22:28, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

A tedious comment from Sweden

A little comment from a Swede. I read the heated debate in , and clicking user Alun got me here, so I hope I am addressing the right person. Anyway, Alun (you, I hope) said there that you had Y haplotype I1a3 which I believe is currently called I1b1. Sweden has the highest frequence in the world of I1b1, then Norway, but I think it is not as common in Denmark. However, I this is not why I write you. In the spirit of ethnicity as a construct: your paternal ancestor was maybe "Swedish" (or, less probably, Norwegian). Here is my argument: Scandinavia was even less centrally controlled than, well, let's call the place England. In fact, England became the model for the Scandinavian kings' nation-building. Still, it seems to have existed a weak feeling of belonging to the domains of one of the three Scandinavian kingdoms (Denmark, Sweden, Norway; Götaland was probably not anymore considered a kingdom in the Viking era, rather a Swedish earldom). There existed a stronger feeling of a common "norrönt" (Scandinavian) origin, language and religion, but the local province was the most important denominator. When the Danish king went to England in the summers, he brought soldiers. These Vikings were gold-hunters from all over Scandinavia, not just Denmark. Furthermore, Denmark has shrunk since, so I guess 25-40% of those who were indeed Danish in the 9th century have descendants who today all are Swedish. (They shifted nationality in the 17th century -- it took some time, but they really did). The same goes for Norwegians in those times, many of whom came from areas that since the 17th century are Swedish. I myself consider myself 100% Swedish, with 50% genes from the earstwhile Danish territory and 25% from the earstwhile Norwegian one. I think the reason for the comparatively easy shift of nationhood in Scandinavia was that people didn't care too much: they still lived in the same province with the same name and very similar language. The only Viking-era national denomination which we can know has the same ancestral meaning to our day is Swedish (Icelandic was not a nation in those days), because Sweden was so small then, more of a nucleus of present-day Sweden. However, from our domestic Scandinavian sources we usually get provincial specifications of the warriors, which allow us to maintain a connexion and sometimes maintain cozy family ties with these gentlemen. Especially the Icelanders are good at that.

All the best, Wahlin (talk) 01:48, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

P.S. Having now read some things you've written in WP, I apologise for my stupid lecturing of haplotypes in the first part of my comment. However, the rest of the comment is haplo-free and still interesting I think. BTW, I have read Cavalli-Sforza and Sykes x 2. Could you recommend a good, modern and not polemic book on palaeogenetics? (And not focused on Britain.) Something comparable to Mallory's good book on Indo-Europeans. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wahlin (talk • contribs) 02:47, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

You’re barking up the wrong tree. And you’re barking about the wrong things as well. I will now bark back.

I tried to address you in relaxed and jocular way, but never before have I so utterly failed to communicate with another person. The first thing wanted to tell you was that I SUPPORTED your “Ethnicity is a social construct” theme – that’s the reason why I gave the examples of my own heritage. I tried to make that clear.

The quotation marks around "Swedish" where there to signal that the adjective wasn't seriously meant. Maybe I was not clear enough. However, you don’t have to tell me things like “I doubt very much that they would have thought in terms of "Swedish", "Norwegian" or "Danish", at least not in the sense of the way we think of them as nation states today” when I had already written you: “it seems to have existed a weak feeling of belonging to the domains of one of the three Scandinavian kingdoms (Denmark, Sweden, Norway; Götaland was probably not anymore considered a kingdom in the Viking era, rather a Swedish earldom). There existed a stronger feeling of a common "norrönt" (Scandinavian) origin, language and religion, but the local province was the most important denominator.” My favourite pastime is history, and you bet I know more about Scandinavian history than you -- which you made painfully clear with this strange line: “Swedes in the west are more likely to be more genetically like people from Ahvenamaa (sic!).” The Finnish province Ahvenanmaa, in English normally known as Åland, lies off the EASTERN Swedish coast (and is monolinguistically Swedish as well: in fact you’re not allowed to have residence there without fluency of the language). What I admit I did fail to convey to you I now say: Swedes, Norwegians and Danes are more or less the same people (genetically and linguistically), and the borders between them that have hopped to and fro. In our age, the three countries do retain different national characters.

As an MD with a speciality where 98% of my patients have genetic diseases, I do know a thing or two about genetics. You couldn’t have known that, but I did tell you that I had read Cavalli-Sforza and Sykes, so why do you assume that I don’t understand basic genetics at all? To me it's showing a great deal of disrespect, implying that other people don’t understand anything of the things they read, with comments like, “Firstly I have thousands of paternal ancestors.” I know that, and I think it is easy to understand to which of these paternal ancestors I referred when I wrote about the inheritance of a Y-chromosome haplotype. I am not so interested in the hypothetical voyages of this haplotype otherwise, but the MAIN reason I wrote you was that I wanted to INFORM you why I found your following words on said talk page so Anglo-ethnocentric: “I am I1a-3 (you can check I1a-3 in his book) according to Oppenheimer's database, which probably means that my patrilineal ancestor came to Great Britain at the time of the Vikings from Denmark.”

The 9th century English scribes usually lumped all Norsemen together as Danes, because they did not bother with more exact information. It’s like when Europeans called all East Asians Chinese. In the talk page, you should have written “… Vikings from Scandinavia” or “Vikings from Denmark, Norway and Sweden”. This was the central reason for my contacting you, which completely passed you by. Probably my mistake. I’ll try again: Great and powerful peoples are usually not very interested in the exact affairs of their more insignificant neighbours. This is not a malevolent force, rather a sort of disinterestedness and I guess it is almost natural not to bother too much about small countries that have no effect on your life. Being from a small nation, I cannot afford that luxury. The usage of Danes in the context of that article (not only by you, of course) and talk page is incorrect. So I wrote to specify what your wording “Denmark” really meant.

And yes, most people in Sweden know their entire ancestry down to the 16th century, and some most people also have a few ancestors that can be traced far into the middle ages. Icelanders have even better archives. I would guess Norwegians are similar to Swedes in this aspect, but maybe not Danes.

However, my main objections against your reply is how you inserted nasty world views for no reason at all, and an uninformed reader could easily get the thought that such views emanated from me:

“…a weird racialised world where we tell people that they can't have British citizenship because their "Y chromosomes" are wrong. That's just scary.”

“It is chilling to hear the racialised arguments of more ignorant generations re-surface due to ignorance of the relationship between genetics and social construction.”

Why do you do things like that? It is very unpleasant and I find it similar to something which I believe in English is called a “Straw man”

Your aggressive way of arguing failed to make you a friend here. Wahlin (talk) 19:43, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for thoughtful second reply. Apology accepted! And now I understand your Åland line -- because it is well known that FINNS in the west your country of residence share more genes with Åland/Sweden than other Finns do (not very surprising). No I don't wasn't bothered by the typo, but when quoting I had to emphasise the spelling. However, since you live in a certainly majority Finnish-speaking part of Finland, I completely understand why you used the Finnish word. And again, admittedly, I did not make my point clear in the first note.

All the best,

Wahlin (talk) 07:43, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

R1b

Hi. Long time mate.

Have you come accross any good recent publications on R1b ? For a major haplogroup, there is suprisingly little new data on its sub-clades, nor any updated origin theories. in fact, the R1b article here on wiki need some attention. Rather surprising given that R1b is such an important Hg in western Europe Hxseek (talk) 05:24, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

OR & POV-pushing on the Genetic History of Europe article

Hi Alun. There's a user attempting to force into the Genetic History of Europe article some pretty blatant original research and POV. I've laid out the details in my first post in this new section of the article's talk page. Your input would be most appreciated. Regards, Causteau (talk) 18:59, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

White people

Hello! You might be inrerested in tha fact that some users are trying to re-add pictures to White people. Thsnks! The Ogre (talk) 16:10, 21 June 2009 (UTC)