Talk:Haplogroup R1a/Archive 8

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Correction needed

The piece contains this statement: "M458 is found almost entirely in Europe, though spreading into Turkey and parts of the Caucasus. Its highest frequencies are in Central and Southern Poland, particularly near the river valleys flowing northwards to the Baltic sea. The authors estimated an age which associates this sub-clade with the Corded Ware Culture." In fact, Underhill et al. make no such assertion, and note that the remains found at Eulau are almost certainly M458 negative. (They note that the 'ancient haplotype' is closest to today's German R1a1a*, which is obviously M458 negative.) MarmadukePercy (talk) 20:13, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Dear MP, I am on record as saying that this article could do with help from someone like you. Both your work as an editor and your generalist approach make you a good person to look for sections which are not as clear as their authors think they are. I have made it my main aim to make sure new literature gets mentioned and does not get filtered by POV knights, including the latest one. I may sometimes do this in ways which need improvement. I am happy to help advise concerning interpretation of any unclear sections.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:27, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Andrew. I was on a bit of wikibreak but will be back contributing here around the first of the New Year and will examine this article in depth then. Best, MarmadukePercy (talk) 20:29, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Would be great.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:42, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

That particular statement has already been removed, but I have worked over the section in which links to the Corded Ware Culture are suggested, sticking closely to what Underhill et al, and the other cited authors, actually said. Underhill et al do note M458 pooling today in the former CW area. But they balance that against the contrary evidence from aDNA.--Genie (talk) 17:27, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

I had gone ahead and removed that particular statement. Glad you worked over some of the rest of the problem area. MarmadukePercy (talk) 17:45, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Clusters Within R1a

I think it would be great if we mention the brilint work of Dr. Peter Gwozdz in clustering R1a.

info can be found in his website: http://www.gwozdz.org/

here: http://www.gwozdz.org/R1a.html & here: http://gwozdz.org/PolishClades.html 87.101.224.234 (talk) 15:58, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

It is mentioned.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:05, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Doesn't make any sense

The article is totally unbalanced. Why are 5-10 year old studies like Semino et al. (2000) in the the Eastern European Origin section are given free range of descriptions and intricate connections with heavy use of linguisitc theories in sentences to paragraphs in the entire body.... while 7 studies (4 from 2009) for Southern Asian Origins are kept to a meger couple of sentences just stating that the 3 authors agree and 4 more say it's consistent, and with the published studies Author and Year kept within a concealed link reference?

The Eastern European section is massive and ties mainly 4-10 year old genetic studies with different linguistic theories of migrations heavily into 4 subsections and descriptions. Why are so many harping on this while then saying only the newer studies have relevance (pertaining to the newest discovered subclade's ex:R1a1a8) and then using most the old studies and language theories in extravagance?

If all these studies/ and vague theories of linguistics (language families?!) in the Eastern European Origin sections are given free a range to be properly acknowledged and equally weighted in length in the body text and importance with (1) The lead Author with Year* (not linked ref.) (2) Sentences to Paragraphs for descriptions of studies by Authors. then....

.....(1)Kivisild et al. (2003), Sengupta et al. (2005), Sahoo et al. (2006), and Sharma et al. (2009) should be given it's due weight. And I mean properly presented (as the East Euro. Origins is exactly) and described in moderate detail.

Both sides have to be describe concerning equality.

Lots of Material especially in the Sharma et al. (2009) study. (2) Stephen Oppenheimer's (2003) analysis should be restored (3) Mirabal et al. (2009), Underhill et all. (2009) and Gwozdz (2009) should expand further if needed. HonestopL 23:01, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Underhill et al. (2009) is now the basis for the whole discussion in the article. As you know, as someone who watches this article, it was the publication of that article which changed everything. It led to questioning, especially by PB666, of the length and repetitiveness of the Indian section as it previously was after I expanded it a few months back, which was really VERY repetitive. And so that section was compressed. But honestly if you look at those compressing edits it is almost impossible to argue with them. A lot of the articles you mention do not add much except data. They are of course very important in that respect, and they play a big role in the data article connected to this one! But there is not point making this article just a writing-out of everything in the data article? Maybe you can write a paragraph here to show what you think could be put in, which would not just be padding. Try to convince others. But personally I find it hard to work out how you avoid simply making it a verbal version of the data table article?? "And then Sharma et al. published the following data, and then etc."--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:30, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

But can I already point out to you that most people find "fairness" arguments about India deserving more words, or rightfully come first in sequence, very unconvincing. And generally speaking such things normally turn out being the prime mover for the usernames associated with repeating this complaint of yours. If you want to convince people you have a point then I would steer clear of that kind of thing.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:30, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Andrew you seem to be the least objective and the most paranoid. You don't have a clue what your talking about. You speak with alot of fluff, and ignore the real questions being asked. Looking back at your edits..you were the ONE who deleted ALL of the body of text's in the South Asian Origins sections (everything was repetitive??? right... go take another look).

I'm going to start contributing as well, and I will work together with other FAIR and OBJECTIVE users in overhauling and writing a proper South Asian origins section (one that is similar in presentation to the Eastern European Section).

Also I noticed a disturbing pattern that when PB666 comes with a problem about your weasel editing, proper sourcing - You have a serious problem, push your archeological and linguistic theories on this page. Then all of a sudden 4-5 users you associate with come to your rescue. Don't start with the whole "repetitiveness" bullsh*t please. I find it kind of pathetic how you try and twist everything people with objections have. I explained it all very well and if you can't understand the issue here, are you capable of editing objectively?

You should be careful making accusations like this. There are experienced editors working here, not all of whom are in agreement at all times. No one is anyone else's flunky, as you seem to imply. As a new user here you'd do well to read the wikipedia guidelines and treat other editors with respect, instead of simply assuming they 'come to the... rescue' of folks. I have worked on this piece, but that doesn't mean I am always in agreement with any editor working here. Nevertheless, I try to accord everyone some measure of respect. MarmadukePercy (talk) 21:36, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

The reason you deleted the bodies of text(s) pertaining to the South Asian section is because you wanted to confine 7 Studies to a few sentences..in doing so misleading the reader. This jumps right out of the page when you read it. There are no bodies of text (descriptions of the studies- substance of R1a in them) like there is in the Eastern European Section, which was all your doing. This is unacceptable. And if you don't like it, that's too bad. Stop your propaganda campaign here and let's present the information IN THE SAME WAY. HonestopL 16:15, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

All these words and you never make it clear what you are demanding except perhaps more words in the India section. Does it matter what the words say??? If you have a point to make, just make it clearly and we can see whether it is a good one. What is it about those seven studies which needs extended discussion? What should the words say? The articles are mentioned, and their data is included also in Wikipedia. What else is needed? Please just explain.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:55, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

I consider HonestopL a likely sock. Joins the fray aggressively from their first edit. In any case, HonestopL, Andrew gave you a coherent and informative reply. If this article is a mess, it is because we get people who "want" the haplogroup to originate in South Asia. This is no way to approach such a topic. The reason is, of course, that R1a is handed around on Hindu patriot internet forums in the context of "indigenous Aryans". I known this is nonsense, but it explains the trouble this article is getting. Maybe the haplogroup did originate in South Asia, I don't know, but what we cannot have is people trying to create the impression it did because they happen to think it should have. --dab (𒁳) 21:31, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Sock??? Indigenous Aryans"??? Deluded much Dbachmann... Don't lie to try and ruin my name here. I'm a new user who has been reading wikipedia for a long time. And because a user (me) has serious objections to the presentation of this matter, don't Harass me and make up shit > understand? Internet Harassment can be dealt with many ways.

Seems like you archived over like 40 talk pages because so many have had problems with you, including multiple admins recently telling you not to harass new users by making unjustified claims. Stick to the facts cause we talking about how the Presentation of the South Asian Origins section in relation to the Eastern European Section, nothing more and nothing less. And how do you edit all day (all times within 24h?) Is this your job? And how come all of your edit are focused on Kurgan Theories??? You put 2 sources and label on every page "the most popular" LMFAO Sounds like "Kurgan Fanatic"....your edits on that page shows you deleted many criticism HHHHmmmmm....and you seem to come every time one of your buddies are in trouble. That speaks volumes. HonestopL 18:04, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

BTW What did you say to me??? the "Hindu patriot" remark..I find that VERY offensive. Like I said Internet Harassment can be dealt with many ways. HonestopL 18:12, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Whether or not you are the same person as Cosmos416 or not, I think I should point out that it is interesting that the various new usernames being used to make this point since he was blocked all refer to their personal feelings about me personally and certain edits I did back before these new user names appeared. That's a funny thing to do for someone just dropping in from the public. Anyway, the facts really are simple:

• At one point I received high praise from Cosmos416 for convincing the community to accept a MUCH stronger section about Indian origins theories.
• This article was later split simply because it was becoming very big. A data article was created, and this article is now more about anything needing discussion. A lot of the Indian material was just data from old articles, so that material is very important there.
• Indian origins theories are no longer controversial, so of course there is less to say about them.
• After the splitting of the article and the publication of Underhill et al 2009 I was criticised by PB666 for still having too much left over which needed compressing. He was right, and so we compressed it. A lot of the India section was just a reading out of data and article names. There is no point doing that.
• You complain that mention of some articles were moved to footnotes. Not all was. Anyway, PB666 was still fairly recently complaining about those footnotes also. So I have to presume that your attempt to take his side is purely cynical, trying to see if stirring up some argument might allow some non-consensus editing.
• Kurgan theories are mentioned in pretty much ALL articles on R1a, whether positively or negatively. You could say that this is where the argument is in this subject. So obviously it needs a longer section.
• I do not think there is any "Kurgan fanatic" who is involved in editing this article right now. If there were we would have them complaining for the opposite thing which the India fanatics complain about.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:50, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

---

Andrew, The facts are simply that I am a new user wanting to contribute to wikipedia,. I believe there is imbalances in this article, so you want start discriminating against users you believe that are Indian? This pattern is going on right now on the Talk Page: Genetics and archaeogenetics of South Asia.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Genetics_and_archaeogenetics_of_South_Asia#RfC:_R1a1

Hhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmm This is exactly like what you guys are exactly doing here. Conspiracy?

There seems to be a pattern here. Be careful in trying to defame and pin things on someone innocent.

(1)Stick to the facts and the problem being asked over and over that you don't want to answer. Why is the Presentation pf the Eastern European section so different from the South Asian origin section?? You did all the work on it and it's problematic as it looks like you don't want to expand the South Asian section to give it greater credibility cause it would harm your Kurgan Theories.

So let's start working together constructively and improve the article, cause I feel it's unbalanced and unjustified. HonestopL 12:47, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Indeed. I asked you above to speak in more concrete terms about what should be in the article, rather than just "adding volume to the sections about South Asia". That request seems perfectly in line with what you are requesting from others. So let's please move on to something more concrete and reasonable?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:38, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Sharma 2009

Sharma(2009) is the absolute worst in the way of an ostensibly "scientific" paper I have ever seen in a (again, ostensibly) reputable journal. Please see this section (and parts of the following section). How that load of slapdash crap passed peer and editorial review is a mystery, and certainly no credit to the personnel involved. rudra (talk) 22:51, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

I know there are some people who do not like it, but it is published and this is not the place to argue about how that works. We have tried to find a balance. The balance has of course been criticised from two sides.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:50, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

It is not a question of like. It is a question of common sense, especially pitted against what has by now crystallized into a fetishistic approach to "published" material, if not also slackjawed reverential awe of such. For example, this paper mentions the figure "72.22%" three times, including once in its almighty abstract. Now, 72.22% of 30 West Bengal Brahmins is not even a whole number. Nowhere close. In fact, a full 8 out of 16 rows in their "Table 1" have the elementary and disastrous problem of not amounting to whole numbers of persons. (And no, this is not "typos" or "rounding error"). These bozos couldn't get their numbers right, even in a "revised" version of their paper. And the editors weren't paying attention either. To quote or cite this pile of trash is basically agreeing to make a laughing stock of yourself. rudra (talk) 12:13, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

I could and do have lots of fun in other places, criticizing published papers. But why stop at Sharma? Are you so full of "slackjawed reverential awe" not to realize that the whole genetics field is full of things that can be questioned. But then again Wikipedia does not have its various neutrality/RS policies because of "slackjawed reverential awe", but instead because no other policy will work in this type of working environment. What are you going to? Assign a management system with some editors managing others in a hierarchy? Maybe a system of elections for every edit? Committees? There have of course been many people who've said they'll go off make something better than Wikipedia by not using such a policy, and by favoring experts etc. It would be great if any of them ever work, but on Wikipedia there is a long history which has led to the present way of working. Now, having got the preamble over, is there anything concrete you can suggest about changes, rather than just erase all mention of Sharma et al?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:20, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

(It's quite simple really. Just exercise some discrimination in the interest of quality. The notion that WP is obligated to faithfully reproduce howlers simply because they happen to appear in <reverential_hush>reliable sources</reverential_hush> does not strike me as a sound basis for policy.) As erasing Sharma would be a net improvement of the article, I'm all for it. As for other changes, I'll get to them in due course. rudra (talk) 13:30, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

For better or worse, erasing Sharma et al is not an option because this is Wikipedia, and this source ticks all the RS boxes. Deleting mention of it would in reality start an edit war which the deleter would loose and so he would achieve NOTHING. Can you think of a more realistic proposal? One thing I often find is that it is easy to make vague general criticisms which take no account of reality, but when people get dragged into the practicalities of making concrete proposals they confront the same need to compromise as everyone else. But it is surprising how easy it is sometimes to come up with a proposal that makes most people reasonably happy, but you have to be willing to discuss things in a concrete and practical way. Problem right now in this discussion is that I do not know what to propose that might please you, except for something that there is no point proposing. See above for a person arguing in an equally impractical way that discussion of Sharma and other Indian authors must be puffed up.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:10, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Quick question: what is impractical about stating 72.22% in numbers rather than percentages (i.e "how many out of how many")? And lo, (according to Wikipedia), "21.67 out of a sample of 30 West Bengal Brahmins were found with R1a1". Would you really like to see a statement like that, and have you anything better than a squidish cloud to evade the issue? rudra (talk) 15:29, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Your concrete proposal is to change the number format? Why even raise that on the talkpage? If you are proposing a non-controversial format change that will simply make the sample size more clear, I'd say just do it. I have personally tended to use the format I think you are suggesting.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:11, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

You are playing games, and you know it. But if you insist, in this instance my practical proposal is that "scientific" howlers be presented in a manner such that their ludicrousness cannot be misapprehended. The basis for such a policy would be that WP is under no obligation to sugar-coat, window-dress, meliorate, excuse or obfuscate idiocies simply because they made it to ahem, peer-reviewed, publications. rudra (talk) 18:33, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes I insist that at least if you want to convince me, we should be talking about what should be in the article in concrete and not just moaning about the world in general. Call it playing a game if you want.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:34, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

On the contrary, it is up to you to convince me that Sharma 2009 -- and other idiocies of similar ilk -- should be included despite the fact that its numbers make no sense. So far, all you've managed is the POV-pusher's standard bleat "but but but it passed peer review!". I accept this argument provided any nonsense to be included is clearly shown as nonsense. rudra (talk) 20:46, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

No you are wrong here about Wikipedia. Showing that something is "reliably sourced" as per Wikipedia definition really is enough to put the onus on the other side. I have no problem with arguing about published articles on other forums, but on Wikipedia, we just summarise what others say. If we are really summarizing what others say, in a duly balanced way, and others agree we are doing this, then there is nothing else to discuss. If you have concerns about the "balance", can you make concrete proposal? If you are going to keep repeating that you want reference to a published article completely deleted then please re-consider whether it is worth arguing with people about this who probably agree with you in the first place anyway.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:59, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Please quote the section of policy that either says or clearly implies that "reliably sourced" is sufficient (rather than just necessary). Thank you. rudra (talk) 21:10, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Necessary? Nothing is necessary on Wikipedia? What are we talking about actually? The point is that you are wrong to say that everyone else has to convince you to allow mention of a reliable source.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:15, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

We are talking about encyclopedicity. But, as the distinction between necessary and sufficient criteria is lost on you, further discussion is pointless. Please carry on, don't mind me, I will try my level best to ignore you. rudra (talk) 21:25, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Peer review should make a source a worthy candidate for consideration, not definite inclusion - but even removing Sharma would not make it necessary for a major rewrite of any part of the article, as he is only cited here alongside other sources (Sahoo 2006, Sengupta 2005). GSMR (talk) 21:25, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Some of the data in Sharma is quite important I'm afraid. Removing all mention would be unreasonable. Overemphasis on this one article would of course also be unreasonable, and so the question in such cases is always what the correct balance would be.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:56, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

What data?? Have you not grasped that their entire data set is a garbled, scrambled mess? Or is it that you find fractions of persons showing haplogroups to be meaningful information? Seriously, do you have any concept of science at all? rudra (talk) 11:26, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

You are missing the point by blaming me. What I think of the dataset is irrelevant. You are clearly not asking for mention of the article to be removed because of any Wikipedia relevant reasons, for example you can not argue that it is not from a mainstream reliable source, or not about the correct subject. You are clearly asking for it to be removed because you think it contains stuff you think is wrong and got past the reviewers. It is indeed sometimes sad that messy stuff gets past the reviewers. But you clearly have no reliable source for saying it is wrong or fringe, and also you clearly do not represent a consensus on this issue amongst Wikipedia editors. (There are other Wikipedians angry about this article because it does not contain ENOUGH mention of Sharma and other Indian authors.) It is a compromise, and frankly, whatever adding up, or formatting, and other problems these authors have, it does not mean all their data is wrong and falsified?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:33, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

From where did you get the idea that just because something seems to come from a "reliable source" therefore it must be included? And from where did you get the idea that editing on WP involves abandoning common sense? Further, who besides you, and just you, is arguing for the inclusion of Sharma -2009? And what is the basis of your argument? You have also failed to specify what "data" from that paper you "think" - at this point, I use the word advisedly - is worthy of inclusion. Since you are unable to tell the difference between science and garbage, it would help this discussion immensely if you actually specified the garbage you are so anxious to include. Thank you. rudra (talk) 13:52, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Please do not exaggerate. You simply have not made a case which is sufficient for removing all mention of this article. And yes, I do claim that this is not just my opinion. Look through the archives.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:11, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Nope, you'll have to show me, bcause you have no credibility. And, to get back to the subject, you still have not specified exactly what you want to include from the Sharma article. rudra (talk) 13:35, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Good point. The point is what should be in the article. Indeed it is much better to make concrete proposals about the article and stop wasting time writing about fellow editors. You were apparently proposing removing ALL reference to Sharma? I on the other hand was thinking the current referencing to Sharma is OK. It was the subject of quite a lot of discussion a few months ago, when the amount mentioned increased. From about October the amount decreased, to great protests from some. So the status quo is my current proposal, given the balancing that went into it. But of course this is not my article, and you are free to propose changes just like I am. I propose that you go through the article and make concrete proposals in a new section of this talk page if you have any. If you continue writing about other editors do not expect to be treated seriously.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:33, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

One last time. What "data" from the Sharma 2009, specifically, do you propose to include or retain in this article? No handwaving. Specifics only. If you fail to answer this question, I will remove every last trace of Sharma 2009 forthwith. rudra (talk) 22:39, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Please stop writing so aggressively. Making threats is pointless. There is nothing to argue about. If you are threatening to work against consensus because of some personal axe you are grinding well then that leads nowhere interesting and we can cut to the chase pretty quickly. (Which is that no one will take you seriously.) If you are not saying that then why on earth would you bother expending so much energy insulting and threatening someone you do not know and who you have no clearly defined disagreement with?

My proposal for now is the article as it currently exists. No point re-writing all the reasons because I am not married to it anyway. No one is stopping you from making proposals for change. I've just said that blanket deletion because you do not like the authors is unacceptable to me and others.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:38, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

You have failed to specify what "data" from Sharma 2009 you propose to include or retain in this article. In other words, you have no case, there is no "consensus", you are just blathering. rudra (talk) 10:50, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

I have specified it exactly, and you show that you can identify it by the edit you just did. I'll list what you deleted:-

• The citation from the list of references. I can not imagine how you justify that.

( It's garbage, not worth citing, even as "further reading". The bibliography is meant to be selective. It is up to you to show that we "need" to cite garbage.)

• A footnote to the article which listed it as one of the 2009 articles that changed the understanding of R1a that year. (It did even it was wrong. But who says it was wrong? You? Who are you?)

(Sound-bites from garbage are still garbage, even if they seem to be saying the right things. The other references are enough to substantiate the claim in the article.)

• This sentence: "Sharma et al. (2009) also found 2/51 amongst Kashmir Pandits and 13/57 people tested from the Saharia tribe of Madhya Pradesh, which is the highest level in one locality found so far." This sentence describes one of the most notable bits of data which was in the article. I see no reason to believe that because the article was poorly edited that these lab results were fraudulent. In any case, once again, who cares what you or I think? We are not important. The reviewers let it through. Even if the data is proven wrong in the future it is notable now.

(It is notable only in your head. Who in the literature is citing these "facts" as notable? Who are you to be the judge of what is notable and what is not, especially when there is no doubt that the underlying data is FUBAR? Clearly, you have issues here.)

• This small batch of data from the article: "For example, in the eastern and northern parts of India, among the high caste Bengalis from West Bengal like Brahmins and Kshatriyas (72%), Uttar Pradesh Brahmins (67%), Bihar Brahmins (60%), Punjab (47%), and Gujarat (33%) of male lineages have been observed in this lineage." Again, I know of no published accusations of fraud. You've presented no argument for such a deletion. And BTW a good faith editor should at least patch up such a deletion by replacing the data with something from another source.

(You have misrepresented that data, to boot. Why didn't you translate your carefully doctored percentages into numbers of people as you did with JK Pandits and MP Saharia? And now you dare to question me?? Where the f*ck do you get off, Andrew Lancaster? BTW, there is nothing to patch up. Citing Sengupta or Sahoo will be enough.)

• A reference to the article which says it is an example of an article which argued for a South Asian origin for R1a. I can think of no possible way to justify deleting this.

(It's garbage. Better examples exist. Have a thought to quality on WP, once you come off your cloud, thank you.)

If you have explanations, please give them.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:09, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

You had the chance to specify the inclusions, and you blew it. It is up to you to justify inclusion, not for me to justify their removal beyond the plain and obvious fact that the "data" in Sharma 2009 are, scientifically, nonsense, and that therefore the paper is worthless. That the editors of some two-bit journal somewhere were asleep at the switch does not mean that we abandon common sense on WP. It is up to you to establish that demonstrable nonsense belongs in this article. Go for it. rudra (talk) 12:41, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

As for your come-lately claim of having specified what you wanted, my comments are interlined above. rudra (talk) 12:59, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

I must be missing something. Putting aside your obviously weird descriptions of our discussions, let's just step back and be real.

This is the biggest survey of India I think every reported, and it is recent, 2009. It was published by the Journal of Human Genetics, which is part of Nature. Some of the raw data is not equivalent to anything tested in other surveys, and is important to anyone who know anything about this field. During all the long and often heavy debates about what should in this article over the last 6 months, out of maybe 15 editors who worked on it including at least some mention of this article has never come into question, although I was criticized by some editors for reducing mention of it.

And yet the only reason you have given for wanting to erase all mention of it even from the list of articles to be published on this subject is that it was poorly edited in terms of things like formatting and adding up on tables? Really? Why not just write an angry letter to the editors?

I really wonder what is behind your passions on this. I understood you got into some argument with one of the articles supporters elsewhere on Wikipedia, but even that does not seem to fully explain it. Can you PLEASE give some sort of comprehensible account of why you have entered this discussion looking from the first moment like you were looking for an edit war? (You just reverted my revert of your first attempt to blanket delete).--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:36, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

You have failed to show how and why a substandard primary source with manifestly unscientific content has any place in this article. Not only have you failed, it is clear that you have no intention of meeting the elementary requirements of WP editing, viz. that the burden of proof rests with the one advocating inclusion of material. You have no argument against the plain and simple fact that the Sharma/2009 paper is garbage. It is thus you who is edit-warring out of what appears to be nothing more than sentimental atachment. There is nothing further to discuss. rudra (talk) 14:45, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Here is a short justification. You are wrong about Wikipedia policy. The following is the first paragraph of WP:Neutral--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:15, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Neutral point of view (NPOV) is a fundamental Wikimedia principle and a cornerstone of Wikipedia. All Wikipedia articles and other encyclopedic content must be written from a neutral point of view, representing fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources. This is non-negotiable and expected of all articles and all editors.

You have never denied this is a reliable source. You only say it is substandard because of the sloppy editing in the journal.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:15, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Are you insane? That, e.g., 72.22% of 30 West Bengal Brahmins equals 21.67 West Bengal Brahmins is not, repeat NOT, a "point of view" calling for, as you would like to suppose, a "neutral" exposition. It is, rather, a mathematical certainty and, in the context of haplogroup testing, a factual and existential impossibility. Even morons have a fighting chance of getting their ears around that.

"Neutral point of view", further, does not mean "no point of view". It means "encyclopedic point of view", where accuracy, relevance and importance in the literature are duly respected. Not to mention the avoidance of insulting the intelligence of the reader, especially by gussying up dubious information.

Moreover, a dog's breakfast published in a low-impact journal is not significant (to follow your bolding). Nor is it a "major survey", until fairly respected sources in the field call it one. (You have given yourself away, using such terms to advance your POV.)

Clearly, you have no concept whatsoever of what goes into an encyclopedia article. Please stick to your hobbyist genealogy pages and start a blog somewhere. Thank you. rudra (talk) 16:33, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Is this personal for you for some reason? Why do you keep talking about me personally like this?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:52, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

A few pointers:-

• Above you claim I am pushing a POV. It might help achieve better understanding if you explain which POV I am displaying? You say I could put it on a blog! What would the blog say? What is Andrew's opinion about Sharma? Let me know why you think I have one. As far as I can see, it is hard to read any POV into a discussion which is mainly about just whether to delete ALL reference to an article, even from the list of references, and not doing so?
• You could also try to explain what WP:undue weight is being given. But again, it is hard to imagine how you are going to do that because the discussion is not about fine points is it? What kind of "weighing" can we talk about when you are deleting something from a list of references or not?

Your edits are effectively trying to deny the existence of the article. That is obviously just not on. Giving a weight of zero is clearly ruled out.

Your point about the article not yet being referred to in secondary literature is not serious I take it. There is unfortunately no secondary literature in this field, and anyway this is a recent article. This arbitrary "rule" would (if applied the same to all sources) would mean we'd need to place this whole field into the category of not being suitable for Wikipedia. If we judge what is a reliable source in a consistent way for this whole field, this article ticks all boxes, no matter what we think of it personally. It must be mentioned according to WP:Neutral.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:08, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

I think it is unhelpful in the framework of this article for editor Rudrasharman to continue to level what amount to personal insults at editor Lancaster. I have mixed feelings about some of the sources used in this piece, but I would prefer dialogue not degenerate into fisticuffs. That does nothing to further the aims of an encyclopedia. MarmadukePercy (talk) 18:08, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

The dialogue is not going anywhere because Andrew Lancaster will not permit it to go anywhere. He is a classic filibusterer, intent only on "winning" what he thinks is an argument, probably because it is important to him that he have the Final Word, the Last Say, that others may propose but only He Will Dispose. Dialogue is impossible with Andrew Lancaster, because he simply will not pay attention. He is content to keep on arguing in circles until his interlocutors give up. (For a good example of how he doggedly holds out for whatever he wants, simply because he wants it, even in the teeth of consensus, see this ridiculously long thread.)

The root problem is that Andrew Lancaster is clueless. This is not an insult, it is simply a sad, regrettable fact, made even more unfortunate by the circumstance that the clueless are usually also clueless about their condition.

• He does not know the difference between necessary and sufficient criteria, never mind how the distinction pertains to WP guidelines on reliable sources.
• Simple arithmetic is beyond him. This is actually very convenient for him, as he can absolve himself of any need to explain, for example, how 21.67 West Bengal Brahmins could test positive for R1a1a, if he can't even get to 21.67 in the first place. Absurdities are thus to him either "formatting errors" or in need of a "Neutral point of view".
• He has idiosyncratic notions of editing on WP. In particular, he thinks that the lack of secondary literature is a license to create a substitute, with WP's voice. He cannot grasp that when dealing with primary sources only, it is all the more important to be as discriminating and conservative as possible, because it is not WP's brief to give random research papers a place under the sun.
• He has no discernible faculty of judgment. He cannot distinguish important from marginal, significant from inconsequential. That is how he can claim that an obscure research paper, with hopelessly garbled data, published in a journal rated 74/138 for impact in its own field (for those not arithmetically challenged, that's a below median ranking) is, by the grace of Andrew Lancaster Himself, a "major survey", with supposedly significant "data".
• He is bereft of common sense. It is common sense to avoid dubious material, but the real issue here is that it takes common sense to identify dubious material. He simply cannot, and thus entitles himself to disdain WP:ENC, WP:REDFLAG, WP:UNDUE, etc.
• He has been a regular participant over the last 2000 or so edits of the article. The article is still a trainwreck. Clearly, he has nothing to contribute, but he will not get out of the way.

Andrew Lancaster is not an asset to the WP project. No doubt there are interests and pursuits well suited to his vast erudition and formidable intellect, but writing encyclopedia articles is not among them. rudra (talk) 05:03, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Gee. What did I do to annoy this guy? Rudra, you apparently entered this article fresh from an argument on another one which I did not follow closely, and for whatever reason you have some sort of interest in me personally. There is no dialogue between us so far. You have NEVER (look above) attempted to explain yourself except to say that the Sharma article is crap etc, and to try to be insulting about me. You've now done quite a few reasonable edits on the article. Do you see me being protective? I am only concerned about ONE quite extreme and unusual proposal of yours, which is quite a specific concern. You note that this article has been a trainwreck and the reason was because of EXACTLY the aggressive approach you are taking now. This is one article where the NEUTRAL policy is really critical. I am arguing that it outweighs the UCS rejoinder in this case, based on reality. The reason is that unfortunately this article is one where no one seems to agree with common sense. But what am I arguing for in practice? Very little. I think removal of ALL MENTION of the Sharma article is too extreme.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:20, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Rudra, you complained that I refer to formatting, and that this means I do not understand your concerns. That may indeed be true. I have asked you to explain more, but this has not worked. So I am looking at everything you said to me above and I can only find these remarks (putting aside vague things about Sharma being crap, me being whatever, etc):-

• this paper mentions the figure "72.22%" three times, including once in its almighty abstract. Now, 72.22% of 30 West Bengal Brahmins is not even a whole number. Nowhere close. In fact, a full 8 out of 16 rows in their "Table 1" have the elementary and disastrous problem of not amounting to whole numbers of persons. (And no, this is not "typos" or "rounding error"). These bozos couldn't get their numbers right, even in a "revised" version of their paper.
• what is impractical about stating 72.22% in numbers rather than percentages (i.e "how many out of how many")? And lo, (according to Wikipedia), "21.67 out of a sample of 30 West Bengal Brahmins were found with R1a1".
• Or is it that you find fractions of persons showing haplogroups to be meaningful information?
• Why didn't you translate your carefully doctored percentages into numbers of people as you did with JK Pandits and MP Saharia? And now you dare to question me?? Where the f*ck do you get off, Andrew Lancaster?

So your own angry postings focus on the use of decimal points, and really that is what I've focused on until now, not as a trick but because that is what was being written to me by you. I have not spent lots of time going off and studying every argument you've had on Wikipedia. Sorry.

There are heaps of ways a sloppy paper can get decimal points and other things wrong and it happens more than you seem to realize. I notice that their datasets all add up to more or less 100%, but N is different in their two tables. So I guess that between versions they added data and they have screwed something up, probably to do with formatting and typos. It is impossible for us to judge whether this has any significant effect on the realism of the data, but I agree it causes doubts. But (1) may I point out though that the data is not really very surprising compared to other surveys of India? (2) This is in any case unfortunately not the first time I've had doubts about whether a paper has messed up the data table. That's the challenge in making Wikipedia articles from this field. This is the type of RS available in this field. Yes, it is a real problem. It sure gets people fired up.

Anyway, I guess that in the ONE and only place where their data is referred to you could TRY just saying something like "Sharma et al also claimed to have measured high levels in the Saharia" (no exact numbers). Maybe you could even put a footnote about exact numbers not put in main text because the tables disagreeing with each other. Removing all mention of this finding just invites problems because people will be coming to this article looking for information about it, and if they do not find it, they'll put it in their way. (I notice Honestopl has entered discussion also BTW.) I do still believe that removing Sharma from the list of references, and from the list of recent articles proposing an Indian origin, will achieve anything except problems with worse editors than me. Why would we need to do that anyway? The article exists, and is not so dangerous that it needs to be hidden from the public!--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:59, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

---

@Rudra
I respect the way you've worked to pin point the error related to the 'fractional' no. of samples, but I still think Sharma et al be referenced in this wiki article because it is a well known published data and also well referenced in the web. In my opinion, wikipedian articles like this should be based on published references and not on the outcome of some people debating over the authenticity of a published paper over here.

Besides, it is quite obvious that the error was typographical and occured when they tried to compile their own data set with the previous papers.

A brief extract from Sharma et al.

To substantiate our data and compare our results, we further compiled the data available in the literature for Indian populations (400 Brahmin Y-chromosomes as well as 1788 scheduled caste/tribal Y-chromosomes).

^{7,9,12,21,23,24,29}

If you compare HG frequencies tabled in Sharma et al with Sengupta et al data(one of the referred study), it will be crystal clear.

Sengupta et al

Calculating HG percentages for N=18 West Bengal Brahmin samples result in R1a = 72.22%(13/18), H1 = 5.56%(1/18), R2 = 22.22%(4/18). These percentages, as you can see, are exactly like those published in Sharma et al except for the no. of 'N' samples which they seemed to have messed up. Aside from that, it definitely provided correct Y-HG percentages when West Bengal Brahmins are concerned.Fylindfotberserk

General discussion of the problem

Trying to distance myself from the various opinions. During the rewrite of this page Andrew has taken a dominant role, it is quite obvious that his POV edits are reflected in the emphasis of this article and do not reflect the current standing among the most prominent current literature. His overt inclusion of Klyosov who basically playing a switch and bait argument on South Siberian aDNA studies is an excellent example of inclusion of material where it is not warranted. I will try to address some of the critiques above and state problems.

I have repeatedly warned Andrew that inclusion of some of this material will be controversial particularly if it is not conditioned. Obvious shell games should be removed from the article until the literature has had a chance to respond, others such as Sharma et al should be carefully used. I just want to make the point about South Asia, Sharma, Underhill and Klyosov look at different South Asian groups, which may be a reason they draw different conclusions. Sharma and Underhill looked at the largest spread of South Asian groups and are to be considered the most reliable, Klyosov does a comparison by pulling unpublished STR data out of his hat. This was bound to be controversial and it is controversial.

• There have been several comments made about the Journal of Genetic Genealogy, both on this page and comments that have been erased. The Journal of Genetic Geneology is refereed journal, at least at some degree, I know this because I refereed a paper recently for them. However, geneological studies are not population studies, that requires a higher and broader area of expertise. Concerning Klyosov paper #1, the style is more or less informal and review style, but contains alot of original research, it probably does not get the level of critique it needed before publication. The area of concern is the molecular clock.

The most recent papers on Y-DNA suggest that that Y-MRCA is approximately 110 kya, this is based on a combination of Markers and STR data. This is very much in line with what we expect. This means that there is a contrast of problems, a greater discrepancey between the evolutionary relevant STR rate, and the genealogical.

The problem is particular important because the more correction one needs to make to reach that 110 ka timepoint on the Evolution rate means that the transition is occurring early and with greater impact. I pointed out this problem to Andrew, that trees that were not bushy in Klyosovs were 'evolutionarily' shorter, indicating that reversion occurs more rapidly than evident. The geneaological rate would be off by 5 fold at approximately 110 ka (IOW we are in the magnitude range of error). Here in lies the problem, within that 4000 to 20000 year range in which local MRCAs are being calculated as Klyosov is doing, the transition between the genealogical and evolutionary rate is occurring, but as of yet we don't know its' impact.PB666 ^yap 17:45, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

• Sharma et al. 2009.

- Unfortunately this paper did not use an updated set of markers and the R1* was not resolved.

- The major reason I would have returned this paper back for revision if I was the referee, is that the figure legends of this paper are atrocious. If one reads the paper several times eventually one will figure out which group the abbreviations are refering to, I found at least 2 errors, and there are some ambiguities that are created as a result. Data taken from the paper or conclusions drawn from aspects of the table that are erroneous or ambiguous should not be used on this page.

- "How that load of slapdash crap passed peer and editorial review is a mystery, and certainly no credit to the personnel involved." - In spirit I agree, ubt the material in the paper was publishable, IMHO, however a good EoC would have insisted on major stylistic revisions.

- As per Andrews reply- as the admins have told him WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT repeatedly this is yet another instance. Sharma is poorly presented paper, this is what the editor is getting at, the results are easily confused and thus if someone gets confused about its results, its not a wonder. Any serious scientist reading the paper would tell you the paper needs help.

• Steppe cultures section.

- I completely agree that this section has gotten entirely too much focus with the very weakest of data, the latest insertions of Klyosov by Andrew strengthen the point, the only way he manages to show that the Andronovo culture aDNA is closer to Russians is by removing all other ethnicities from the comparison, there is no scale given on the cladograms.

- I have warned that this section is driven largely by an idea, not reality. The strongest argument for the origin of IE is in anatolia and its spread is in the Bronze age, The Indo-Iranian language is an early branch off of the stem language. The strongest regional evidence for the origin of the Bronze age is in the region of Anatolia and fertile crescent and SE Europe, not the E. Ukraine-Volga-Ural region. The Andronovo culture is a bronze age culture and has stronger links to earlier bronze age cultures than it does to Ural-Volga (Kurgan) cultures which were decidedly Neolithic. The connection with IE language is PIE, however no-one knows were PIE arose, this is speculative, and Keyser's results clearly indicate that the R1a1a STRs in the Andronovo samples are not more closely related to the Kurgan-PIE origina region, but to regions South and West of this region.

---

We need to remove the mythologies from this article! The kurgan hypothesis is driven by ethnoracial perceptions and is not driven by the current theories and facts as they stand. I completely agree, due to the strength of the South Asian and Middle Eastern origin hypothesis relative to the current understanding of Ukraine-Volga-Ural origin this section is greatly overrepresented by mostly old papers or papers from controversial authors and sources.PB666 ^yap 18:07, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

I think you sum up the Sharma case. I see no problem with citing it fwiiw now that we've already gone to the trouble of spending time scrutinizing it, if only to buy us peace from the "Aryan" trolls. It would be ideal to cite it alongside a review, are you aware of anybody expressing a published opinion on the Sharma paper?

as for "The kurgan hypothesis is driven by ethnoracial perceptions" I beg to differ. The Kurgan hypothesis is a hypothesis combining comparative linguistic with archaeological evidence. It is a bona fide theory as such, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with genetics. If a disfigured version of it turns up on an article on a Y haplogroup, this is the problem of Wikipedia, not the Kurgan hypothesis. The Kurgan hypothesis is completely imperturbed by any possible lieu of origin fo R1a geneticists may or may not agree on. The Kurgan hypothesis also does not postulate that the Bronze Age originated in the Pontic steppe, I am not sure how you got that impression. --dab (𒁳) 18:17, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

The critical problem here is that authors were treating it as a bronze age culture when in fact it was neolithic. The whole PIE/IE Neolithic/Bronze age waffling with regard to R1a raises the bar of concern, and then when you see authors like Klyosov play loose with the facts in order to force the point. There is nothing solid regarding the Kurgan culture and R1a. The basic problem is the aDNA shows no solid link to Ural-Volga-Ukraine in Keyser et al. who studied STRs over a much broader area. Whether or not Kurgan was PIE or something else..... IE appears to have come from the southwest, and whether the same is true with Bronze age culture is not determined. So that the Andronovo culture that has been somehow glued to PIE and Kurgan, genetically links to the SW and W, linguistically (Indo-Iranian) links to the SW and metallurgically links to cultures to the SW. There is nothing substantive that linkes R1a1 in Andronovo or later cultures to the Western Steppe. The only links shown in Keyser et al which appear to be valid are mtDNA types, indicating a female, probably founder association of Andronovo and the likely invasions of IE bearing bronze-culture of males from SW. The whole R1a1/Kurgan association is a house of cards. Its addition to the page needs to be treated as a minor hypothesis, not as much attention as it is currently given. Follow the evolution of the section from November, you will note a large number of facts inserted were incorrect and represent misunderstandings on the part of editors, some of these misunderstandings reflect the published literature on R1a1. That is basically the problem, authors are creating or forcing myths without a good understanding of what they are talking about. Andrews conclusion that Keyser agreed with these was incorrect, Keyser could not find the connection between R1a1 and Volga-Ural culture, this group was simply stating what others had attributed and showed what they found with R1a1.PB666 ^yap 23:42, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

PB666, I would love to delete about 50% of what you wrote SO THAT people would see the relevant bits. I really wish you would do it yourself! You are of course right that Sharma and Klyosov for example are more devisive than, let's say Underhill et al. This indeed exactly why the current article is almost entirely structured around Underhill et al. Just deleting all mention of Klyosov and Sharma is neither fair nor realistic, as it will only create an edit war. (And honestly I think both sources are important, not just formally in satisfaction of RS rules.) Balance between different points of view is the key to making a stable article. Wikipedia is not the place to finish arguments off, just a place to summarize them.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:44, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

You have a very long 'stalker' page devoted to what I write, I find it fascinating that you now want to delete 50% of what I wrote, more or less you want to delete those bits you disagree with.PB666 ^yap 23:42, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

No, I wish the bits which were IRRELEVANT were not there. Like, why how long ago the Y TMRCA was.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:53, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Given the current controversy regarding the origin and nature of Klyosov's work, including seven paragraphs on Klyosov on the main with regard R1a1a supercedes all reasonable boundaries of its fair a proper treatment as an unverified perspective potentially fringe perspective. I want someone , not Andrew Lancaster, elde who has a more objective consideration of Klyosov and has read his two recent (and only english language papers) to include these, that is what I suggested and I will continue to strike Klyosov from the main page until a see an attempt at objective conclusion. The current inclusions in the article are way in excess of the body of work Klyosov has done. Many agree, Andrew, your hand dominates this article. There is a reason that Underhill is a core of this article, look at the authorship and contributors, then look at the authorship and publication history of Klyosov.PB666 ^yap 02:58, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Striking all reference of Klyosov from the main page is absolutely unreasonable as has been explained to death, not only by me but also by others. You have never made any justification for such an extreme proposal. Let's consider some of the changing explanations you have given:-

• Your first complaint, and I think still the real one, was that you took it personally in some bizarre way because the article was cited before you had read it. I am citing your own words. As you mention, because you are a disruptive editor, I collect diffs of your words for easy reference and can quote them easily.
• Later you modified that to the weird theory that Klyosov has not yet been accepted in the field, presumably meaning that he needs to appear in the secondary literature before we mention him. But as you know, this field has no secondary literature so such a method, if applied to all authors, would mean we need to delete all haplogroup articles from Wikipedia.
• For a short period you actually tried to develop a claim that Klyosov was a fringe author, but this was very unconvincing, because (a) you did this by showing he took part in a debate in a Nature publication, concerning a subject in which you and many top geneticists agree with him, and (b) the Klyosov material you MOST want to delete here is the LEAST controversial of all, concerning the Kurgan theory. The Kurgan theory is mentioned in every article on R1a.
• One argument you now deny ever having been an issue was that the Kurgan theory itself is what you want removed, because you have an unpublished theory about Indoeuropean coming from Anatolia which you think is superior. The invalidity of this case is obvious.
• Then of course we have your final session where you have openly announced that you are deleting reference to Klyosov as revenge for the criticism your editing has suffered over on the Mitochondrial Eve article.

Honestly there was never any point making any of the above cases. Look at them listed out. Please only write concrete realistic proposals about what should really be in Wikipedia.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:53, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree with both PB666 and Andrew on this one. Both should be included and have details on descriptions relating the studies, but limited I think to the subclade R1a and it's relevance (i.e:frequency, diversity, analysis by the author(s)). I will go through the studies and write up something very similar in presentation for the S.A.O section that is in E.E.O section. See how everyone likes or dislikes it- We're making progress! HonestopL 16:30, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

If people would ONLY propose things they know will not be considered unreasonable by others, progress would be a lot easier. Discussion about Sharma, Kylosov, and the Kurgan theory should all be about how the wording needs to be in order to be balanced in the real article. Discussion should be about concrete editing proposals and not conspiracy theories. All the extreme proposals people are making are just a big diversion.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:53, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

BTW HonestopL I do not know why you keep saying you are agreeing with PB666. He is saying all mention of Klyosov and Sharma should be removed. As far as I am aware, you have never agreed with PB666 concerning anything except that you both don't like Kurgan theories (for completely different reasons), and you don't like my editing because I have argued they can not be completely removed from the article. In fact, I can think of no case ever where any editor has agreed with PB666 in opposition to me concerning anything clearly defined at all. It is not a case of people ganging up. PB666 knows he is a one man show working against an ignorant consensus as he calls it.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:17, 20

January 2010 (UTC)

Once again Andrew is carrying on, finger shoved in ears with the WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT attitude. I not am saying all Klyosov should be removed and parts, judiciously, can be added back, based on strongest elements and by someone who can show themself to be objective about it. Criticizing the molecular clock that Underhill and Zhivotovsky use is fine; however I provided a much better, solid and scientifically credible source of critique. Broader range inclusions that cover a wide area such as the association of older Balkan spread is fine. Studies based on a cherry picked sample set (e.g. Ethnic Russian R1a1) should be removed, the comparisons of unpublished data (second hand) from china, comparisons with Russia, between Russia and India should be removed, since the samples that he used are a small fragment of data available and since he cherry-picked both his samples conclusions. You have serious WP:OWN issues here, Andrew you are not addressing, you are blasting people with misinformation in order to suppress their points of view. Klyosov is clearly, based on its credibility as a source of information, overrepresented in this article.PB666 ^yap 16:01, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

You only have to look a few paragraphs up, and you'll see that you did say you'd remove all mention, something you've repeated over and over ad nauseum, and you also put these words into practice in all your recent edits on this article. Its all you do. Don't you have enough self awareness to know what you write? And if you have a more nuanced proposal, then why on earth don't you just explain it? After hundreds of pages of ranting and demanding that we remove all "mythology" where are your concrete explanations about which exact words are giving the wrong emphasis, and how to tweak them to get the balance right? All that we have from Klyosov in the current version of this article is non-controversial I think, but more remarkably you can not even explain why it is not in any detail, after many requests to you to do so. Do you claim that using STR haplotypes to study phylogenies is controversial? That disagreeing with the Zhivitovsky method is? That linking the most recently spread BRANCH of R1a1a to the languages spoken where the haplogroup exists is controversial? Why? None of these things are controversial? Where is your source for saying this is fringe? I think you are simply unable to work with others and unable to edit in a focused way. You keep flying off on crazy tangents, both on talkpages and when editing articles.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:15, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

However, we are concerned that this haste may not be in the best interest of sound scientific process, as evidence by the heavy reliance on the non-refereed publications, unpublished work and works not accessible to the scientific reading audience through usual scientific channels (categories that cover all five citations to Dr. Klyosov's previous work). Reference to the non-peer reviewed and poorly accessible data and formulations renders the constructive critique process problematic.- Hum Genet (2009) 126:725–726

Dr. Klyosov's Comment makes the erroneous claim that the haplotypes found in a population (and representing a sample) form a genealogy, and that "familial" rates are therefore appropriate. For mutation rate estimates, Dr. Klyosov (Comment, p. 13) refers to Chandler (2006); however, this author suggests a method of estimating relative mutation rates at Y-chromosomal STRs based on haplotypic distributions in populations. For estimating absolute mutation rates, Chandler (2006) used estimates of overall Y-STR mutation rate from data on father-son pairs obtained by Gusmão et al. (2005). Hum Genet (2009) 126:725–726

For those unfamiliar with the problem, Klyosov is using a real time rate for estimating divergence, when it is well known that rate 'fades' with genetic distance, and secondarily the sites he is using, extending, are not well characterized with regard to rate. Therefore we have two composite sources of error. The degree of fade versus distance is not well known, Zhivotovsky suggest that the rate is about 1/3 the father-son rate at 64,000 years but this was based on a previous estimate of the TMRCA, new estimates place the TMRCA about 110,000 years ago, ergo it could be approximately 1/5th the father-son. The rate of rate decay over time very much depends on the STR site, the site rate, the size of the STR, and thus variance of rate-decay depends on variance of rate * other sources of variance.

To correctly determine rate one needs to establish a decay versus genetic distance profile, and Klyosov did not do this, for this reason branches with fewer events should significantly shorter divergence time from nodal types than expected.

Shi, W; Ayub, Q; Vermeulen, M; Shao, RG; Zuniga, S; van der Gaag, K; de Knijff, P; Kayser, M; et al. (2009), "A worldwide survey of human male demographic history based on Y-SNP and Y-STR data from the HGDP-CEPH populations", Mol. Biol. Evol., doi:10.1093/molbev/msp243, PMID 19822636 {{citation}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |last9= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

Complete removal of all of the Klyosov information is justified solely based on the above, however I am willing to compromise on the amount added; however Andrew has previously voiced his support for this authors techniques, the Journal which it was published, and the amateur science framework in general. In my opinion is that his overt non-neutrality on the issue has resulted in an over-inclusion of Klyosov into this article. At minimum we can say, based on the find of a single author, based on the fact he is including second hand (but previously unpublished) information, based on the amateur presentation of his research - minimally, we should treat his results as premature and needing verification from someone who is more published in the feild, more importantly professional science journal.PB666 ^yap 16:10, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

So are you demanding complete removal or not???--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:15, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

The quotation you pulled out from the correspondence between Klyosov and Hammer, Zhivitovsky etc has nothing to do with anything currently cited in the article. If so, then what? It is, as has been repeated OVER AND OVER, a defence Klyosov criticizing them about their Zhivitovsky method. Such criticisms are common in this field, and you've expressed sympathy with them yourself. Quoting this discussion out of context is dishonest and cynical and you know it.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:19, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

It has everything to do with the issue, the major critique is about rates, the second critique is about where Klyosov is coming from and how reliable he is as a sources. WP:RELIABLE SOURCESPB666 ^yap 16:23, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Outdent. OK, as usual you have kept editing your own postings after they are responded to and you've made a kind of garble that can not be understood. The longer you edit something the more impossible it is for others to understand it. Anyway, it is very simple: 1. You proposed an extreme edit, deletion of all reference to a published author. 2. All other editors of this article disagreed with that extreme edit, and they could give many reasons for this disagreement. 3. You could give no reasons, and you refuse to talk compromise: all or nothing. That's where you are now stuck. Compare to WP:BRD, a reference pointed out to you by admin Doug Weller long ago.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:55, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

• 1. False
• 2. Klyosov is excessively included other editors agree you are heavy handed with the article.
• 3. Compromise, yes, but since you have repeatedly readded the full monty I will repeatedly delete it most of it until you get rid of your WP:IDIDNTREADTHAT/OWN attitude and start working toward a concensus. The problem is not going to go away, other here repeatedly point out your desire to own the page. Secondarily I am using a technique you condoned on the mtEve page undertaken by Muntawandi, I see no problem using this technique as long as you don't see a problem using it elsewhere, what is good for the goose is good for the gander.PB666 ^yap 22:47, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

1. What, did you leave a footnote in somewhere? Please, let's not play silly games which a second grader would laugh at?

2. Cynical nonsense. You know that you are on your own and you've justified this by saying that the consensus is ignorant. By the way, for a long time you were proud of the fact that you were pushing me to work on this article and in relatively recent times, when the article was basically as it is now, you have taken credit for that fact and said that might work made the article a major improvement. You are shameless. It is easy to make shallow "own" accusations at someone just because they did a lot of work for a short period, especially when you went out of your way to try hounding me and other authors into either submitting to you or leaving this article. You know very well that no one else has said I am heavy handed with this article except for people (or maybe it is one person) who drop by every now and then to argue that India rightfully deserves more words (i.e. people who are complaining about edits which were made with your approval and even at your insistence). These/this people/person has also made it clear that they realize it is not just me but also a whole "conspiracy" of other editors who disagree with them. You are cynically now being hypocritical about avoiding criticizing Sharma too hard even though it is a far more controversial article than Klyosov, in the hope that you can pretend you have someone who agrees with you.

3. "Compromise yes" you say? What does that mean? Did you propose anything concrete about why any particular text needs tweaking and how it could be tweaked? Have other people closed the door to discussion? No, you have. By your own account, which keeps changing anyway, you are making the same edit over and over based on revenge and emotion, not article quality, and knowing you are going against consensus.

So by your own description this is simple old fashioned one sided edit war. If you think not, then how do you distinguish it? Do you think that by waiting a day or two before making the same massive delete edits that this means you are not in an edit war?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:44, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

There is no further sense in talking to a person who lives their life with fingers in their ears. It is a disservice to this page to carry on this conversation, the logic above is clear and solid, you represent a fringe sect by these additions, and I will continue to delete the inclusions until you can back them up with data from a widely credible scientific source.PB666 ^yap 02:53, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Ancient R1a1 in Mongolia

Might be nice if this piece mentioned at least in passing word out today that a skeleton of a 2,000-year-old western Eurasian male in northeast Mongolia was found to be positive for the R1a1 haplogroup. [1][2] MarmadukePercy (talk) 15:32, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

The second link doesn't work, it leads to a "cookie error" page of some sort (a normal "web design" idiocy). Try this (or this to see what they want -- there will be a squib with the link on the right). rudra (talk) 21:25, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Split proposal

Origins and hypothesized migrations of R1a1a => Origin hypotheses for R1a1a(R-M17)

As noted in the edit summary, this is one huge mass of speculation. It is also heavily contaminated with geneticists speaking out of school, pronouncing on subjects outside their competence, such as linguistics, archaeology, anthropology, sociology and ancient history. As such, therefore it's a fertile ground for POV-pushing (of which the various academics themselves are not wholly innocent.) All of this should be encapsulated in a dedicated article where the details can be laid out (and without which not much is really likely to make any sense). But all that detail in this article would be a tail wagging the dog. This article should just focus on the facts: i.e., classification and distribution. (With, of course, due attention to the bimodal distribution of R-M17, a notable fact indeed in need of explanation.) rudra (talk) 14:52, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Well yes genetics literature is full of such problems (if we would try to avoid Wikipedia being affected by them then we should remove the whole R1a article) and yes this section is often the subject of POV editing, for example people wanting to remove mention of particular authors and so on. But Wikipedia has clear policies about that. So can you please clarify what the basis is for splitting this material out? If you are saying that this section of the article is reliably sourcing things which are wrong, stupid etc even though publish, then sorry but I think this is not a justification for anything. We are not here to filter out RS material because Again, please read the very clear and very emphatic first paragraph of WP:Neutral. The whole point of that policy, which is one of the clearest in all of Wikipedia is that we DO NOT try to judge the merits and de-merits of non fringe reliably sourced materials. We mention all of them.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:44, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Having removed much of the coatrack material infesting the section, I'm willing to withdraw my proposal. However, I'm also willing to bet that sooner or later all that cruft will find its way back. Which is the point of my proposal. rudra (talk) 05:44, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Again, I get your point. Really. Our apparent disagreement, hard to see through all your abuse, is really just how to solve a practical problem that the literature itself creates because this is a young and fast moving field. Your proposal would effectively lead to a POV fork, which would not make the real problems go away, it would just move them around. You are just the latest person to consider these problems on this particular article, and there will indeed be others who will argue all the opposite things to you, but EVERY haplogroup article deserves more attention. This one is now pretty strictly sourced. R1a just gets lots of angry browsers because people apparently associate it with certain ethnicity discussions. Have a look at the version back before the most recent burst of editing I started a few months back. It has improved. Please do not shoot me for the problems which come from outside!--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:11, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

There is no POV fork either present in, or implied by, or consequent on the split proposal. A section split results in a summary being retained in the article. The relation is one of summary to detail, not "one set of details here and another set there" (which is the defintition of a POV content fork.) As for the summary, it in fact is already present: it states quite succinctly that South Asia, having an older R1a1a population than Eastern Europe, is the more/most likely origin. Everything else is repetition, detail, tangents, trivia, curiosa and cruft-magnets. rudra (talk) 22:01, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

You clearly do not know anything about this field or else you are being deliberately deceptive. The origins of R1a are still "in discussion" and the material you proposed splitting off (or deleting now, given you new approach) is the core of that very discussion which you can find in all possible sources which can be used for this article.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:16, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

The discussion is moot, as I removed the tag several edits ago. I've cleared off most of the cruft. As for how a summary functions, I'll leave the details for another time. (Suffice it to say for now that "likely" is not the the same as "done deal", and yes, prose to express more clearly that research is still afoot could have been added.) At this point, what the section really needs is a WP:RS for the contextual critique that origin and dispersal are separate phenomena (which is the single biggest problem for the South Asia partisans, as none of them have proposed dispersal scenarios to accompany their agenda-driven satisfaction with the data on origins.) rudra (talk) 20:02, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

I did not consider it moot, because I have been trying to communicate with you about more than just the tag. Apparently you solved the concern you had by taking a lot of material out. I have concerns about whether you have now created a POV article instead of a POV fork. Coming to your sourcing question, if I understand correctly, you are saying that you want to find a source that says what you want it to say? In all seriousness I do not mind helping you find sourcing (try Chiaroni et al perhaps for this point you raise; do you know it?) but of course I wait to see how you propose to use such sources (it sounds like synthesis), and your apparently arbitrary and un-contestable "rules" about what sources are acceptable continues to be a major concern.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 00:11, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

My concern with breaking the article apart, and segregating the issue of speculation concerning the origins of the haplogroup, is that it will simply confuse readers, who find they have to make a jump for a discussion that is intrinsic to the origins. I don't see the point in that. I do agree that it is a sensitive issue, and close attention must be paid, but I find the split proposal unwieldy and unsatisfactory. MarmadukePercy (talk) 00:24, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

The segregation would have been of the details only (because that's where the incessant tugs-of-war occur -- to some extent, the split proposal was conceding the inevitability of troll attacks), a decent summary could have sufficed to clue readers in to the issues. If the cruft could be kept out successfully, a split would be in play only if the section grew too big legitimately. rudra (talk) 18:42, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

To repeat a point that seems to have been misinterpreted, the section needs prose to frame the information (both facts and theories). With a bimodal (at least) distribution, the origin versus dispersal distinction helps to explain why so many different theories remain in play, viz., either there was an early flow from one focus, as origin, to the other focus (and points elsewhere), or there was an early bifurcating dispersal from a third focus, with the dissipation at the origin also to be accounted for. Now, all of this is pretty obvious, and I'll argue that its statement helps to frame the presentation, but it's still all WP:OR or WP:SYNTH unless we have a source to state the obvious for us. rudra (talk) 18:54, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, just to confirm so there is no misunderstanding again, the split proposal is off, but concerning this point of needing to have a source in order to write something about the difference between origin and dispersal I think that the most obvious question is why we can not just say (in this article) that the origins of R1a are something there is no general consensus about. In the R1a article itself, why would we need to have a side discussion about WHY there is disagreement and uncertainty? Wouldn't that be for another article (population genetics? archaeogenetics? phylogeography? all of these?) which this one would link to for more discussion? I think there are sources for such discussion, so that is not the problem. The problem would be trying to write as if those sources were all specifically about R1a. In practice, one thing I have tried to do in haplogroup articles is to make sure the uncertainty of all origins discussions is reflected in choice of wording. It is important for these articles to say there is uncertainty, not necessarily to go through all the reasons why? Please note: I am trying to respond to comments you've made which are not yet very clear. Please do not go ballistic about any misunderstandings I have about your intentions. WP:AGF. Here are some sources which are reviews. I hope it helps.: --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:26, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

• Underhill and Kivisild (2007), "Use of Y Chromosome and Mitochondrial DNA Population Structure in Tracing Human Migrations", Annu. Rev. Genet., 41: 539–64, doi:10.1146/annurev.genet.41.110306.130407
• King; Jobling (2009), "What's in a name? Y chromosomes, surnames and the genetic genealogy revolution", Trends in Genetics, 25 (8): 351–360, doi:10.1016/j.tig.2009.06.003 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help). Also here
• Jobling; Tyler-Smith, THE HUMAN Y CHROMOSOME AN EVOLUTIONARY MARKER COMES OF AGE (PDF)
• Chiaroni; et al. (2009), "Y chromosome diversity, human expansion, drift, and cultural evolution", PNAS, doi:10.1073/pnas.0910803106 {{citation}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |journal= (help)

As I mentioned above, it is a little off-topic in the sense of being generalist (not R1a specific), but because this is possibly of interest (or should be) to many editors who might read here I'll "opine". Part of my reason for doing this rather than righting an answer, is because I can not be sure if this is what Rudra is talking about, but I do want to treat his remarks in the most positive possible way. Other people have bombarded this talk page with general complains about genetics for a long time anyway, so why shouldn't I? LOL

The biggest confusion that happens both in Wikipedia but also in some of the oldest or poorest published literature is equating area of highest frequency (% of population) with the most probable point of origin. Much more important is to look at two things together, which are really the same thing, but two types of evidence for it:-

1. Diversity of closely related haplogroups, and where these are located. For example, if R1a1a's "siblings" (including the unidentified ones within the R1a1* paragroup) are all found in a specific region, this is relevant information to origins discussion. The same goes with slightly less closely related clades such as R1a*, R1* etc. Such discussions can and should be quite complex. In the case of R1b1b2 (R-M269) which has many clades, sub-clades and sub-sub-clades already defined, this method has become very powerful.
2. Within each SNP defined clade geneticists then look at the diversity of STR haplotypes. What they look at in this case is the variance, the average differences, between different examples of people in one clade in one region. The theory once again is that the area with the most diversity has more chance of being an area where there was an older presence.

There ARE however ways to try to look at frequencies in a more sophisticated way. This is a big subject in more general biology (centroids etc) and the Chiaroni article I posted above just touches on it. One proposal they make for example is that highest diversity regions often look like the shapes that would be left by waves. To take a simple case, let's say you find highest diversity of a clade forms a circle around an area. In such a case geneticists are happy to consider ignoring the lower frequencies in the center of the circle and go looking for other evidence (e.g. diversity as described above, or information from other fields). An obvious area which has low but diverse presence of many haplotypes which may have spread from it is the Middle East. Apparently, as you would expect, some clades have become very common there recently, but they do not completely hide the presence of an older diversity which may have been a feeder area for many areas surrounding the Middle East.

ALL these methods add up to educated guesses. Nothing more. There are well-defined and obvious things that can go wrong with them in a BIG way. The correct approach has to be trying to get lots of partial evidence and making a case. There is rarely a killer piece of evidence. This uncertainty is something that frankly the academics have an interest in under-stating in primary materials. (Hence the care we need to take with all primary materials.) This rightfully annoys people in other disciplines (linguistics, archeology) who note that apparently strong conclusions get over-turned every year. A common quip is that if you want to look for results that do not change every year, the old rough science of Cavalli-Sforza basically came up with most of them. I do however believe that recently, as the field gets more mature, this really is improving. We can certainly go beyond Cavalli-Sforza.

If the above is not of interest to anyone, ignore it and accept my apologies. It is not intended to argue for any particular edit in the R1a article.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:07, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Li et al 2010

Li et al, 'Evidence that a West-East admixed population lived in the Tarim Basin as early as the early Bronze Age', BMC Biology 2010, 8:15 doi:10.1186/1741-7007-8-15 DinDraithou (talk) 21:51, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Provisional PDF DinDraithou (talk) 21:54, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Excellent paper. Thank you for posting. MarmadukePercy (talk) 22:14, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

(OT: "Mair H Victor", when the Chinese names are given Western style? I like that:-)) rudra (talk) 22:02, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Knowing that Mair posts to the IER mailing list, I checked to see if this had been mentioned, and found this instead: "Global genetic history of homo sapiens sapiens". rudra (talk) 22:08, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

A new source, and note, it reviews

See http://download.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/PIIS0960982209020697.pdf?intermediate=true I am not saying it demands any major changes, but according to Wikipedia guidelines, we should look at this carefully to make sure we are no inconsistent with it (note double negative deliberate) because this is secondary literature and not raw data. The authors and journal are also very prominent. Concerning the subject here:

More surprising is the status of Y-chromosome haplogroup R1, which, unlike mtDNA haplogroup I, is not indigenous to West Eurasia but appears to have originated in South Asia, possibly in the early settlements associated with the southern route dispersal [64]. This appears better substantiated than the alternative suggestion of a Central Asian origin [65]. Two major subclades of R1 appear in Europe: R1b in the west and R1a in the north-east. It has been suggested that R1b mirrors mtDNA haplogroup H and the forerunner of V in arriving from the east shortly after the LGM. Then, with the Late Glacial, its main subclade R1b1b2 expanded into western and central Europe [66–68], with a possible expansion at the same time from Anatolia [69]. R1a might then represent an expansion from an eastern refuge, perhaps in the Ukraine, although it might also have been the result of more recent dispersals [62,66,70–72].

It means that the eastern refuge theory has changed but not died completely, which is funnily enough also something I re-adjusted after rudra's recent edits. The references used by this review can be found following:-

• 62. Marjanovic, D., Fornarino, S., Montagna, S., Primorac, D., Hadziselimovic, R., Vidovic, S., Pojskic, N., Battaglia, V., Achilli, A., Drobnic, K., et al. (2005). The peopling of modern Bosnia-Herzegovina: Y-chromosome haplogroups in the three main ethnic groups. Ann. Hum. Genet. 69, 757–763.
• 63. Klein Hofmeijer, G., and Soprintendenza ai beni archeologici per le province di Sassari e Nuoro. (1997). Late Pleistocene Deer Fossils from Corbeddu Cave: Implications for Human Colonization of the Island of Sardinia (Oxford, England: British Archaeological Reports/J. and E. Hedges).
• 64. Kivisild, T., Rootsi, S., Metspalu, M., Mastana, S., Kaldma, K., Parik, J., Metspalu, E., Adojaan, M., Tolk, H.-V., Stepanov, V., et al. (2003). The genetic heritage of the earliest settlers persists both in Indian tribal and caste populations. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 72, 313–332.
• 65. Wells, R.S., Yuldasheva, N., Ruzibakiev, R., Underhill, P.A., Evseeva, I., Blue-Smith, J., Jin, L., Su, B., Pitchappan, R., Shanmugalakshmi, S., et al. (2001). The Eurasian heartland: a continental perspective on Y-chromosome diversity. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 98, 10244–10249.
• 66. Semino, O., Passarino, G., Oefner, P.J., Lin, A.A., Arbuzova, S., Beckman, L.E., De Benedictis, G., Francalacci, P., Kouvatsi, A., Limborska, S., et al. (2000). The genetic legacy of Paleolithic Homo sapiens sapiens in extant Europeans: a Y chromosome perspective. Science 290, 1155–1159.
• 67. Wilson, J.F., Weiss, D.A., Richards, M., Thomas, M.G., Bradman, N., and Goldstein, D.B. (2001). Genetic evidence for different male and female roles during cultural transitions in the British Isles. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 98, 5078–5083.
• 68. Hill, E.W., Jobling, M.A., and Bradley, D.G. (2000). Y-chromosome variation and Irish origins. Nature 404, 351–352.
• 69. Cinniog˘ lu, C., King, R., Kivisild, T., Kalfoglu, E., Atasoy, S., Cavalleri, G.L., Lillie, A.S., Roseman, C.C., Lin, A.A., Prince, K., et al. (2004). Excavating Y-chromosome haplotype strata in Anatolia. Hum. Genet. 114, 127–148.
• 70. Peri�cic´ , M., Lauc, L.B., Klaric´ , I.M., Rootsi, S., Janic´ ijevic´ , B., Rudan, I., Terzic´ , R., �Colak, I., Kvesic´ , A., Popovic´ , D., et al. (2005). High-resolution phylogenetic analysis of southeastern Europe traces major episodes of paternal gene flow among Slavic populations. Mol. Biol. Evol. 22, 1964–1975.
• 71. Balanovsky, O., Rootsi, S., Pshenichnov, A., Kivisild, T., Churnosov, M., Evseeva, I., Pocheshkhova, E., Boldyreva, M., Yankovsky, N., Balanovska, E., et al. (2008). Two sources of the Russian patrilineal heritage in their Eurasian context. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 82, 236–250.
• 72. Underhill, P.A., Myres, N.M., Rootsi, S., Metspalu, M., Zhivotovsky, L.A., King, R.J., Lin, A.A., Chow, C.E., Semino O., Battaglia V., et al. Separating the post-Glacial coancestry of European and Asian Y chromosomes within haplogroup R1a. Eur. J. Hum. Genet. doi:10.1038/ejhg.2009.194.

Regards--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:15, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

I notice the 'eastern refuge' suggested for R1a is the Ukraine, and not the Balkans. "R1a might then represent an expansion from an eastern refuge, perhaps in the Ukraine," according to the paper. I am well aware that the usual place suggested as a refugium has been the area of modern-day Ukraine, although some observers have also suggested the Balkans as well. Perhaps my memory has failed me, but I thoght you had suggested the Balkans at one point, Andrew. Perhaps I'm mistaken on that, though. MarmadukePercy (talk) 12:58, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

There were four refugia in Europe during the LGM: Iberia, Italy, the Balkans and the Ukraine. Renfrew's covering editorial in the Current Biology issue with these reviews has a nice picture, on the 3rd page of the PDF. rudra (talk) 13:28, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, back to MPs point, there are at least a couple of papers that linke R1a in Europe with the Balkans (althoug, of course, I2b is more commonly connected with the Balkans) Hxseek (talk) 09:50, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Li et al 2010

Li et al, 'Evidence that a West-East admixed population lived in the Tarim Basin as early as the early Bronze Age', BMC Biology 2010, 8:15 doi:10.1186/1741-7007-8-15 DinDraithou (talk) 21:51, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Provisional PDF DinDraithou (talk) 21:54, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Excellent paper. Thank you for posting. MarmadukePercy (talk) 22:14, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

(OT: "Mair H Victor", when the Chinese names are given Western style? I like that:-)) rudra (talk) 22:02, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Knowing that Mair posts to the IER mailing list, I checked to see if this had been mentioned, and found this instead: "Global genetic history of homo sapiens sapiens". rudra (talk) 22:08, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

A new source, and note, it reviews

See http://download.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/PIIS0960982209020697.pdf?intermediate=true I am not saying it demands any major changes, but according to Wikipedia guidelines, we should look at this carefully to make sure we are no inconsistent with it (note double negative deliberate) because this is secondary literature and not raw data. The authors and journal are also very prominent. Concerning the subject here:

More surprising is the status of Y-chromosome haplogroup R1, which, unlike mtDNA haplogroup I, is not indigenous to West Eurasia but appears to have originated in South Asia, possibly in the early settlements associated with the southern route dispersal [64]. This appears better substantiated than the alternative suggestion of a Central Asian origin [65]. Two major subclades of R1 appear in Europe: R1b in the west and R1a in the north-east. It has been suggested that R1b mirrors mtDNA haplogroup H and the forerunner of V in arriving from the east shortly after the LGM. Then, with the Late Glacial, its main subclade R1b1b2 expanded into western and central Europe [66–68], with a possible expansion at the same time from Anatolia [69]. R1a might then represent an expansion from an eastern refuge, perhaps in the Ukraine, although it might also have been the result of more recent dispersals [62,66,70–72].

It means that the eastern refuge theory has changed but not died completely, which is funnily enough also something I re-adjusted after rudra's recent edits. The references used by this review can be found following:-

• 62. Marjanovic, D., Fornarino, S., Montagna, S., Primorac, D., Hadziselimovic, R., Vidovic, S., Pojskic, N., Battaglia, V., Achilli, A., Drobnic, K., et al. (2005). The peopling of modern Bosnia-Herzegovina: Y-chromosome haplogroups in the three main ethnic groups. Ann. Hum. Genet. 69, 757–763.
• 63. Klein Hofmeijer, G., and Soprintendenza ai beni archeologici per le province di Sassari e Nuoro. (1997). Late Pleistocene Deer Fossils from Corbeddu Cave: Implications for Human Colonization of the Island of Sardinia (Oxford, England: British Archaeological Reports/J. and E. Hedges).
• 64. Kivisild, T., Rootsi, S., Metspalu, M., Mastana, S., Kaldma, K., Parik, J., Metspalu, E., Adojaan, M., Tolk, H.-V., Stepanov, V., et al. (2003). The genetic heritage of the earliest settlers persists both in Indian tribal and caste populations. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 72, 313–332.
• 65. Wells, R.S., Yuldasheva, N., Ruzibakiev, R., Underhill, P.A., Evseeva, I., Blue-Smith, J., Jin, L., Su, B., Pitchappan, R., Shanmugalakshmi, S., et al. (2001). The Eurasian heartland: a continental perspective on Y-chromosome diversity. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 98, 10244–10249.
• 66. Semino, O., Passarino, G., Oefner, P.J., Lin, A.A., Arbuzova, S., Beckman, L.E., De Benedictis, G., Francalacci, P., Kouvatsi, A., Limborska, S., et al. (2000). The genetic legacy of Paleolithic Homo sapiens sapiens in extant Europeans: a Y chromosome perspective. Science 290, 1155–1159.
• 67. Wilson, J.F., Weiss, D.A., Richards, M., Thomas, M.G., Bradman, N., and Goldstein, D.B. (2001). Genetic evidence for different male and female roles during cultural transitions in the British Isles. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 98, 5078–5083.
• 68. Hill, E.W., Jobling, M.A., and Bradley, D.G. (2000). Y-chromosome variation and Irish origins. Nature 404, 351–352.
• 69. Cinniog˘ lu, C., King, R., Kivisild, T., Kalfoglu, E., Atasoy, S., Cavalleri, G.L., Lillie, A.S., Roseman, C.C., Lin, A.A., Prince, K., et al. (2004). Excavating Y-chromosome haplotype strata in Anatolia. Hum. Genet. 114, 127–148.
• 70. Peri�cic´ , M., Lauc, L.B., Klaric´ , I.M., Rootsi, S., Janic´ ijevic´ , B., Rudan, I., Terzic´ , R., �Colak, I., Kvesic´ , A., Popovic´ , D., et al. (2005). High-resolution phylogenetic analysis of southeastern Europe traces major episodes of paternal gene flow among Slavic populations. Mol. Biol. Evol. 22, 1964–1975.
• 71. Balanovsky, O., Rootsi, S., Pshenichnov, A., Kivisild, T., Churnosov, M., Evseeva, I., Pocheshkhova, E., Boldyreva, M., Yankovsky, N., Balanovska, E., et al. (2008). Two sources of the Russian patrilineal heritage in their Eurasian context. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 82, 236–250.
• 72. Underhill, P.A., Myres, N.M., Rootsi, S., Metspalu, M., Zhivotovsky, L.A., King, R.J., Lin, A.A., Chow, C.E., Semino O., Battaglia V., et al. Separating the post-Glacial coancestry of European and Asian Y chromosomes within haplogroup R1a. Eur. J. Hum. Genet. doi:10.1038/ejhg.2009.194.

Regards--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:15, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

I notice the 'eastern refuge' suggested for R1a is the Ukraine, and not the Balkans. "R1a might then represent an expansion from an eastern refuge, perhaps in the Ukraine," according to the paper. I am well aware that the usual place suggested as a refugium has been the area of modern-day Ukraine, although some observers have also suggested the Balkans as well. Perhaps my memory has failed me, but I thoght you had suggested the Balkans at one point, Andrew. Perhaps I'm mistaken on that, though. MarmadukePercy (talk) 12:58, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

There were four refugia in Europe during the LGM: Iberia, Italy, the Balkans and the Ukraine. Renfrew's covering editorial in the Current Biology issue with these reviews has a nice picture, on the 3rd page of the PDF. rudra (talk) 13:28, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, back to MPs point, there are at least a couple of papers that linke R1a in Europe with the Balkans (althoug, of course, I2b is more commonly connected with the Balkans) Hxseek (talk) 09:50, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Li et al 2010

Li et al, 'Evidence that a West-East admixed population lived in the Tarim Basin as early as the early Bronze Age', BMC Biology 2010, 8:15 doi:10.1186/1741-7007-8-15 DinDraithou (talk) 21:51, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Provisional PDF DinDraithou (talk) 21:54, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Excellent paper. Thank you for posting. MarmadukePercy (talk) 22:14, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

(OT: "Mair H Victor", when the Chinese names are given Western style? I like that:-)) rudra (talk) 22:02, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Knowing that Mair posts to the IER mailing list, I checked to see if this had been mentioned, and found this instead: "Global genetic history of homo sapiens sapiens". rudra (talk) 22:08, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

A new source, and note, it reviews

See http://download.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/PIIS0960982209020697.pdf?intermediate=true I am not saying it demands any major changes, but according to Wikipedia guidelines, we should look at this carefully to make sure we are no inconsistent with it (note double negative deliberate) because this is secondary literature and not raw data. The authors and journal are also very prominent. Concerning the subject here:

More surprising is the status of Y-chromosome haplogroup R1, which, unlike mtDNA haplogroup I, is not indigenous to West Eurasia but appears to have originated in South Asia, possibly in the early settlements associated with the southern route dispersal [64]. This appears better substantiated than the alternative suggestion of a Central Asian origin [65]. Two major subclades of R1 appear in Europe: R1b in the west and R1a in the north-east. It has been suggested that R1b mirrors mtDNA haplogroup H and the forerunner of V in arriving from the east shortly after the LGM. Then, with the Late Glacial, its main subclade R1b1b2 expanded into western and central Europe [66–68], with a possible expansion at the same time from Anatolia [69]. R1a might then represent an expansion from an eastern refuge, perhaps in the Ukraine, although it might also have been the result of more recent dispersals [62,66,70–72].

It means that the eastern refuge theory has changed but not died completely, which is funnily enough also something I re-adjusted after rudra's recent edits. The references used by this review can be found following:-

• 62. Marjanovic, D., Fornarino, S., Montagna, S., Primorac, D., Hadziselimovic, R., Vidovic, S., Pojskic, N., Battaglia, V., Achilli, A., Drobnic, K., et al. (2005). The peopling of modern Bosnia-Herzegovina: Y-chromosome haplogroups in the three main ethnic groups. Ann. Hum. Genet. 69, 757–763.
• 63. Klein Hofmeijer, G., and Soprintendenza ai beni archeologici per le province di Sassari e Nuoro. (1997). Late Pleistocene Deer Fossils from Corbeddu Cave: Implications for Human Colonization of the Island of Sardinia (Oxford, England: British Archaeological Reports/J. and E. Hedges).
• 64. Kivisild, T., Rootsi, S., Metspalu, M., Mastana, S., Kaldma, K., Parik, J., Metspalu, E., Adojaan, M., Tolk, H.-V., Stepanov, V., et al. (2003). The genetic heritage of the earliest settlers persists both in Indian tribal and caste populations. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 72, 313–332.
• 65. Wells, R.S., Yuldasheva, N., Ruzibakiev, R., Underhill, P.A., Evseeva, I., Blue-Smith, J., Jin, L., Su, B., Pitchappan, R., Shanmugalakshmi, S., et al. (2001). The Eurasian heartland: a continental perspective on Y-chromosome diversity. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 98, 10244–10249.
• 66. Semino, O., Passarino, G., Oefner, P.J., Lin, A.A., Arbuzova, S., Beckman, L.E., De Benedictis, G., Francalacci, P., Kouvatsi, A., Limborska, S., et al. (2000). The genetic legacy of Paleolithic Homo sapiens sapiens in extant Europeans: a Y chromosome perspective. Science 290, 1155–1159.
• 67. Wilson, J.F., Weiss, D.A., Richards, M., Thomas, M.G., Bradman, N., and Goldstein, D.B. (2001). Genetic evidence for different male and female roles during cultural transitions in the British Isles. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 98, 5078–5083.
• 68. Hill, E.W., Jobling, M.A., and Bradley, D.G. (2000). Y-chromosome variation and Irish origins. Nature 404, 351–352.
• 69. Cinniog˘ lu, C., King, R., Kivisild, T., Kalfoglu, E., Atasoy, S., Cavalleri, G.L., Lillie, A.S., Roseman, C.C., Lin, A.A., Prince, K., et al. (2004). Excavating Y-chromosome haplotype strata in Anatolia. Hum. Genet. 114, 127–148.
• 70. Peri�cic´ , M., Lauc, L.B., Klaric´ , I.M., Rootsi, S., Janic´ ijevic´ , B., Rudan, I., Terzic´ , R., �Colak, I., Kvesic´ , A., Popovic´ , D., et al. (2005). High-resolution phylogenetic analysis of southeastern Europe traces major episodes of paternal gene flow among Slavic populations. Mol. Biol. Evol. 22, 1964–1975.
• 71. Balanovsky, O., Rootsi, S., Pshenichnov, A., Kivisild, T., Churnosov, M., Evseeva, I., Pocheshkhova, E., Boldyreva, M., Yankovsky, N., Balanovska, E., et al. (2008). Two sources of the Russian patrilineal heritage in their Eurasian context. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 82, 236–250.
• 72. Underhill, P.A., Myres, N.M., Rootsi, S., Metspalu, M., Zhivotovsky, L.A., King, R.J., Lin, A.A., Chow, C.E., Semino O., Battaglia V., et al. Separating the post-Glacial coancestry of European and Asian Y chromosomes within haplogroup R1a. Eur. J. Hum. Genet. doi:10.1038/ejhg.2009.194.

Regards--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:15, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

I notice the 'eastern refuge' suggested for R1a is the Ukraine, and not the Balkans. "R1a might then represent an expansion from an eastern refuge, perhaps in the Ukraine," according to the paper. I am well aware that the usual place suggested as a refugium has been the area of modern-day Ukraine, although some observers have also suggested the Balkans as well. Perhaps my memory has failed me, but I thoght you had suggested the Balkans at one point, Andrew. Perhaps I'm mistaken on that, though. MarmadukePercy (talk) 12:58, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

There were four refugia in Europe during the LGM: Iberia, Italy, the Balkans and the Ukraine. Renfrew's covering editorial in the Current Biology issue with these reviews has a nice picture, on the 3rd page of the PDF. rudra (talk) 13:28, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, back to MPs point, there are at least a couple of papers that linke R1a in Europe with the Balkans (althoug, of course, I2b is more commonly connected with the Balkans) Hxseek (talk) 09:50, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Sourcing

The "sourcing" of the article is actually a sick joke, a parody of Wikipedia procedures. A magpie's hoard of half a dozen POV-pushing editors' hobbyhorse lists is not "sourcing", never mind "strict". Random punters in random journals are being cited all over the place (or were, before my edits). I see no evidence whatsoever of proper attention to the requirements of dealing with WP:PRIMARY materials. On the contrary, it's particularly noteworthy that obscure research papers from third- and fourth-tier journals have been scrounged up to disguise what is actually "interesting" WP:Original research. Tidbits, trivia, and evaluative prose ("most thorough", "strongest", "the (references) do not explain (something unclear to the WP editor)", etc.) in Wikipedia's voice have no place in an article without secondary literature to explain why they are in the article. Wikipedia is not a substitute for secondary sources that do not exist. This is WP:PRIMARY policy, and non-negotiable. rudra (talk) 22:24, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Please stop making vague generalizations, and make an actual case for one of your opinions?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:17, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Given the general nature of this issue, it might be better to post it to the WP:NORN board, but I'm posting it here because it seems topical.

• WP:PRIMARY policy is pretty clear.

  Our policy: Reliable primary sources may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them. Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation. A primary source can be used only to make descriptive statements that can be verified by any educated person without specialist knowledge. For example, an article about a novel may cite passages to describe the plot, but any interpretation needs a secondary source. Do not make analytic, synthetic, interpretive, explanatory, or evaluative claims about material found in a primary source. Do not base articles entirely on primary sources. Do not add unsourced material from your personal experience, as that would make Wikipedia a primary source of that material.

* This is my "original research" into WP:UCS application of WP:PRIMARY policy to a case not covered explicitly in the policy document: when despite (other) reasonable grounds for an article to exist the material available is practically all primary, i.e. no secondary or tertiary literature of consequence exists to

1. Help frame the presentation of information, avoid WP:OR, etc., and
2. Help adjudicate proposed content as to WP:WEIGHT, WP:DUE, etc.

• The basic idea is that primary materials, even if they prima facie meet theWP:RS criterion, are not all equal, not on a level playing field. At the same time, WP cannot be secondary literature by proxy and choose among the primary materials on the basis of "inside" or "expert" knowledge. (This is a key sticking point, to which I'll return later.)
• Rather, editors should view this as an exercise in due diligence and vet the material according to objective criteria of encyclopedicity. The purpose is to limit inclusion of material by fairly strict ground rules, in keeping with the overall policy directive of using primary materials only with care.
• Here is my list of things to consider (nore could be added, I suppose) in evaluating a source:

1. Authorship by an established expert (similar to the WP:SPS idea)
2. Publication in a top-tier journal (taking top-tier as a secondary proxy for "quality"; Top-20 or Top-N for any reasonable N should work.)
3. Citation index (being cited in other sources is a plus)
4. Coherence of information (no gross errors in the data; we don't want to say something like "Hopeless et al.(2010) found that 2 + 2 = 5 in Upper Nocluvia." and because we don't want that, we shouldn't cherry pick other information from that paper and hide the fact, obvious to any reasonable person, that the source has problems with its data)
5. Representativeness of information (stable broad coverage is prefered to potentially unstable specific or local details)
6. Reasonableness of information (eschew potential outliers, the essentially unique or eyebrow-raisingly exceptional; wait for secondary literature to tell us about those)
7. Relevance (no coatracks please, stay focused and on topic)

• A list of criteria like this can serve as content guidelines to limit material: include only if multiple criteria are met. It will also help to keep many trolls and cranks out, because their material, by the nature of the beast, will all too likely fail more than one criterion. If they edit-war, escalate (e.g. to AN/I), cite these consensus guidelines, and get them tossed forthwith, life is too short.
• The significant problem I foresee is that consensus on a list like this will not be achieved. This is because the lack of secondary and tertiary literature usually means that an article should not exist at all. However, this has been overruled by "popular demand" in the form of a core of editors with an abiding or long-term interest in the subject. As a rule they are into the topic deeply enough that they will be tempted to nominate themselves secondary experts by proxy and apply their own judgement of things like WP:WEIGHT and WP:DUE, on grounds of familiarity with all relevant issues, etc. And they may want to reserve the right to plug their own favorite exceptions to the rules, or the latest and greatest hot off the press to keep up to date. This means endless edit-wars and long wandering talk page threads, but that would be no downturn from the current state of affairs anyway: they seem to prefer this.

(I'd like to be proved wrong -- that the haplogroup articles can be brought under control with content guidelines as above -- but I'm not holding my breath.) rudra (talk) 20:22, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

---

(Apropos the strikeout above: Sorry all, I was wrong, not topical. I may take this to WP:NORN at some point, but the plan here was not yet another round of circumambulatory blather. What follows was posted before this note, hence the strikeout rather than delete.) rudra (talk) 16:22, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

For the record I find it amusing that you imply that there have been previous "rounds". You post apparently asking for comment, I reply, you stop it there, apparently bemused, in some cases quite angry and cursing, that someone would dare ask questions or raise doubts about what you initially posted. That is not a "round". LOL. Anyway, if your interest in the subject was not open to discussion with mere mortals I am happy for discussion to be called off. I had fleeting thoughts of your seeing my long replies to your thoughts as a good thing, and certainly meant no harm by it.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:20, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

---

Once again, apologies in advance for a long posting. It seems appropriate right now. If not ignore it. It is not proposing any specific edits for R1a. I do not see any reference to anything specific in this article, so I think you have misunderstood my request, or felt it was misplaced. Basically I was asking for discussion to focus on the practical details of this article, as it should. Your posting is just a much longer generalization, but still another generalization. I believe that writing about the problems associated with haplogroup articles in general probably should really be discussed on another forum (WP:HGH?), and is unlikely to be relevant to any practical concern here. Ask yourself whether you think anyone can or will actually be able to argue for or against your generalizations. Ask your whether these concerns are really related to the typical editing disagreements on haplogroup articles. My experience is that the problems are, as usual on Wikipedia, concerning the practical details of specific cases, and most often are based on problems with just communicating about them. In other words, the disagreement in recent discussions and past discussions on this article has been about how to apply the theories, rules, norms etc.

Another very Wikipedian generalization you should have added is that every improvement we have time and energy to make is a good thing. WP:Deadline, which you are wrongly reading in a way critical to other aggressive editors but not yourself (now insinuating that all haplogroup article really should not exist unless they are all perfected), is very important in order not to go insane on Wikipedia, and certainly not only haplogroup articles. Haplogroup articles and pretty much most articles I have seen on Wikipedia, can all be much better than they are, and until they are as good as they can be, why talk about whether they can ever be good enough in theory?

For what it is worth though, as is shown by the review article I posted yesterday, haplogroup articles normally have at least a skeleton of non primary sourcing and in this respect they certainly may exist even if we read Wikipedia policies in selectively strict ways contrary to their spirit. Where putting in the latest information would be controversial, like with Sharma's data table, discussion (not unilateral edit warring by self-assigned white knights) can and should occur about the "due weight" they should get, and your 7 points seem reasonable in a vague theoretical way. But 99% of the time this particular type of article is just being cited in order to mention the latest SNPs and data sets, and blatant errors are rare.

Most controversies are artifacts of particular communication failures on Wikipedia. Your Sharma demand was not about weighting at all. I do not want to dwell on it but it would be very confusing to talk as if we forget that you wanted it deleted from ALL mention, and you "argued" (using lots of expletives) that the burden of proof was on others in order to justify ANY level of mention, or even to deserve discussion with you. So you were not following your own suggestions, nor Wikipedia policy (including WP:Neutral). The point is that in this real example, controversy was not coming from any "core of editors" (your words above) plotting against Wikipedia policy and refusing to discuss the case with you as its defender. You simply refused to discuss the case with others, and opened up pre-emptive personal attacks. You did this ASSUMING bad intentions and assuming that others would fight you in ways which turn out to be incorrect. So the problems recently on this article have nothing to do with what you mention above as far as I can see, but are just classic communication problems. In the same way PB666's edit war on this article was clearly NOT about the Wikipedia policies he sometimes cited (in conflicting ways). He did not like "steppe theories" because he had his own fringe theory about Indoeuropean coming from Turkey. He therefore denigrated Klyosov as a source in order to try to give the impression that no recent authors believe in even very adjusted versions of them. We could talk for a long time about many real edit wars and find the same patterns over and over.

If I read your above summary, one thing which stands out as a theme is that you are constantly thinking about all the possible and probable intentions of people who might possibly disagree with you and work against you. I understand very well that if you've been in some tough editing discussions, this is an enormous temptation. But in your case it seems to guide nearly all your priorities, and you are judging potential enemies and planning attacks pre-emptively, based on your ideas about "types" of editors and "types" of subjects, even before there is any clear disagreement. I think WP:AGF is way more important to Wikipedia than you realize.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:08, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

I believe the opinions expressed by this blog (John Hawks) concerning the series of articles in which the review I posted yesterday is found, is a balanced explanation of realities lying behind problems Rudra is confronting and blaming on various scapegoats. The whole field has problems, but not only problems. Life is just complicated and has no finishing line. It is not a group of Wikipedia editors who have created this, and it also not, for example the JOGG.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:27, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Just to point to one thing so it is not missed, problems in this field come not only from the normal scientific problem of fast changing information, requiring use of primary sources. This happens a lot science and cause nowhere near this much controversy. A special problem is that a lot of the field's discussion is multi-disciplinary. The geneticists, linguists and archaeologists all misquote each other constantly, even though things are getting better, and this leads to specific problems for us on Wikipedia. If you think about it though, uncritically blanket banning sources and restricting the sources we use can actually make the problem worse. This is where it helps to have experience in what really goes wrong in haplogroup articles, and not what might theoretically go wrong.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:50, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

(See WP:NOT. Wikipedia is not a factoid emporium. Wikipedia is not a news outlet. Wikipedia is not a blog. Wikipedia is under no obligation, let alone compulsion, to be bleeding edge or even up-to-date. Wikipedia's brief is to be a tertiary source. WP:PSTS is quite clear in stating a policy of dependence on (reliable) secondary and tertiary sources. If these do not exist, this is a prima facie ground against a WP article existing at all, for lack of proper sourcing by Wikipedia standards. It is not a license to ignore policy and break all rules. Such an argument is too absurd even to "discuss".) rudra (talk) 15:57, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I do not know why you are responding so late to this posting, and in such an obviously twisted way? I was responding (in this old post) to your own long posting which you retracted. I was probably taking you too seriously. Did you misunderstand what you are replying to?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:20, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

(Posts in parenthesis are not follow-ups or responses. They are commentary, like asides.) rudra (talk) 18:01, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Oh. Should have known. You do a lot of asides.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:16, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Discussion about this article is everywhere except here: a key for the confused

Users wondering where they can find all the discussions that should be here, concerning the various controversies surrounding the recent edits and opinions put forth by User:Rudrasharman can find it in several places on Wikipedia:-

• Discussion of JOGG as a source. Note, this discussion will eventually change address and be archived.
• The talkpage of User:Dbachmann, who is an admin known to both rudra and me.
• A second thread on that talk page. (Note how discussion there has been better than here! Also note that focus has turned to a related article also, where there is more discussion...
• The data article for R1a.

Hopefully this helps people both now and in the future understand better what is happening.

Because Rudra has been making a lot of assertions about what he believes to be my qualifications, ways of thinking and working etc, I hope it is acceptable if I make a more friendly speculation that he is a person who is apparently understandably very nervous about trying to have a straightforward discussion here in order to work with other editors. Instead he is apparently trying to use pre-emptive personal attacks, admin contacts, noticeboards and deceptive edit summaries in order to get a job done. He must have done too much reading of the silliness that has happened sometimes in the past on these talkpages. I really hope he is willing to work according to Wikipedia civility and WP:Talk norms such as WP:AGF in the future. Some of his ideas appear to be correct ones to me at least, and I certainly don't think anyone claims this article could not be improved.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:47, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree with you Andrew, a 100%!! Thank you for being civil and clear in your points. And Thank you for being neutral and restoring the studies- Let's all work together in making this page a quality one again! HonestopL 13:25, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Some notes:

• The WP:RSN discussion is about JOGG, not about this page.
• The discussion about this page was started by me and is now archived. The thread on Dbachmann's talk page about this page was started by Andrew Lancaster: diff.
• The data page has its own um, discussion, started by...
• If Andrew Lancaster imagines that I am answerable to him for anything I do, he may betake himself in a ballistic trajectory into the nearest accumulation of water. rudra (talk) 04:52, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I think you last sentence in particular is a good summary of your position and approach to work with others.

• You start the RSN discussion specifically about this article, and even started a sub-section to give updates about edits happening here. Yes, it SHOULD be about the JOGG, but you have tried to avoid that.
• The thread you started here looks like any one of dozens of troll threads that have started on this talk page over recent years, even though you feel it deserved special attention. It went no where because it was only meant to be an announcement and complaint by you. You were extremely angry that anyone tried to talk about it. (Or do you just use obscenities all the time?)
• I started the discussion with Dbachmann concerning you as a disruptive editor. But indeed discussion you did then start about this article, whereas you had refused constructive discussion here. It is not my fault that this was the most open discussion you have given about your approach to this article.
• The data page talk page discussion was started by me after you started editing. As usual, you "talk" with troll style edit summaries.

It would be good if your started respecting Wikipedia policy, and ceased behaving like a POV troll.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:32, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

And now, a brand new thread, started by...? rudra (talk) 19:57, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

What's your point? Are you saying I should be taking advantage of your openness to discussion and trying to build consensus with you instead? Let me know. That would be great news. Don't think that's your point though?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:23, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

(If there's any point to this thread having been started, it's that we can expect a by now familiar phenomenon simply will not stop.) rudra (talk) 23:57, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

The point to this thread is simple and practical. It is just an index to related discussions, not only for people now, but in case someone is looking for them in 6 months. Please feel free to continue adding any. I do not see any "familiar phenomenon" involved unless it is that you tend to write lots of "asides".--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:45, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Concerning recent discussion of Sharma et al. 2009, it should also be mentioned that an editor recently came questioning the recent removal of all mention of R1a1* in India, and he has been lectured quietly over on his talkpage: [3]. The subject matter of that posting is basically of a nature which should appear on this article talkpage, and there was a thread for discussion started here. It is relevant to the question of one Wikipedian concerning whether that information was not significant enough to be protected by the non-negotiable part of WP:NEUTRAL had consensus or not. Add User:Fylindfotberserk to the long list of people who think it was significant.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:45, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

High frequency data of geographically separate groups have been added under South Asia Headline

It is quite astonishing that all of a sudden the high R1a carrying groups from diverse geographical regions of the sub-continent got flushed out from this section to be filled up with data corresponding to ethnic groups within some specific geographical region i.e. NW India and Pakistan. That looked biased. For the sake of diversity and neutrality in this section, I added the following high percentage data from other parts of the subcontinent. Sengupta et al 2005
Sengupta et al
1)Konkanastha Brahmins 48.00%(12/25)
2)West Bengal Brahmins 72.22%(13/18)
Underhill et al 2009
3)Manipuri 50%
--Fylindfotberserk (talk) 21:44, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Hello. I notice that you found the archived discussion. You should not respond in an archive. Can you place your comments here and start a new discussion if you feel it is important?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:14, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

I now also noticed your edit inserting more data. Further back in time this issue became very controversial and to be fair more and more data was added and finally a new article had to be split off. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_R1a_frequency_by_population . Please keep that in mind when making your proposals. Perhaps another way to be more fair is to reduce all the data in that section for example? Data seems to be creeping back into this main article.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:17, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Just like I said, I provided data for the geographically diverse groups within the sub continent only to ensure neutrality. Most of the ethnicities showing high percentages mentioned in this section before my edit were from the North-western part of the sub-continent. Don't you think that looked biased enough? Besides, the data provided by me are definitely contenders for the 'high frequency' and are 100% authentic.

"Further back in time this issue became very controversial and to be fair more and more data was added and finally a new article had to be split off"

I understand what you are trying to imply. Actually, I've been watching this article for quite some time(from November 2008 to be precise) and if I remember correctly, the controversy that resulted in the split off of this article was because of data pouring into the Frequency tables (which happened to be at the bottom of this article) as well as into the Info box under Highest Frequencies where something like 48%-72% South Asians was mentioned and not because of this section. This section was more or less same datawise until recently. Besides, you are talking as if you never heard of the percentages I provided. Strange..!!

"Perhaps another way to be more fair is to reduce all the data in that section for example?"

Sorry to say but this sounds ridiculous. What would you say if I propose to reduce 'all' the data in other sections as well??? The motto of these sections is to provide a gist of the high frequency groups. I just diversified it.
I actually thought of putting only one 'Most High' frequency data per region i.e. North, South, East and West of the sub-continent, but considering the large no. ethno-linguistic groups and caste/tribe differences within same locations, I felt that other groups need to be highlighted as well. Now if you are concerned about the size of the article as a whole than I can assure you that even after entering my data, the South Asian section took only 8-lines. Try comparing it with European and the Middle East/Caucasus section. Besides, I have plans to make this section more readable. Don’t worry, I’ll not bombard it with more data…

I know about the Epic Edit War related to the authenticity of 'Sharma et al' which resulted in all data referring Sharma to get flushed out, but it is quite strange that nobody cross checked the other papers studying the same groups of people that were referred by Sharma et al. That would have pointed out the possible cause of the error and where it happened. Instead the article was subjected to rage filled edits. As far as discussing Sharma et al is concerned, I just saw it on the main discussion page a few days back, but when I wished to post there, it was in the archive!!! Anyways, what's done is done and I don't want to start it all over again .... until I find enough proof to justify the reasons for these errors pertaining to other groups studied in Sharma et al just as I’ve done here --Fylindfotberserk (talk) 16:31, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, good to see you are aware of the background. I thank you for your explanation. Concerning the Sharma situation, it is (after discussion on Dbachmann's talkpage) "allowed" by Rudra to stay in the bibliography, and it is also mentioned in the text as an article which argued the likelihood of Indian origins for R1a. Concerning the R1a1* amongst the Saharia, I removed all reference to exact numbers. Rudra still does not like that although the evidence he has given is all about not trusting exact numbers. He does refer to the WP:REDFLAG policy claiming that the existence of any R1a1* in an Indian tribe is an extraordinary claim and would need extra special referencing, by which he means more than just one article with a shoddy table. As someone familiar with the field I do not see the presence of R1a1* as surprising though, and I see no reason to ignore the data (no reason for Wikipedians to claim fraudulent lab results, or incompetence concerning lab testing to this extent). No author author tested the same tribe and in general Indian has not been much tested yet. Do you have any opinion on that?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:40, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

(Regarding R1a1*, Sahoo 2006 did not find it (See their Supplementary Table 3). Sengupta 2006 almost certainly did not find it: although they didn't type for SRY1532.2, they found exactly 1 person typed as R1*-M173 (See their Table 5), and he was in Pakistan. Zero in India. That's two studies drawing a blank. And then, along comes an egregiously unprofessional mishmash "finding" significant levels and lo, this is not unusual? Whatever. No wonder the "experts" in this field are so clueless.) rudra (talk) 13:29, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I understand, but Indian has not been heavily sampled and is a very large and diverse country. Furthermore, what we have seen in all other places where R1a1a is common is that once the data builds up, some R1a1 is also found. Anyway, did Sahoo test the sub-population in question?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:49, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

"Sharma et al. (2009) also found 2/51 amongst Kashmir Pandits and 13/57 people tested from the Saharia tribe of Madhya Pradesh, which is the highest level in one locality found so far"

The suplementary document table 1( extracted here) from Sharma et al may throw some light in this scenario. This document looks much more authentic than their published PDF. All the percentages surely add up to whole number of samples. Kashmiri Pandits data of 2/51 R1a*(new R1a1*) were from a set of 510 samples studied in the Sharma tests and show a percentage of 3.92. Thus it looks authentic enough as far as refering Kashmiri Pandits under R1a*(old)/R1a1*(new) is concerned. Saharia data on the other hand does not show up in the supplementary doc table 1(only referenced in the MDS plots), but appear in the PDF in a confusing way. But I've to wonder if the wikipedians can exclude this data because of that ... problem. Sharma et al may not be the best but is definitely a significant study and I am referring to the neutrality factor here.

"(Regarding R1a1*, Sahoo 2006 did not find it (See their Supplementary Table 3). Sengupta 2006 almost certainly did not find it: although they didn't type for SRY1532.2, they found exactly 1 person typed as R1*-M173 (See their Table 5), and he was in Pakistan. Zero in India. That's two studies drawing a blank."

Although not in a tribal sample, actually R1a*(SRY1532) was found in 1 Himachal Pradesh Rajput in Sahoo et al. Besides that R* and R1* did show up in the groups mentioned.
R*(M207) =1 sample each in Bhumihar(Bihar, CS), Kurmi(Bihar, BCS), Oriya Brahmin(Orissa, CS), Lambadi(Andhra Pradesh, TR), 'Chenchu(Andhra Pradesh, TR), Katkari(Maharashtra, TR).
R1*(M173) =1 Mahishya(West Bengal, BCS), 1 Nepali(Sikkim, CS), 2 samples of Kappu Naidu(Andhra Pradesh, CS), 3 samples of Raju(Andhra Pradesh, BCS).
It should be noted that 3 Tribal populations Lambadi, Chenchu and Katkari showed positive for R*.

"……the existence of any R1a1* in an Indian tribe is an extraordinary claim and would need extra special referencing, by which he means more than just one article with a shoddy table."

Sharma data on Saharia looks definitely confusing, but I would not be surprised to see R1a1* in tribals in future studies. --Fylindfotberserk (talk) 16:39, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Right, and this is the problem I have been warning about, R173 xSRY1532.2 that is also not R1b could be M420+ or positive for any of the other 6 "R1a" (2009) defining markers. In addition the R1a1 in the Saharia are not defined by any other markers. This is a big open question mark, but then you have Klyosov saying despite this large level of uncertainty concerning basal lineages in India, he looks at his whiz-bang analysis of STRs and declares that some remove villages in china is the source of R1a1. Even though the data he uses has never presented in any other publication.

As long as Andrew continues to insist that Klyosovs 'not ready for prime time' publications are relied on 8 times in the article, you are going to have pages and pages of critiques, and he will never pull his fingers out of his ears on the issue. There are many other errors. I should note I have not been on this page for almost 3 mos, and Andrew blamed me for the enormous length and the fact that others were not posting. Having reviewed this page, people are still posting, still arguing with Andrew about these dubious sources he has chosen to include. _I do not think that Klyosov's results meet the criteria of reliable research, other than his critiques, and should be removed from the article. Sharma's result are more reliable, but they are far from complete by current standards and should critiqued as a consequence of their deficiencies. So while I do not agree with rudra on all the specifics I do agree with this, the power of the publication does not warrant the excessive attention Andrew has given it.PB666 ^yap 05:26, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

PB666, could you please explain why 8 out of 16 rows in Sharma 2009's data table (see this for details) involve non-integral numbers of persons? Is that meaningful? Is that scientific? Or why they report a total sample size of 621 in one paragraph and 510 in the next. Or why their table reports 57 Saharia tribals tested while their text reports 71. Could you explain what you mean by "reliable" in this context? And how irrecoverably garbled data could have any scientific value? Thanks! rudra (talk) 08:41, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

PB666, there is only one person on Wikipedia who has argued to the extreme deletion position that you have about Klyosov. There were quite a few people who disagreed with you. Don't pretend you don't know that, please. There is also only one person who argued the extreme position of total deletion about the Sharma article. This is not about me, and this is not about anyone defending particular sources and trying to get them seen as major sources for the structure of this article. This is about one off cases of individual people attacking particular sources which are in any case not playing a major role in the article. What's more this article has seen dozens of such cases with the striking thing always being that the individuals concerned always have a point of view about particular theories which exist outside of Wikipedia but they wish to have either emphasized or de-emphasized. There are basic Wikipedia policies which apply in such cases, and I note both you and Rudra keep running up against them whether the other editors involved are me or someone else.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:23, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

As Himachal Pradesh Rajputs showed 1 positive for R1a1* (R-SRY1532.2)/old(R1a*) in Sahoo et al as I've posted earlier, it seems that this data can be mentioned under R1a1 (R-SRY1532.2) heading.

"....could you please explain why 8 out of 16 rows in Sharma 2009's data table (see this for details) involve non-integral numbers of persons? Is that meaningful? Is that scientific? Or why they report a total sample size of 621 in one paragraph and 510 in the next. Or why their table reports 57 Saharia tribals tested while their text reports 71. Could you explain what you mean by "reliable" in this context? And how irrecoverably garbled data could have any scientific value? Thanks!" ---rudra

Your Arithmetical Analysis on the Sharma et al PDF found out 50% of the rows to contain non-integral no. of samples….that’s fine. But it seems, you got stuck with the PDF only and used your findings in an attempt to eliminate the Sharma study out of wikipedia without cross checking its supplementary docs(apparent from your comments above) which becomes necessary in this type of scenario where utmost care needs to be taken. Besides, a person with neutral POV would dig deeper to find out the possible reasons for the errors. The supplementary doc (both MDS plots and the table) coupled with the PDF where they mentioned compiling 2809 samples helps to identify that the errors might have occurred at the time of compilation. For the record, Sup doc provided correct data and no row showed fractional no. of samples. Check here. Now the only possible cause for the error lies with the compilation of referenced data which I’ve pointed out numerous times when talking about WB Brahmin data in Sharma et al which is referenced from Sengupta et al.

Even if you are not satisfied, you can check Sharma 2007 (referenced in Sharma et al 2009) which will clarify that the erroneous sample numbers in the PDF are because of mistakes that arose at the time of compilation. Following groups that showed fractional values in the PDF provide correct integral values when used with sample no taken from the above link and analyzed with their respective percentages in the PDF.
Punjab Brahmins (n=28), Himachal Brahmins (n=19), WB Brahmins (n=18), Maharashtra Brahmins (n=30).
MP Gonds(31-32) and Maharastra Brahmin(32-30) sample errors are very minute in nature and are purely typographical. Check here. Only UP Kols, Gonds and Saharia data still amounts to fractional samples.

I think I have provided enough reasons that points towards greater reliability on Sharma data than before and I suggest that Sharma data be referenced in this article once again for the groups I’ve listed positive. Considering the fact that most of the statistics come from referring the supplementary documents and not the published PDF of other studies, I do not see any problem referring the Sharma et al supplementary table. --Fylindfotberserk (talk) 21:10, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your notes on this (and BTW thanks to Rudra also for originally spotting this interesting problem). I am not saying everyone will agree with me, but just to (re-)register my thinking. I think if an RS has a problem in one table, I can understand why we should be careful with that one table, and for example avoid using the exact numbers. If there are other tables in the paper which are in order it is not up to us to judge the whole paper and remove reference to everything just because of problems in one table. By the way, this subject is also relevant to on-going discussion at Genetics and archaeogenetics of South Asia.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:44, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Right, that's what I was saying with regards to a neutral approach. I tried to make the South Asian distribution section more readable as you can see. I also rounded off the percentage values for WB brahmins and Konkonastha Brahmins as suggested.

Besides these what about adding data for JK Brahmins under R1a1*(old R1a*) section i.e. 3.92% of the group studied in Sharma et al. (extracted here) shows to be SRY1532 positive or we can say 2/51 samples as the data add up to whole numbers(No fractional no. problems).--Fylindfotberserk (talk) 08:02, 20 March 2010 (UTC)