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That is not what "genetics confirm". I wish people at yellow journalism pseudoscience rag "Discover" would read the darn paper before spouting off on it. The a

by bugsy 15y ago

That is not what "genetics confirm". I wish people at yellow journalism pseudoscience rag "Discover" would read the darn paper before spouting off on it. The actual study found that Neanderthal DNA is present in a small percentage (not all) of people in each continent. Including Africa. Anyone contemplating downvoting this, for the love of scientific reality please read the actual original paper first.

carbocation 15y ago
The headline is only slightly off. Even the title of the actual journal article ( http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/28/7/1957.abstract http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/28/7/1957.abstract ) is "An X-Linked Haplotype of Neandertal Origin Is Present Among All Non-African Populations" Anyway, the fact that Neanderthal sequence is present in all non-African populations is more important and interesting than whether or not Neanderthal sequence is present in all non-African human individuals. By statistical likelihood, we'd expect the answer to the latter question to be 'no', while the answer to the former is interesting, empiric, and, now, known to be 'yes'.
- bugsy 15y ago
  The headline is not slightly off, it is completely inaccurate because the hack "journalist" at Discover didn't read the paper. It is not true at all that "All Non-Africans Part Neandertal". On average world wide, they found a Neandertal chromosome segment present in 9% of the 6092 chromosome samples from all inhabited continents. It's also not true what both titles suggest that no African samples were part neandertal, the supposed neandertal segment (B006) was found in several African samples from their extremely limited sample size that doesn't even cover a small fraction of ethnic populations of Africa. Not only is it present in several African samples they tested, it is likely to be found in others as well should this be extended to a more comprehensive sample of world ethnic groups. As a completely separate topic, the uniquely Neandertal origin of B006 is speculative to say the very least, but it's fine to assume so for the sake of argument, it's just not a definitive claim of fact... yet.
  - carbocation 15y ago
    You're not wrong, it's just that the specific point that you're arguing isn't the one that is most interesting to population geneticists.
  - losvedir 15y ago
    Oh my, if what you're saying is correct, then thank you. I saw this story on Ars, Discover, and a couple places and took the wrong thing from it (both individual vs. population, and the presence of neandertal genes in some africans). To be clear, are you saying the more accurate statement would be: "Neandertal chromosome segments found in all tested non-african populations, and some tested african populations"? (Which, when you put it that way, seems like a somewhat weird distinction to make.) edit: I followed the link upthread, but it was only to the paper abstract. Is the full paper available for free online somewhere? edit2: It seems the distinction might be no neandertal geneds found in sub-Saharan African population samples?
    - bugsy 15y ago
      > "Neandertal chromosome segments found in all tested non-african populations, and some tested african populations"? Yes, your more accurate statement is correct. > "It seems the distinction might be no neandertal genes found in sub-Saharan African population samples?" Regarding the Sub-Saharan distinction, the article text's terminology describes haplotype B006 as "virtually" absent from Subsaharan Africa. They then explain this as meaning that 6 out of the 1420 subsaharan samples contained B006, including 5 from tribal groups in Burkina Faso. They explain this away by supposing that these tribal groups must have historically interbred with north African groups, which is not an unreasonable guess, but I am sure it is also true for many other subsaharan groups as well. North African incidence rates of B006 are comparable to the middle east and Russia and higher than China. So, 0.4% of sub-saharan samples contained B006, but not none. Also, north-western mexico, east south america, east china, siberia and indonesia all have similarly extremely low incidence rates, but no explicit mention of these areas is made in the paper, it's just seen in the data. Only subsaharan africa is called out for special mention. The highest rates of B006 are in western Canada - greater than 25% in some areas. There is also a separate problem of the circular argument due to the inherent selection bias of brute force digging through the data sets looking for a gene with these characteristics. It's not like they started with a gene they knew was neandertal only, researchers sought out a gene in the single sequenced neandertal sample which had lower modern african incidence rates and from that concluded it was a non-african sourced neandertal gene, then turned around and concluded the reverse, bringing the argument full circle. That's another problem but I'd just as soon not get into that since I would much rather assume that is all good and only focus on the very misleading titles that are going around in articles about this paper.
rpeden 15y ago
Am I missing something? I don't see this article in Discover, or on Discover's site. The linked article is from the Discovery Channel, which as far as I can tell has different owners and isn't affiliated with Discover Magazine.
- bugsy 15y ago
  You are correct, I apologize for the mistake.
funthree 15y ago
>Anyone contemplating downvoting this, for the love of scientific reality please read the actual original paper first. I wouldn't downvote you because you are necessarily wrong. In fact I don't think that is even suggested behavior. However, you probably should get downvoted for other reasons (http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#Be_Civil http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#Be_Civil)

by bugsy 15y ago

carbocation 15y ago

The headline is only slightly off. Even the title of the actual journal article ( http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/28/7/1957.abstract http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/28/7/1957.abstract ) is "An X-Linked Haplotype of Neandertal Origin Is Present Among All Non-African Populations" Anyway, the fact that Neanderthal sequence is present in all non-African populations is more important and interesting than whether or not Neanderthal sequence is present in all non-African human individuals. By statistical likelihood, we'd expect the answer to the latter question to be 'no', while the answer to the former is interesting, empiric, and, now, known to be 'yes'.

bugsy 15y ago
The headline is not slightly off, it is completely inaccurate because the hack "journalist" at Discover didn't read the paper. It is not true at all that "All Non-Africans Part Neandertal". On average world wide, they found a Neandertal chromosome segment present in 9% of the 6092 chromosome samples from all inhabited continents. It's also not true what both titles suggest that no African samples were part neandertal, the supposed neandertal segment (B006) was found in several African samples from their extremely limited sample size that doesn't even cover a small fraction of ethnic populations of Africa. Not only is it present in several African samples they tested, it is likely to be found in others as well should this be extended to a more comprehensive sample of world ethnic groups. As a completely separate topic, the uniquely Neandertal origin of B006 is speculative to say the very least, but it's fine to assume so for the sake of argument, it's just not a definitive claim of fact... yet.
- carbocation 15y ago
  You're not wrong, it's just that the specific point that you're arguing isn't the one that is most interesting to population geneticists.
- losvedir 15y ago
  Oh my, if what you're saying is correct, then thank you. I saw this story on Ars, Discover, and a couple places and took the wrong thing from it (both individual vs. population, and the presence of neandertal genes in some africans). To be clear, are you saying the more accurate statement would be: "Neandertal chromosome segments found in all tested non-african populations, and some tested african populations"? (Which, when you put it that way, seems like a somewhat weird distinction to make.) edit: I followed the link upthread, but it was only to the paper abstract. Is the full paper available for free online somewhere? edit2: It seems the distinction might be no neandertal geneds found in sub-Saharan African population samples?
  - bugsy 15y ago
    > "Neandertal chromosome segments found in all tested non-african populations, and some tested african populations"? Yes, your more accurate statement is correct. > "It seems the distinction might be no neandertal genes found in sub-Saharan African population samples?" Regarding the Sub-Saharan distinction, the article text's terminology describes haplotype B006 as "virtually" absent from Subsaharan Africa. They then explain this as meaning that 6 out of the 1420 subsaharan samples contained B006, including 5 from tribal groups in Burkina Faso. They explain this away by supposing that these tribal groups must have historically interbred with north African groups, which is not an unreasonable guess, but I am sure it is also true for many other subsaharan groups as well. North African incidence rates of B006 are comparable to the middle east and Russia and higher than China. So, 0.4% of sub-saharan samples contained B006, but not none. Also, north-western mexico, east south america, east china, siberia and indonesia all have similarly extremely low incidence rates, but no explicit mention of these areas is made in the paper, it's just seen in the data. Only subsaharan africa is called out for special mention. The highest rates of B006 are in western Canada - greater than 25% in some areas. There is also a separate problem of the circular argument due to the inherent selection bias of brute force digging through the data sets looking for a gene with these characteristics. It's not like they started with a gene they knew was neandertal only, researchers sought out a gene in the single sequenced neandertal sample which had lower modern african incidence rates and from that concluded it was a non-african sourced neandertal gene, then turned around and concluded the reverse, bringing the argument full circle. That's another problem but I'd just as soon not get into that since I would much rather assume that is all good and only focus on the very misleading titles that are going around in articles about this paper.

rpeden 15y ago

Am I missing something? I don't see this article in Discover, or on Discover's site. The linked article is from the Discovery Channel, which as far as I can tell has different owners and isn't affiliated with Discover Magazine.

bugsy 15y ago
You are correct, I apologize for the mistake.

funthree 15y ago

>Anyone contemplating downvoting this, for the love of scientific reality please read the actual original paper first. I wouldn't downvote you because you are necessarily wrong. In fact I don't think that is even suggested behavior. However, you probably should get downvoted for other reasons (http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#Be_Civil http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#Be_Civil)