Y, mtDNA, Adam, & Eve

For various reasons the idea of mitochondrial Eve and Y chromosomal Adam capture the public imagination. This frustrates many people, includingme. I've gotten into the fatigue stage on this topic, but some sort of counter-attack is necessary against malignant memes. Even geneticists who don't usually work with populations can get confused by the implications of mtDNA and Y chromosomal phylogenies.Melissa Wilson Sayres, who works on Y chromosomes, has a useful post (promised first of two) at Panda's Thumb, Y and mtDNA are not Adam and Eve: Part 1. If you have friends/acquaintances who are confused by this issue, it might be a good place to start. Much of the discussion around this topic was triggered by the recent paper in Science, Sequencing Y Chromosomes Resolves Discrepancy in Time to Common Ancestor of Males Versus Females. As Graham Coop observed on Twitter the idea of a "discrepancy" is not clear, insofar ...