Daily Data Dump (Tuesday)

Templeton disproves gene analysis that appeared to support out-of-Africa replacement model. This is from a Washington U. press release, but the title is still obnoxious. The term "prove" and "disprove" should be used sparingly in science (though perhaps there are others out there who disagree, I'd like some reasons laid out for why they shouldn't be used only in exceptional circumstances). Remember that I pointed to a controversy between Alan Templeton and computational biologists who used a Bayesian phylogenetic framework a few weeks ago. Templeton is claiming that the Neandertal admixture findings vindicate him. Certainly one does need to revisit models which assume that admixture may have occurred, but only below a threshold of 1%, when the current research indicates 1% to be the low bound. But I don't think we need to fall into the trap of separating the world into the light and the dark; people may be ...