Dsterncardinale's Review of Traced by Dr. Nathaniel Jeanson

[thoughtful (Valerie (non-scientist))]

@dsterncardinale

Do you realize that this is not directly relevant to TMRCA calculations?

We’ll, TMRCA and y-chromosome Adam are obviously different things; other than that, not sure what your point is.

@dsterncardinale

No, that’s quite clear right now. The authors who generated the data he uses say it isn’t reliable. That most of the differences he uses don’t reflect actual differences in the sequences .

Based on the quotes from the authors in their paper and emails, they don’t know that; they just think so. I do not see any reason they think so other than that they believe the mutation rate should be what other scientists have said it was in the past.

@dsterncardinale

It’s just compounding errors. “Calculate” a per-generation mutation rate based on data that, according to the authors who collected them, are not precise enough to do that kind of calculation, and then take that faulty rate and calculate a series of times to MRCA based on the assumption that the occurrence of a mutation within a population is equivalent to its fixation within that population.

I don’t know how else to put this. This is a con, and you are the mark.

I’ve watched enough videos from Jeanson and a few from Carter that I pretty much know how this research went from their off-the-cuff remarks. I wasn’t sharing info on Carter but I will just to explain I know I’m not being conned: He and Carter were working together on the uniparentally inherited DNA. Jeanson explained at some point he thought the rate was slow. Eventually he saw these few papers and was thinking about what it would mean if the rate was actually fast. Carter didn’t think the “clock” would be consistent enough because of his thoughts on what he calls “patriarchal drive” as well as other things he’s written about more recently. He doesn’t believe historical infererences can be reliably made and perhaps they also parted always on whether the fast mutation rate could be used if not explicitly published. Jeanson came up with branching matching population growth. He moved forward based on that research.

Anyway, I’ve researched enough on my own to be very convinced that the mainstream clock/mutation rate is not correct, but I’m not certain that Jeanson is right on every point. I think it’s actually good that Carter and Jeanson don’t agree; one will eventually convince the other of various points But anyway, no one is creating a con, of that I’m also certain. They could be mistaken, sure. But I’ve also felt that after I understood Jeanson’s population growth argument better after reading the book, it worked well, and I think perhaps he’ll convince Carter he’s right with more data. So far no one in the forum has explained why the hypothesis doesn’t work, or explained it in a way that convinced me it doesn’t work. That’s why I keep asking questions because I’m curious about whether it is solid or not. Using the mutation rate he did is a huge risk for him and his audience without a solid hypothesis to back it up.