Talk:Genetic studies of Jews/Archive 8

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Eran Elhaik

Both triggerhippie and The Timesareachanging whoever are reverting out the addition of a new paper by Eran Elhaik. The edit-summaries either make no sense or are question-begging. The mainstream uses PCA, it does not favour it. Press a button and you get a fast result. A lot of mathematicians consider the method unscientific, incapable of yielding verifiable results. Anything added can be called 'undue' if you want to preserve text without alteration. The paper deals in some detail with research on Ashkenazis and replicates earlier studies, while arriving at a different conclusion, ergo it is pertinent here. In what sense is a new theoretical paper presenting a 'minority view' as opposed to a new perspective? etc.etc. All I can see here is WP:IDONTLIKETHAT Nishidani (talk) 22:01, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

I agree. This is an edsum I do not really get: "This piece is about the principal component analysis method in general, so it doesn't belong in this article. The mainstream view is in favor of PCA. There's no elaboration on the method on this page, so including only this minority opinion is WP:UNDUE)". I do not think anyone is calling for a large digression on the weaknesses or strengths of PCA. This is a new field and a lot of this stuff is borderline. Our rules tell us to go with the flow of what is getting published and I think it would be a big call to delete mention of this? Elhaik is clearly notable in this area, and this is clearly part of that discussion?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:47, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

Debates on the strengths and weaknesses of PCA belongs to principal component analysis article, not here. And even if we include it here for some reason, it can't consist of a minority opinion and ignore arguments that reflect the mainstream scientific consensus. --Triggerhippie4 (talk) 13:18, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

I.e., you neither read Elhaik's paper, the source (b) you didn't notice its critique of one of the most recent papers on Ashkenazi. All you have done is to repeat yourself, while flaunting an ignorance of the topic. It looks as though you don't desire to see a 'general consensus' (consensus in science is always provisory, not an absolute) troubled by a note of doubt. There is no 'minority' or 'majority opinion' concerning a new paper. It is relevant to this article that, if his analysis is correct, then the Ashkenazi origin theories are flawed. We should not that, just as we noted his Khazar theory and devoted extended space to its critics. Otherwise we just have the usual distaste for anything that might trouble the current meme. Censorship Nishidani (talk) 20:57, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

And I would expect the other blanketing editor The TimesareAChanging to set forth a detailed reason governing his equally obscure revert here, on the talk page. Otherwise, just a chiming revert means tagteaming.Nishidani (talk) 21:16, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

Nice job assuming good faith there, Nishidani. As you stated, the study in question is so new that it does not reflect either the majority view or even a significant minority view (which Wikipedia would be obliged to cover), thus it fails WP:DUE on its face. (A single study can be highly misleading; that's why we have WP:MEDRS for any claims related to medical treatment, under which a single study would be considered a primary source and hence unreliable.) If I were to emulate your "tag-teaming" accusation above, then I would guess that you are probably cherry-picking this study to make some sort of political point about Israel (the primary focus of your Wikipedia editing for the last 15 years). Regardless, if the study is as novel as you say that it is, then we should wait to see how it is received by relevant authorities in the field before rushing to add it to a Wikipedia article (whatever the motivation for doing so might be). Regards,TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 23:34, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

I'm note sure how citing a Nature article by a distinguished Israeli subject-matter expert can be considered cherry-picking. If we are going to bandy AGF around, it applies first and foremost to the study in question. This is a triple A source that is not trying to stand up a new theory or methodology, but merely present much needed perspective to an existing methodology's use. Science is all about skepticism, critiquing theories and continuously revising models. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:03, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Cherrypicking. 95% of the time on Wikipedia that means WP:IDONTLIKEIT. It is not an argument. I added a note to the PCA article, and since that is read generally by people who have a solid science or math background, it went unchallenged. It is new research, (though if you have any elementary curiosity one will find quite a few scientific papers recently mentioning that PCA is methodologically problematical) and relevant. You still have no argument other than waving a meaningless cliché without substance. It is inevitable that Elhaik's paper will become part of the core record on this topic, mentioned by those who contest it, and by those who find it cogent. Nishidani (talk) 09:38, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

"It is inevitable that ... " Whether you care or not, there are obvious WP:CRYSTAL and WP:TRUTH problems with your statement above.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 09:44, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Come on, this is silly, parsing any comment reasoning on the talk page on why an edit should be made or retained, by simply throwing clichés back, particularly stupid misdirections. I never spoke of truth, or clairvoyance. Scientific papers have feedback, intense if the stakes are high, ergo Elhaik is no exception. Secondly, I wrote that he will be criticized for his conclusions and find support from others. That states nothing about whether his theory is true. True theories don't exist. Knowledge provisory. So please read 'closely if you deign to comment, and, above all, familiarize yourself with the topic, for which so far there is no evidence.Nishidani (talk) 10:08, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

This clutching at straws approach to Wikipedia policies/essays is, as mentioned above, without substance. Iskandar323 (talk) 11:18, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Most population genetic studies use PCA. The study of Elhaik is important in that it shows that PCA is non-robust in the sense that using it in slightly different ways can produce dramatically different results. For example, it is normal to add control populations in addition to the populations under study (similarly to how a test of a drug includes subjects who only take a placebo). Elhaik shows that the choice of which control populations to include can drastically alter the apparent relationship between the studied populations. (This will come as no surprise to a mathematical statistician, but geneticists usually only know statistics from a cookbook perspective.) The connection to this article is established by the study itself, which uses Jewish genetics as an example. However, Nishidani's summary is not very good (sorry, Nish) and I plan to rewrite it. Zero^talk 12:58, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

By all means. That was placeholder addition varying the language on three different pages from memory, so that people with topic competence might be alerted and adjust it appropriately. Its relevance was as obvious as my incompetence:)Nishidani (talk) 21:45, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

@Triggerhippie4: I see nothing controversial about including discussion about relevant technical debates (within reason) or "minority" opinions. When it comes to working out what the majority and minority opinions are though, in most topics we would look for review works, but we don't have many of those for this fast-moving field. This means, IMHO, that we need to heir on the side of inclusion.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:14, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

The "Recent studies" section as a whole exhibit WP:UNDUE. Currently, most of it is about studies led by Eran Elhaik or [exclusively dismissive] responses to them. Why give so much space to views that are not accepted by the scientific community? Elhaik is not the foremost authority on the subject of Jewish genetics for this section to rely on him so heavily.

Also, the section is called "Recent studies" but many of the studies in the other sections are more recent. If the purpose of the section is to summarize the article, shouldn't it then be renamed accordingly? --Triggerhippie4 (talk) 23:55, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Raphael Falk

Falk was professor emeritus of genetics at Hebrew Uni, Jerusalem, and wrote a book length overview of precisely the topic of this article. The article is flawed by excessive use of primary sources, many of them dated, givcen over 20 years of research that have witnessed papers with numerous discrepancies between their results. A retrospective analysis of the issues was required, and Falk had perfect credentials for this. Attempts to cancel that overview need to be strongly argued on this talk page before removal of that material otherwise impeccably referenced to a leading authority on the topic Nishidani (talk) 23:26, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

In my opinion the removal was appropriate, because there were too many sizeable paragraphs dedicated to Falk, and because his paper was published in Frontiers which is considered unacceptable for important topics like geology, medicine, or genetics, due to its reputation for poor peer review, poor oversight, and borderline predatory nature.

Several discussions at RSN give a consensus that Frontiers shouldn't be used, even when the author is a professor or an expert.

https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_329#Sourcing_with_Frontiers_Journal_in_Public_Health

https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_253#Frontiers_journal_article

I do however agree that the article suffers from primary source overload and could use more secondary sources. Thankfully, better alternatives to Falk's paper exist. - Hunan201p (talk)

Falk's piece is a review work that, by covering numerous other studies, summarizes the evolution of the discipline that is the subject of this article beginning in the 1950s. As far as I can see, this article otherwise dismally fails to provide any background or context, simply launching into 'recent studies'. Nowhere else does the article mention what was happening in the 60s or 70s. The rest of the page follows a chronology of sorts, in that studies are listed by order of date, but review works are severely lacking. The overview I've added is obviously not comprehensive (my resources are finite), but anyone is welcome to expand upon it – that, surely, is the nature of this project. But the Falk source is itself an overview piece that provides a skeleton and cites dozens of other landmark studies that can themselves also be cited to expand the section. Frontiers is perhaps not the ideal host, but pending anyone updating the article with some background furnished by review works of a higher quality, that subject is fairly moot. The article currently also references dozens of news articles, which are also not ideal sources for high academic subjects, and one might assume those would get questioned long before review works by esteemed subject-matter experts. There are even some lengthy, entirely unsourced paragraphs currently on this page for those with an appetite for trimming. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:34, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Aside from relying on a single dubious source, the entire paragraph is tendentious one-sided promotion of anti-Jewish POV, and does not reflect the majority view on the matter. Triggerhippie4 (talk) 08:29, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

I.e. you are saying that the foremost historian of genetics in the Israel/Palestine context, whose parents fled Germany as soon as Hitler took over, whose supervisor, Israel's leading geneticist at that time, likewise German, was extremely diffident about holding contacts with German scientists after the war, and who called himself a Yekes Zionist, who became a professor of his discipline at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is, here, pushing an 'anti-Jewish POV'!?!. JeezuseffenC, you are calling him, an Israeli/Jewish/Zionist, an antisemite in effect, because you cannot grasp that Zionism, an ideology as all agree, is not a synonym for 'Jews', and that Falk's close analysis (in his book not this paper) of the racist lineage behind early Zionist ideas about the Jewish people in no way can be construed as anti-Jewish_ to the contrary it was driven by an odium for Nazi-fascist pseudobiological thinking (reflected in., for example, Arthur Ruppin's work in Palestine) and the dangers it created in sowing a 'scientific' rationale for the Holocaust. Sheesh. What people can get away with here in thoughtless insinuationsNishidani (talk) 09:58, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

@Triggerhippie4, Iskandar323, and Nishidani:

Falk's paper is a review, however it's also a very faulty and outdated one. For example, Falk cites at face value the idea that R1a in Levites comes from Slavs, which as we can see was already discounted by Behar et al. (2017).

Falk also cites Costa, et al. 2013 regarding the supposedly European maternal origin of Ashkenazim, but again, as we see in the Wiki, Fernandez et al. (2014) gave conflicting evidence, and Doron Behar publicly criticized the study's veracity.

So the basis for the content in question here has been contested by studies published after Falk's. Falk takes assumptions from studies that never reflected a consensus within population genetics

Raphael Falk's personal beliefs also matter. Falk was an anti-Zionist, and had a life-long interest in linking Zionist eugenics to genetic research on Jews, and has for years sought to dispel any notion of genetic "Jewishness". This is not a mainstream attitude. Falk is even summarized as having said that every aspect of genetic research on Jews is not merely a scientific pursuit, but a political and social one, as well. This makes him an extremist who lies on one end of a spectrum that includes Jewish purists on the other. Both sides draw cocksure socio-political conclusions from research that is too murky to allow that.[1]

To allow a Frontiers Genetics citation from Falk would be inconsistent with the discussions at RSN, which discourage the use of Frontiers for important topics. There would be no argument against citing Falk's paper if it were published through Brill, but a publisher like Frontiers with a notoriously ineffective peer review process, it would be a slap in the face of community consensus from a partisan geneticist.

FWIW, I recently added an extremely high quality secondary source to the reflist.- Hunan201p (talk) 09:13, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

I concur that the article you allude to, namely Yardumian, Aram; Schurr, Theodore G. (1 June 2019). "The Geography of Jewish Ethnogenesis". Journal of Anthropological Research. 75 (2): 206–234. doi:10.1086/702709. ISSN 0091-7710. is 'an extremely high quality secondary source'. Unless my ageing memory is a fault, its use on wikipedia was subject to persistent hostile dismissal by POV-pushing editors who disliked its conclusions, and tried to demonstrate that it failed our criteria for inclusion. As a result, through sheer weight of numbers, it was 'disappeared'. Presently, I will address all of your remarks (I'll be busy offline for the next few hours) Perhaps Iskander or someone else can link to the ridiculous discussions that challenged Yardumian and Schur's paper. Reading that will remind one how strong the temptations are in this area to expunge any kind of research which contradicts an ideological construct.Nishidani (talk) 09:58, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

This was perhaps the discussion you recalled re: Yardumian/Schurr. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:51, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. The original discussion took place The discussion took place on the Eran Elhaik page. I still shake my head at the way good scholarship can be blocked on the flimsiest grounds hereNishidani (talk) 14:30, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Falk developed his point on the intervention of politics into genetic research further in Zionism and the Biology of Jews, which cited this paper, so we'll need to impeach Springer too. Iskandar323 (talk) 14:49, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Amid all the trigger happy cancelling of Falk, I note that a citation to boingboing.net apparently went unnoticed here - I am going to presume, for my own sanity, that this was oversight, and that everyone attempting to jettison Falk based on his choice of Frontiers as publisher had simply not noticed this. Iskandar323 (talk) 15:45, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

This is getting a little too ad hominem, but on the face of it, Falk was a professor emeritus of genetics, which is more than can be said for Behar, whose own linkedIn profile (he has no Wikipedia page) calls him a 'genetics enthusiast'. So we have a tenured professor versus a genetic profiling company owner with a clear conflict of interest related to the conclusions that can be drawn from genetic data. Behar does not have the authority to single-handedly discount anything. He can have an opinion, sure, and for what it is worth Falk includes the opinions inherent in Behar's research as part of his overview. As for Falk, I would like to see a source calling him an extremist; even based on what you've said, I would not deduce the same reading. All science is colored by bias, and it is hardly controversial to assert that there are political and social aspects to research here. However, altogether too much weight appears to be being placed on Behar, not least the statement in the lead based on a single 2010 study - that, surely, is outdated, if anything. The main RSN discussions about Frontier that you have linked to is far from conclusive about Frontiers in general, and the bulk of the discussion is more specifically directed at the Frontiers Journal in Public Health. If you think the classification of Frontiers in general should be more definitive, surely that is a matter for RSN again? Iskandar323 (talk) 09:40, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Behar et al. in lead

Here's an actual review article of multiple studies that is far more suitable for providing the kind of summary-style statements that we should be seeing in the lead in place of aggrandized conclusions from individual studies, such as Behar (2010). Iskandar323 (talk) 15:24, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

The effort to get collaboration here is more than usually difficult: editors hostile to any disturbance of the romance of origins are simply using their revert rights, and oblique edit summaries. Of course Behar's opinion, one among dozens, should not be showcased in the lead as though it were the final word. That is obvious, but, expect revert warriors to insist on it.Nishidani (talk) 13:26, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Expunging material on spurious and self-contradictory grounds

Skllagook

• (Es 1) The authors cited in the section are not geneticists. And since this article concerns genetic studies on Jews and their genetic origins, their views on the topic do not seem to be directly relevant or qualified (they are not specialists in the field this article is about).

• Es 2 Re recent edit summary mentioning me: the articles you mention do explicitly quote relevant specialists(geneticists, linguists). While what I removed was by biblical scholars whose statements on genetics didn't seem to be based on specific opinions from geneticists/research(but rather their own). That was the issue I noted

Well you noted badly. The authors you removed were reviewing Steven Weitzman's book which contains a whole chapter summarizing research on the genetic theories. Yes, Weitzman is a historian, but he is far better qualified to comment on this than the numerous people this article draws on who are not geneticists, i.e.Alla Katsnelson, Sharon Begley, Nicholas Wade,Michael Balter, Judy Siegel-Itzkovich, Matt Burgess, Cnaan Lizphshiz, M Aptroot , Andrew Lawler, Kate Yandell, Kevin Alan Brook, Simon Romero, Dovid Katz, Diana Muir Appelbaum, Paul S.Applebaum, Gianna Palmer,Eryn Brown,Yori Yanover, Andrew Tobin, David Keys, National Post? etc etc-

The contradiction is flagrant. You've conserved hackwork and thrown out quality. Genetic origins of Jews presumes, being a subset of a larger argument, that short paragraph on the general category of Jewish origins (and we cover linguistic aspects here in detail). There is no rationale here and no coherence in the application of the principle you cited. Nishidani (talk) 23:38, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

You did everything to keep Yardumian, Aram; Schurr, Theodore G. (1 June 2019). https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10.1086/702709 "The Geography of Jewish Ethnogenesis". Journal of Anthropological Research. 75 (2): 206–234 out of other articles and yet you argued frorcefully for the inclusion of Kevin Alan Brook who is all over this page and who has zero competence in genetics or academically. This means you are editing per what you like or dislike regardless of the contradictions these disparate choices mean in terms of wikipedia's criteria for selecting RS. POV pushing. Nishidani (talk) 23:54, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

It seemed that Weitzman was being cited for his opinion on genetics, an area in which he has no expertise. Whereas Aptroot or Katz for example, are cited on linguistics which they are experts in. Are Weitzman's statements on genetics (that were added to the page) his own opinions as a non-expert (based on his opinion of the research), or is he repeating an experts/experts' opinion(s)? It wasn't clear and seemed like the former. If the latter, then I am happy to admit my error.

I argued, I believe on the Khazar hypothesis Talk page and not this or other pages (and I was not the one who added the material or started the discussion topic), that it might be appropriate to include Brook's book in a section on the history of the hypothesis that already treated/described Brook's previous work. I don't think that was too extreme and I would not personally describe my contributions to the discussion as especially forceful. The issue/concern with Yardumian (which I did not intend to discuss here) was that it seemed to make arguments that are drastically at odds with the majority of genetic research on the topic - and it seemed, at the very least, that it should not be treated as the dominant view/consensus. It is not about what I personally like or dislike, as I tried to explain to you before. I ask that you please not make accusations regarding my motives. Though we have disagreed, I have never done so to you. Skllagyook (talk) 00:06, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

You didn't answer my points, esp. why an article on the genetic origins of Jews cannot contain a short paragraph on the larger background, the origins of Jews, of which this article forms a subset. Paleogenetics, secondly, leads to historical speculations, - all these papers have them, and yet the geneticists are not historians (and often cite historically unreliable books, Ostrer being a noted example). Weitzman is a major historian, -not like Brook whose case for inclusion as relevant to genetics you argued for,- and scholars at that level customarily ask competent area scholars to comment and peer-review those parts of their work which go beyond their specific area of competence. You just walked into the article, having not participated in any discussion, and did what edit-warriors to, remove preemptively a well-researched edit. Your support for Brook and elision of a major historian doing exactly what Brook tries to do, but with scruple, means you are pushing a POV. That stands out like dog's balls. Nishidani (talk) 00:23, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

You make, I think, a fair point regarding the possible appropriateness of a non-expert (but expert in an overlapping or connected field) in a section devoted to the history of the topic and its study. (Indeed, the Brooks material I voted to retain was likewise in the "History" section of that article.) I will restore the paragraph I removed. One reservation I have however, is that the paragraph was/is entirely written in Wikivoice. It seems it might be better to attribute the opinions it describes to the authors cited (Weitzman etc.). Perhaps others can also weigh in. Skllagyook (talk) 00:33, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Let me apologize for my rather exasperated tone. Because I am working from a defective computer that edit took a few hours of frustrating tussles with pages appearing and text disappearing, and a footdragging internet connection. Despitre differences, we have always worked well together and I was somewhat shocked to see a careful piece of labour, which duly took in as I composed it many imaginable concerns from people who might find cause to challenge it (that is to be expected here) go up in flames with your particular intervention. You were the last editor in this field I would have expected to find it so problematical that it had to be deleted.Nishidani (talk) 09:37, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Actual dubious sourcing

I noted above the inclusion of a citation to boingboing.net in the Raphael Falk thread above, and it turns out that this was just the beginning of the crappy sourcing in plain sight on this page. There are also copyvio levels of material sourced to surnamedna.com, a self-declared journal of extremely unclear provenance that should concern anyone who cares about sourcing. More generally, the over-emphasis on certain news sources, which naturally tend to provide an editorial slant to research that often misrepresents the actual findings, is obvious. Iskandar323 (talk) 09:32, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

There is no justification for poor sourcing in this field, which has more than ample documentation from specialist articles and books. The only existiong justification for this crap is that it touts the usual rubbish about lineal descent of every existing Jewish person from people who lived in Hebron or Shechem or Jerusalem etc. 3,000 years ago, which everyone knows is stupid, but a few insist on repeating.Nishidani (talk) 13:23, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

@Jeppiz: The wider imbroglio aside, while your attention is on this article, I would be quite interested to have your input on the quality/substance of surnamedna.com as a source, given your professed intimacy with journal editing. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:21, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping Iskandar323. Obviously SurnameDNA is of "academic junk status" and should not be used as source for any claims. As I already wrote, it is rather concerning that academic references in this article are picked on what they say. It's the classic example of cherrypicking where articles are selected just based on what they say, rather than on academic quality. Both 'sides' seem equally guilty, as in picking a junk source like SurnameDNA just because there's a claim of Hebrew descent, or picking Frontiers just because the opposite claim is made. As if that was not enough, then each side proceeds to argue (accurately) for why "the others' junk" should be thrown out, yet still try to argue for why "their own junk" should be kept. Obviously neither SurnameDNA nor Frontiers should be used here. Jeppiz (talk) 10:59, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

I didn't make a particularly determined case against SurnameDNA; I merely drew attention to it as obviously suspect, and, if one compares the digital platforms of this and the likes of Frontier, this obviously comes out worse: cruddy interface, no dois, etc. As I noted, the sections of text attributed to it also bear the hallmarks of possibly major copyvio issues. Iskandar323 (talk) 11:25, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

The article is a tremendous mess because it sums up briefly masses of papers that, when they don't produce different results, as one would expect in the first few decades of a relatively new science, often contradict each other. I've generally avoided the page because it is unworkable, and enjoyed by revert-myrmidons alone. I've given a list of a score of sources that are newspaper reports which are faute de mieux sources. An article as complex as this can only be seriously done to encyclopedic standards if one privileges books, articles views and overviews written by competent experts, or historians who consult with them, of the progress in this area for synthesizing the papers we mention. But that is precisely where we get stuck. So far little material of this kind exists: we have Falk, Weitzman, Goldstein for example and if used, edit wars explode, because, as the state of the art suggests, these works are far more sceptical of what so many papers assert about the historic inferences that might be drawn from this or that research project (often dating back to Hammer et al 2000, way outdated). Paleogenetics leads to historical implications, historical knowledge (of things like conversion, a very important factor) sits uneasily with what molecular biologists claim about history (Ostrer and Behar are particular poor in this regard: Ostrer even cites the Tanakh for the population of Israel in the 9th and 8th centuries BCE).

As to Falk being the other side of the coin, I disagree strongly. He was both an historian and a geneticist of the first rank, with the additional advantage of being both a Zionist, an Israeli scholar of distinction, and, if you read his 2017 book you will find several cautionary notes about how, in writing up his research, he found himself struggling with his own assumeptions, besides exercising as a scholar an awareness of how all academic work is embedded in a sociocultural and historical context that it is the duty of scholarship to detect and eradicate as far as is humanly possible. With that premise, it is almost certain that his paper was circulated for peer-review. That's how academia works. And he is one of the few capable of giving an inside view of the sociopolitical and historical contexts for this kind of discourse. Of all of the lamentable sources used here, he is singled out, and his work challenged, for no other reason than that the venue is lambasted as disreputable, because peer-review is presumed to be non-existent. Actually, though my word is worth nothing, I delved into this, and found out offline via Israeli contacts that this paper was indeed peer-reviewed, and led to several adjustments of his submitted paper. Why that venue was chosen I don't know, but as observed by others, given his standing, it qualifies as SPI. Nishidani (talk) 13:54, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Nishidani, I agree with most of your statement. To start where I disagree, please understand that there is indeed a peer review in Frontiers, but it is "quick and dirty" (the term commonly used). Compared to any serious publication outlet, Frontiers peer review is superficial and uncritical and mainly serves allow authors to claim there was a peer review. For any good academic journal, only 1-5% of submitted manuscripts are published, the rest rejected. That obviously does not apply to Frontiers. That said, you are of course right that Falk's publication is far from the only problematic source nor even the most problematic source. Your characterization of the general problems in the article is spot on. Largely, I believe, because the topic itself borders on the plain stupid. Finding any population group today with a common ancestry that is both common to all in the group and not shared by others outside the group must be impossible. Not surprised most serious academics have not even gone into. Falk makes pretty much the same argument, so you will see I do agree with what Falk wrote. I just wish he had published it better. Jeppiz (talk) 15:46, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

It is the reluctance or caution of academics not wanting to be seen as 'fools stepping in where angels fear to tread' that is the problem. After delivering a paper I was invited to write, some 3 decades ago, on a very obscure oriental topic of philosophy it was rumoured I knew quite a lot about, a leading scholar approached me afterwards (I had to deliver the address, long and somewhat intricate, from memory, since a professor working on the topic borrowed my only copy, gave it to a Japanese scholar with a similar research aim and both disappeared on the day I was due to talk) and thanked me for a book I had written, one challenging a powerful consensus (of silence). We had a beer, and he confided: 'You know I have a drawer full of similar stuff piling up over the years, I just never published it.' Well thanks. I was the dickhead who stuck his neck out, and silent nods from established scholars smiled my way. No rancour. All of that struck me as very comical.

Falk had nothing to lose, given his age, his eminence and expertise on the twinned topics of history and genetics. Most importantly he was a German Jew, saved from the Holocaust by his parents' prescience, and never allowed himself to forgot the lesson seared in his marrow of maintaing an extreme sensitivity to any hint of 'race', from whatever quarter, even in his adopted Israel. He could venture through this minefield delicately yet fearlessly, unlike so many younger scholars who know these things but have to watch out, understandably. In any case, I will try as time allows, to gloss what he is used here to state from the Frontier's paper by backing it up from his 2017 book, of which I have a copy. Were the text as it stands removed, it would be very difficult to do this.Nishidani (talk) 17:44, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Citing nicholas wade

There is a big part in the hypotheses section citing Nicholas Wade, when i checked out his wikipage that many of his claims and conclusions are largely criticized by the scientific community, on his wikipage it’s written

His 2014 book A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History was widely denounced by the scientific community for misrepresenting research into human population genetics

And

In May 2021, Wade published an article in support of the COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis,[8] fueling the controversy around the origins of the virus.[9] Wade's claims about the origin of COVID-19 are at odds with the prevailing view among scientists.

And

David Gorski of Science-Based Medicine described Wade's argument as a conspiracy theory.

So i wonder is he a reliable source ? Is he even a geneticists or have a speciality in the field ?

I suggest removing his citations and claims from the article Tezak habra 2 (talk) 13:30, 8 February 2023 (UTC) <--- blocked sock of User:Amr.elmowaled

He's a science writer for the New York Times, and with that comes all the risk of editorializing that I mentioned in the section above, and as Nishidani noted below that, there is enough high quality literature that the page does not need this. Iskandar323 (talk) 13:43, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

As you say, Wade is a science writer, not a scientist. He is qualified to report what scientists say, so writing "Nicholas Wade estimates..." and similar is giving him a status that he doesn't deserve. Stuff like that should be removed on a reliability basis. Incidentally, here is the bit from Atmon's article about the cousins (which doesn't make sense in Wade's piece): "The median pair of individuals within a community shared a total of 50 cM IBD (quartiles: 23.0 cM and 92.6 cM)—such levels are expected to be shared by 4th or 5th cousins in a completely outbred population. However, the typical shared segments in these communities were shorter than expected between 5th cousins (8.33 cM length), suggesting multiple lineages of more remote relatedness between most pairs of Jewish individuals." Zero^talk 13:55, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

The Ostrer review article I linked above also summarizes that study: "The IBD segment sharing was greater within specific Jewish populations and as expected highest among Jewish populations with greater degrees of inbreeding, such as Libyan, Djerban, and Tunisian Jews. In fact, the general degree of sharing within populations was similar to what one might observe for fourth to fifth cousins. This included the Yemenite as well as the Middle Eastern, European and North African Jews." Iskandar323 (talk) 14:05, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Yes, but the sticking point in all of this desperate argumentation is, as I have occasionally noted, the general principle made by Steve Jones:-

How far back must we go to find the most recent shared ancestor for – say – all Welsh people or all Japanese? And how much further is it to the last person from whom everyone alive today- Welsh, Japanese, Nigerian, or Papuan-can trace descent. . . Speculative as they are, the results are a surprise. In a population of around a thousand people everyone is likely to share the same ancestor about ten generations. Some three hundred years ago. The figure goes up at a regular rate for larger groups, which means that almost all native Britons can trace descent from a single anonymous individual on these islands who lived in about the thirteenth century. On the global scale, universal common ancestry emerges no more than a hundred generations ago-well into the Old Testament era, perhaps, around the destruction of the First Temple in about 600 B.C.Steve Jones, The Serpent's Promise: The Bible Retold as Science, Hachette 2013 p.27.

No doubt a polemicist from these quarters would say what counts is some direct inkling now of recent partial Jewish descent, so that 11 of my 16 nephews don't qualify and only 5, unbeknown to them and their parents and grandparents, had an ancestral address in Isaiah St.,Shechem etc., 3,000 years ago. You'd need one of the Keystone cops to track it down, but.Nishidani (talk) 14:27, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

That is rather the point that Falk made. No amount of interlinkage between different population groups ultimately lands you at hard and fast revelations about the past. The best you get is a series of speculations. To assert otherwise is to re-engender the scientific racism of the 1800s in the terms of the 21st century, and it is this Falk cautions against. Iskandar323 (talk) 15:04, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

yeah i think this citation should be removed Mernebtah (talk) 22:47, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Adding eran elhaik 2016 study that challenges to academics and 23andMe to detect jewish type “jüdische Typus”

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fgene.2016.00141/full

Whenever i add this study or more precisely this challenge, the user Triggerhippie4 keep removing it by claiming that frontier is not a reliable source or that eran elhaik is not reliable enough to cite from a such study, i find both illegitimate since neither frontiers is unreliable as have been argued before in earlier discussions nor eran elhaik is not reliable enough to cite

So what is wrong with it ? Tezak habra 2 (talk) 23:21, 12 February 2023 (UTC) Confirmed sock. Jeppiz (talk) 12:43, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Amr.elmowaled. --HistoryofIran (talk) 02:08, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

There are ongoing discussions at RSN re Frontiers/Falk and we will see what the outcome is. My impression at the moment is that there are no convincing arguments for excluding Falk with attribution. If Falk's findings are disputed by others, then the thing to do is produce suitable RS exhibiting that disagreement and we can include them. Selfstudier (talk) 12:36, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Below is a public comment from a scientist who was part of the review team at Frontiers for an Eran Elhaik study. The comment can be found at Leonid Schneider's blog, dated 2017/09/18.

Extended content

"Elhaik’s Frontiers in Genetics paper had 4 reviewers including me (for unknown reasons my name is not listed at the paper web-page). At least two of them (a geneticist and a linguist) strongly suggested to reject the ms – unfortunately without results. The odd ideas of Elhaik (a Dan Graur’s protégé) and Waxler have no disciples among modern scholars, although predictably they have been enthusiastically welcomed by some leftists. Most recent criticism of Elhaik & Wexler’s conception is: Flegontov P. , Kassian A., Thomas M. G., Fedchenko V., Changmai P. , Starostin G. 2016. Pitfalls of the geographic population structure (GPS) approach applied to human genetic history: A case study of Ashkenazi Jews. Genome Biology and Evolution 8 https://academic.oup.com/gbe/article/8/7/2259/2467022 [see the main text for the genetic portion and the Supplement for the linguistic overview] Elhaik’s Frontiers in Genetics paper is a response to our criticism. AFAIK Elhaik’s was rejected from several journals and then Frontiers in Genetics was used as an outlet."

Hunan201p (talk) 02:24, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

A commentary by an unlisted reviewer who speaks about "leftists". Cited to a blog. This is hardly persuasive. Selfstudier (talk) 12:30, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

A comment on a blog whose blogger has also been sued several times for their content. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:51, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

I amended the discussion at RSN to reflect the fact that both Frontiers and Falk are being discussed. Selfstudier (talk) 12:58, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

I had a look at the article and at the author. In his own field (insects) the author appears to be a fairly good author who publishes in good journals about insects. This article in Frontiers is not within the author's core competence, and is (quite frankly) very poorly written, parts of it more similar in style to a blog post than to an academic article. It is a rather good example for why so many of us in academia are hesitant about Frontiers. I cannot imagine that any respectable journal would have published that article (keep in mind that this is not a comment on the findings but rather on the poor academic writing). And unlike Falk, who was an expert on the topic he wrote about in Frontiers, that does not apply to Elhaik. Jeppiz (talk) 14:18, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Eran Elhaik has an article on WP so notable. That article describes him as "an Israeli-American geneticist and bioinformatician" and speaks about his work in this area and criticism of it. So again, it is not that obvious why the work should be excluded. That some criticize his work is not in and of itself a reason to exclude, we would need more than that, I think. Selfstudier (talk) 18:01, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Speaking generally (not about Elhaik in particular), the fact that someone has a page on Wikipedia is of zero relevance unless the article is about the topic they speak about. For example, I remember a Professor of linguistics (with an article on WP) who wrote books about Jesus. Obviously neither his status as Professor nor his WP article made him an RS on Jesus (while he would have been RS in his own field). I also agree with Selfstudier and Iskandar323 that a blog post by an unidentified reviewer means nothing, and can be ignored. That said, the article itself remains a sorry mess that would never pass in a proper academic journal. Given that Elhaik is a researcher who regularly publishes in top journals (about insects), it seems safe to assume he would have published in a respected journal if the article had been good enough. Jeppiz (talk) 20:33, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

I had a look at how often this article has been cited, and it's downright laughable. Only two academics appear to cite it—and one of then is Elhaik himself. So despite being published seven years ago, other researchers shun it. That’s a much stronger indication that experts consider it garbage than that blog post. Jeppiz (talk) 21:25, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

You use 'shun' as an inference from no wide citation, ignoring two things. Few want to touch that specific topic- it is a career risk and (b) numerous examples exist of seminal articles ignored for various reasons, for decades, from Mendel's onwards.Nishidani (talk) 22:44, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

You appear to be engaging in caricature and personal research. The former shows in your characterization of Elhaik as someone who conducts basically research into insects, t5he latter in making a personal judgment about the poor quality of the paper. He has 65 peer-reviewed articles in major scientific journals from the Lancet onwards. in a decade and a half, on a very wide range of scientific topics regarding molecular biology, including theoretical issues,and of course paleogenetics. Nishidani (talk) 22:20, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

With all due respect, your reply is guilty of the exact same things. You make a personal guess that the paper's risible citation count is because of the topic, but that's only your assumption (and an erroneous one; articles on the same topic area much more widely cited, so it's not due to others staying away from the topic). Second, you refer to his publications in good journals as if they mattered here. It's an impressive publication record and Elhaik obviously a good research in his field. That field is not the one this article deals with. And last (and very surprisingly for being you) you confuse anomalies and regularities. Yes, one can find the odd great article that is poorly cited—but it is an anomaly. And in all honesty, I would expect you to know that. Jeppiz (talk) 23:03, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Hmm, I hadn't realized we (not me) have already been around the block regards this chap. Selfstudier (talk) 23:25, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Yes, although the paper discussed there was far more insightful. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:03, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Now now dear Jeepiz. (a) if you assert I make the same errors I impute to you, then, since you don't address the merit of my contentions, logically your reply boils down to:'Nishidani. Don't complain about me in this regard. You too fall into the same error, and your remarks are just a matter of the pot calling the kettle black'(and therefore smack of a 'holier than thou' hypocrisy) (b)I stated that you had made an 'inference' from the low citation index of Elhaik's paper, i.e. that this is evidence or proof that paper is 'shunned'. You reply, asserting I did the same thing by making a 'personal guess' as to why it is rarely cited. No. I didn't. I suggested that a low citation count can be accounted for, technically, in many ways. If you suggest it evidences poor quality and tacit censure, I reminded you that many other factors could be adduced to account for that neglect, which is not rare (providing a link to an article precisely on instances of neglect not translating into negligibility) So that is a caricature of what I wrote (and unusual for you, in my experience). Just as in writing

author. In his own field (insects) the author appears to be a fairly good author who publishes in good journals about insects

you distort grossly his publishing record. It's like questioning Stephen Jay Gould's papers on cognitive bias in science by sneering that he is out of his area of specialization, i.e.the land snail As you now allow, his record is 'umpressive'.

I don't think I confuse anomalies and regularities. It is true that I have always been sensitive to what I call scotoma in several fields of scholarship (stumbling for example on great scholars like Michael Astour (Hellenosemitica) and Cyrus Gordon as an impressionable undergraduate) (and its converse, lockstep lipservice to a new 'theory' with its own distinctive jargon, that generates a huge fad of (pseudo) academic acclaim (Heidegger, Derrida and deconstructionist postmodernism). That doesn't lead me to some social constructionist approach, but it does make me sensitive to cognitive bias in anything I study with any degree of intensity. In any topic, one must take on board signs of emerging evidence for tensions within the dominant paradigm(s). Climate science is an egregious exmple of interests throttling an emerging empiricism until reality kicked in.

Elhaik's paper has a few grammatical and stylistic errors. English is not his mother tongue, and I spot those everywhere in technical papers (I proofread occasionally philosophical papers where precise syntax is crucial, and overlooked by experts writing in English). Elhaik comes from a school where the cultural pressures in the regional history of their discipline constitutes an important part of one's technical formation, something that is not par for the course for the majority of molecular biologists working in their field, who don't need these historicing sensitivities to conduct research. So his paper offers some light on that field's specific paradogmatic premises and indeed does so by proposing an experimental model for claims widely made in a money-making scheme whose approaches smack of fraudulence. What's the problem in a scientist doing that?Nishidani (talk) 10:24, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Nishidani, as always, I appreciate your rhetoric flair and the long, nice examples (tangential though they may be). None of that can distract from the fact that this is an article that (a.) was published in journal of dubious quality and (b.) has only been cited by one other academic in the seven years since. Jeppiz (talk) 12:41, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

There are a couple of possible reasons for this, not least that the subject is fairly academically toxic. Even its title alone is probably enough to put off many academics from putting it anywhere near their reference section. Nevertheless, it has been referenced in a few papers jointly authored with Elhaik in addition to the citations by Kohler. Another possible reason for its relative paucity of through-citation is that it is a bit of an end-in-of-itself. Part review article, part challenge to the standing precepts of some other research, the lack of response to Elhaik's invitation for others to respond is part of the conclusion. No one wants to ask these questions. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:58, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Rhetoric? That is used, ironically, in its clichéd rhetorical sense, as a euphemism for an argument of persuasion careless of the factual, i.e., essentially hot air. In technical terms, every kind of written or spoken discourse, outside of terse mathematical or strictly logic proofs, can be read as framed by rhetorical devices, for the simple reason that, as Brian Vickers once put it (1988), rhetoric is simply the systematization of natural eloquence. Unbeknown to ourselves (like Mr Jourdain’s surprise at hearing that he has been speaking ‘prose’ in Le Bourgeois gentilhomme - Par ma foi ! il y a plus de quarante ans que je dis de la prose sans que j'en susse rien) we all speak in terms that have classifications in rhetoric – you availing yourself of a contrast between regularity and anomaly (out of the blue) exemplifies comparatio, while the insect remark instances meiosis ( excuse the molecular pun, but I like to season exchanges with them to soften possible enmities with a touch of the light-hearted).

And no, not tangential. You spoke of your background, and that elicited anecdotes of my own experience. You are objecting on the grounds of venue, but also assert a personal view that Elhaik’sa paper is not up to scratch. You add that few respond to it. You don’t contest that Elhaik is a very productive writer of peer-reviewed articles in his field, articles that broach a wide variety of topics in molecular biology. In all of this you ignore the History of Science, the discipline that c0mes in after the historical dust has settled and then teases out all of the socio-historical, cultural, ideological, even theological, and economic pressures within which this or that idea or theory can be seen to be embedded. Unlike Steven Weinberg (Dreams of a Final Theory), E.T.Bell, Richard Lewontin, Joseph Needham who all wrote histories of, or meditated deeply on, the austere disciplines they worked creatively in, and the like, the overwhelming majority of physicists, mathematicians, molecular biologists and biochemists pursue careers that are singularly focused on the technical and analytic problems in their respective fields. You can know, effortlessly, absolutely nothing of history and work creatively on the cusp of these disciplines. The same is true of economics, which haplessly aspires to the status of science (All you need at Chicago is advanced mathematical abilities: in Italy it long required parallel coursework on political science and the sociohistorical constraints on theory).

How many molecular biologists know something , in a cross-disciplinary fashion of the crossweave between (a) the larger history of their topic’s theoretical developments (b) its development in Israel (c) the history of the Jewish people (d) the history of Zionism, (e) the theoretical adequacy of techniques of ethnogenealogical determinations and (f) the commercial use of such DNA analysis in the flourishing new industry that services people who desire to have a putative scientific identity miraculously revealed on payment? Such a combination is rare, interest in its ramifications likewise sparse, and one would imaginably not expect any significantly resonant feedback. In the end, it is not the venue, but the qualifications of the author that must count in assessing whether to include or exclude.Nishidani (talk) 17:50, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

• Procedural comment OP has been blocked as a confirmed sock. That makes no difference for the discussion, it's certainly not Elhaik’s fault, nor the fault of any WP user in favour of including it, that the first comment came from a sock. The ensuing discussion is equally valid. Jeppiz (talk) 12:46, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Frontiers

Recently, there has been a lot of edit warring over an article published in Frontiers. While I have no opinion on the claims the article makes, that article shouldn't be used. Frontiers is not a reliable academic outlet, it's predatory publishing that authors pay to publish with minimal academic scrutiny. This is in sharp contrast to proper academic publishing, where manuscripts undergo proper peer review. If a proper academic article can be found to back up the same claims, that is not a problem. Users pushing the Frontiers article, even if initially in good faith, need to stop as it is becoming disruptive. WP:RS is a core policy of Wikipedia. Jeppiz (talk) 10:50, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

While I have seen those claims bandied about, I am yet to see any evidence for them. How do you know that there is no "proper peer review"? The matter about fees to authors is misleading. The main commercial academic publishers (Elsevier, Springer, Taylor & Francis, etc) these days offer authors two choices (1) free behind paywall, (2) open access for a fee. This journal offers only (2) and the amount they charge is about the same. That makes it unsuitable for authors who can't pay but the same for authors who can. It isn't proof of a predatory nature without further evidence. Zero^talk 12:57, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

In case you doubt this, here is a list of what Elsevier charges for open access. You can see that the fee averages about the same as what Frontiers charges. Zero^talk 13:03, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Jeppiz. You appear to have missed the relevant discussion at RSN. In any case a professor emeritus and leading expert in his field(s), having 60 years of peer-reviewing of his work, is not the sort of chap our policy's cautions are targeted at. Essentially, he just summarized there the content of his still untranslated work in Hebrew, which broke new ground, kicked off a lot of researchy and became the founbdational work on that topicNishidani (talk) 13:32, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Nishidani, I had indeed missed that discussion and would not have started this one if I had seen it, thanks for directing me to it. Zero, thanks for the explanation. As Associate Editor of two good journals (one Elsevier and one Emerald), editorial board member of a dozen more, and ten years of regular publishing in a number of good journals (as per JCR) from Elsevier, Emerald, Springer, Sage, Taylor & Francis, I am aware :) But no, they are not similar to Frontiers. While you are right that we can pay for open access in most journals this day, this has no impact whatsoever on the review process, and neither reviewers nor AEs are even aware of it. It is a way to boost one's impact if the manuscript is accepted, sure, but it doesn't make it any easier to get accepted and the review process is thorough. Not so for Frontiers, when one can simply pay the fee, receive a few lines of reviews, quickly address them, and the paper is accepted. Jeppiz (talk) 14:47, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

I did ask on the noticeboard where this consensus against Frontiers is to be found but no-one answered. Can you point me to it? Selfstudier (talk) 16:51, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Anyone who wants to improve the sourcing for the history is welcome, as Nishidani says, to refer directly to Falk's far more extensive Hebrew book on the subject, or this Springer one and cite directly from there. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:52, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

On-going edit warring over Frontiers

Would Triggerhippie4, Iskandar323 and Nishidani please stop this endless edit-warring over the Frontiers article? I must say I am surprised to see some good and established users edit war in this way. Particularly surprised both to see Triggerhippie4 return to this so soon after being blocked for the same edit warring and to see Nishidani remove tags about unreliable sources despite being perfectly aware there's an ongoing discussion about that exact matter. I recommend all users regardless of opinion to stop the edit warring, and recommend Nishidani to self-revert the removal of the tags. Jeppiz (talk) 15:20, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

@Jeppiz: Don't just wade onto a page and start casting aspersions and accusations of edit warring, which is itself a behavioral issue. By all means chastise Triggerhippie4 for rebounding from an edit war block to not only revert AGAIN, but to erroneously restore a single-source tag to a multiple source section, but don't chew Nishidani out for calling that crap out. Totally out of order. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:45, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

This is the first time in many years I doubt your judgment, also because it is offensive and nonchalantly careless in (not?)reading what has happened here over the last week.

No, the tags can be justified if there has, for each one, been a serious effort by a discontented editor to lay out reasons for them. Mass smear tagging often functions as a device to win an argument by someone who won't engage in discussion. That's my experience in the I/P field.

I'm perfectly aware that one serial reverter, who rarely appears to add anything to articles, as opposed to removing or restoring stuff he likes, does not engage in the 'ongoing discussion'.I have have reverted twice here on 6 February and today, 11 Feb when I saw Triggerhippie again removing eminently good text by a scholar who was an acknowledged authority in the field. All we know from his various edit sumnmaries as he persists in a serial revert war with several editors, is that Falk is ‘junk’,’crap’, ‘anti-Jewish’ and finally some nobody forced - thast is the innuendo- to pay a 'predatory' publisher to get notability after 5 decades on the forefront of his two disciplines. Nishidani (talk) 16:54, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Both Iskander and I engaged in extensive discussion, and were met by silence as the reverting persisted. When I saw this editwarrior’s final effort at blanketing text he dislikes – he didn’t even trouble to ‘waste his time’ at the RSN board- while it is under discussion, I (a) restored it and (b) then added several sources to show that what TH regards, from what privileged olympus of omniscience escapes me, as ‘crap’ /‘junk’ is a position eminent historians accept. I could add several more.Nishidani (talk) 16:57, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Iskandar323 and Nishidani, I hope you know I appreciate you both. Editing in a field that causes a lot of emotions, you both almost always keep a level head and do good work, and I am glad you are both around. As for the issue at the core of all of this, the question of whether all Jews are genetically related, I am on the same page as Falk (and presumably you both) in thinking it is nonsense. The North Sentinelese tribe is no doubt ethnically homogeneous but for any modern population, that is a nonsensical view. You have both made this argument well in the discussions and I agree with you. (Iskandar323, please don't assume discussions are not read just because not everyone comments immediately). My comment is exclusively directed at the use of a source that fails any academic scrutiny. I understand many users in the ARBPIA Field approach issues from the point of view of whether it says what they want (again, I usually find both of you [and Selfstudier as well] much better than most users in this field). Personally, having no connection whatsoever to the region, not even emotionally, I try to look at the facts. In this one case, I fear you might let your judgement be clouded. Like you, I think Falk's conclusion is correct. I wish he had published in a reliable academic source. As an academic myself, with more than a decade of editorial as well as research experience, I know what crap (to be blunt both honest) Frontiers publishes. My issue here is with academic integrity, not with Jewish genetics one way or another. But the fact of the matter is that Frontiers is unreliable, and I do not know one academic in my field who would consider it reliable. Trying to pass it off as a suitable source is not serious. Last but not least, you will have noticed I mentioned all users, regardless of their opinions. Jeppiz (talk) 18:42, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Jeppiz, while you may be 100% correct about Frontiers, you still haven't offered any actual evidence in support of your claims. Is there somewhere I can read such evidence? I'm also wondering why it is relevant in the case of Falk. Since he is a subject-area expert, WP:SPS says that his article would be citable even if it was only on his personal web page. Unless we think that Frontiers maliciously modifies the articles it publishes against the wishes of the authors, why does publication remove the reliability that existed before? Zero^talk 23:54, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

@Zero0000: WP:SPS is mainly applied to BLPs and other non-technical subjects. It would be highly irregular to apply SPS to a bio-science topic like population genetics, much less a controversial one like Jewish genetics. SPS also says that if a viewpoint is truly notable there should be another, more reliable source that meets Wikipedia's standards. Frontiers clearly does not, as you can see at the RSN archives. In my opinion, the content in question should be removed. If one could find a page from his Springer book that contains similar statements I would have no problem with adding it, but as a matter of principle we should respect the consensus not to use Frontiers Media as a source for highly contentious and convoluted subjects like this one. - Hunan201p (talk) 00:21, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

@Hunan201p: You are entirely wrong about SPS and I suggest you read it more carefully. The last sentence there excludes it from BLPs. What it does say is "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications" and there is no reason to not apply that to a genetics expert. Zero^talk 04:04, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

As a review article summarizing pre-existing research, this is exactly the sort of input that we would want to see from a vastly experienced and knowledgeable subject-matter expert such as Falk. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:43, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

This article would certainly benefit from a good review article or, better still, a meta-analysis. In most academic fields, the relevance of such research is obvious, which is why it is usually fairly easy to publish good reviews and meta-analysis in top journals. No expert who had done even a half-decent review would need to publish it in Frontiers. In all honesty, the hypocrisy at display on this talk page by "Team A" wanting to keep SurnameDNA and reject Frontiers and by "Team B" wanting to keep Frontiers and reject SurnameDNA is rather depressing. WP:CHERRYPICKING very much applies; an academic source isn't more reliable because it says what you want it to say ("you" here refers to us all on WP, not to any individual user). Both SurnameDNA and Frontiers should go from this, as they are not reliable academic sources. Jeppiz (talk) 11:12, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

There is certainly some hypocrisy on sourcing, on that we can agree. If I am being counted in 'Team B' in this analysis then I would note that I have not actively removed any material from the page other than that cited to boingboing.net or worse. What I have done is drawn attention to is the sudden interest from some users in ripping down the freshly added material from a renowned Israeli geneticist (albeit published in Frontiers), yet set alongside an utter disinterested in the state of sourcing throughout the rest of the page. At best one could call this rather selectively focused. However, as it stands, Frontiers has not been firmly pronounced 'unreliable' at WP:RSN, regardless of apparent claims to the contrary, and neither has SurnameDNA, for that matter, and so it too remains, though perhaps it should also be taken to WP:RSN. Though from what I can tell here, none of the authors in the cited SurnameDNA paper have the distinction of having held tenured fellowships. Iskandar323 (talk) 11:42, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

@Jeppiz and Zero0000: My apologies for misconstruing WP:SPS on BLPs entirely, that was a lapse of judgment (temporary, I hope). But to say that I am "entirely wrong" about SPS is stretching it. SPS also says exercise caution when using such sources: if the information in question is suitable for inclusion, someone else will probably have published it in independent reliable sources, which points to issues of WP:UNDUE, when no one is offering an alternative to Falk. Also, please see Aquillion's comment here. WP:SPS is one of the weaker ways to determine reliability. There is consensus that genetics research is held to a higher standard of reliability

Also, at WP:Verifiability, immediately above WP:SPS, is the following: Predatory open access journals are considered questionable due to the absence of quality control in the peer-review process. Frontiers is an open access predatory source, which casts doubt on the validity of SPS here. And lastly, note G at WP:SPS says Please do note that any exceptional claim would require exceptional sources. I believe that Falk's claim: there is no Jewish genotype to identify and genetic markers cannot determine Jewish descent does constitute an extraordinary claim that isn't satisfied by an outmoded Frontiers source.

This is why @Iskandar323: is mistaken in promoting this source as an innocent review article. It is in fact pushing a extraordinary claim (that there's no way to getermine Jewish descent by genetic markers) that isn't found in the cited sources. - Hunan201p (talk) 11:42, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

This is all easy to source; people just aren't trying. See Falk's Springer-published book on the subject, page 15, for the same information. WP:ECREE it is not. Iskandar323 (talk) 11:53, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

@Iskandar323: I do not see the same information you speak of. The link you gave me is a snippet view for page 1, but I was able to view page 15 by modifiying the URL, and saw nothing to substantiate your claim. The big bold claims from the Frontiers article aren't here. - Hunan201p (talk) 16:09, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I do think both SurnameDNA and Frontiers should go, both are unreliable. I agree with Iskandar323 and will go a bit further still: in academic circles, Frontiers is frowned upon. I forbid my PhD students from submitting there, and from citing articles published in it. Virtually all colleagues (not just in my department but in my entire academic field) do the same. Having said that SurnameDNA is worse still, and I would object to even calling it in academic journal. While "journals" of this kind abound in every academic field, they are not even taken seriously. (If anyone really wants to defend SurnameDNA I can provide a lengthy debunking, though I'm optimistic enough that it's countless flaws should be evident). Jeppiz (talk) 11:59, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

It's odd to put SurnameDNA on a par with Falk. Hunan evidently hadn't read Falk's translated work on Biology and Zionism. The paper we are citing from summarizes that book. In that book this is the kind of self-reviewing scruple exercised as an historian and geneticist of the first water.

Experimental scientists pride themselves of being followers of Francis Bacon’s (1561–1626) inductive method of investigating nature, presumably without prejudice. But clearly, this is impossible; we view the world through a lens that is polarized by our dispositions, inclinations, and preconceived notions. As a student of the evolution of scientific concepts, I based much of my narration on secondary readings of the sources. I have been continually surprised to discover how difficult it is to admit the extent to which many of us – in the natural sciences and in the sciences of man – are influenced by our preconceived ideas. p.xiii

I do not intend to present in this book an historical view or a comprehensive picture of the biological literature of the origins of the Jews and the blood relations between them. As I have experienced in recent years, the subject is emotionally loaded. My perspective is that of a biologist who tries to examine Zionist history. Even though I tried to be objective, I am aware that my personal biases affected the writing. p.16

After noting pressures in Israel and among pro-Palestinian scientists to spin research, he states-

Concise histories of the people involved in the studies are necessary factors of many of the works discussed. They obviously present the authors’ perspective of history.However, such explicit “political writing” in a scientific paper resulted in pressure on the editor of the journal that published it. The paper was taken off the internet edition and regular readers were advised to extricate the pages of the paper from the printed edition. Twisted and convoluted as this incident may appear to readers of the professional literature, it exposed much of the biological essence of the Palestinian-Zionist conflict that many of the participants succeeded in veiling under the cover of the presumed image of scientific objectivity. Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh, a Palestinian-American scientist, explicitly responded to this issue and the paper’s findings. The data provided by the paper is ironically consistent with data published in the same journal by Israeli scientists […]. Amar et al. showed that “Israeli Arabs” (Palestinians who are Israeli citizens) are closer to Sephardic Jews than either is to Ashkenazi Jews. […] Yet, Amar et al. incredibly concluded that “We have shown that Jews share common features, a fact that points to a common ancestry.” […] Many worked feverishly to establish links (however tenuous) between Ashkenazi Jews and the ancient Israelites […]. But Ashkenazim are also clearly closer to Turkic/Slavic than to either Sephardim or Arab populations. p.196

Falk's text brims with notes on how research in this area is deeply entangled in all sorts of pressures, ideological and political, and makes no distinction between the Zionist or the pro-Palestinian twist. And he states that he has had to constantly monitor his own assumptions. All of this suggests the detached wisdom of an empiricist embued with strong sensitivities to epistemological biases, his own and others.

That you advise binning his peer-reviewed paper because it was published in Frontiers in Genetics nis purely formalist. If Falk at 86 wished to be heard he should have ignored his anxiety to publish quickly and submitted his final paper to two or three mainstream journals, betting he would be still around by the time their particular systems of peer-review endorsed it for future publication at some time in a near future he, at that age, could not be so confident of seeing unlike the younger scholars seeking outlets for their work in those journals.Nishidani (talk) 15:37, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

A final point. I admire your stringency with students, and the insistence on the highest standards. But you must know, as I do, that publication venue is just one of numerous issues vexing scholarship. Careers are made or broken according to quantity of output, plagiarism is not rare (one critic of my work lifted one of its core ideas, built his book around it, and won a national best book of its genre award (in another language of course). We could undoubtedly entertain each other for hours recounting shenanigans of this type, political pressures to shut up (I was even offered lucrative bribes by a politician), lobbying pressures to boycott or make problems for people who don't toe a particular line. These things are also serious factors, and, in my view, I only look at the quality of the scholar's work, their reputation, and, in this case, I take into consideration the intrinsic difficulties that a position, authoritatively documented, might encounter when it does not sail to the winds of an ostensible orthodoxy. In that regard, Falk passes all tests, and the venue is irrelevant.Nishidani (talk) 15:37, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

@Jeppiz: I note that you have repeatedly been asked to provide evidence that Frontiers is a predatory journal and you have failed to give us anything except your personal impressions. Yet you impune the motives of anyone who disagrees with you. Did I miss something? Mind you, I'm one of those who think that the source is Falk and not Frontiers and I have consistently supported an author-first approach to reliability questions over many examples. I have no reason to doubt the journal editor's word that Falk's article was reviewed by Veronika Lipphardt (specialist in the history of population genetics who wrote a book on Jewish genetics) and Yulia Egorova (specialist in Jewish anthropology). But even besides that, since you have at least one quarter the length of academic life that I've had, you know that the quality of the paper rests most heavily on the quality of the author. That's why I believe this article would be citable if it was written on the back of an envelope. Zero^talk 15:42, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

FYI: WP:Articles for deletion/Raphael Falk (academic). Zero^talk 15:42, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Zero, you're pretty much spot on. Saying that Frontiers is predatory is, to me, WP:BLUE. It is common knowledge in my field, but I've chosen to be anonymous and you are absolutely right to point out that me saying something does not make it so. If you Google Frontiers and predatory you'll find plenty of gullible young researchers who submitted there, only to become sceptical when they discovered how superficial and easy the reviews were. For what it's worth, Frontiers has been pestering me many times to review or even sit on editorial boards - in areas I would have very little competence to review. It certainly appears Falk's reviews for his article were from relevant reviewers. I want to emphasize again that mine is a comment on Frontiers in general, not on Falk (a good and serious researcher for all I can tell). Jeppiz (talk) 15:57, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

This long discussion is interesting. Zero^talk 08:14, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Yes, lots of interesting details. Some people reporting an often long and multi-round reviewing, noting the high quality of the reviewers and discussing how Frontiers does reject papers and sometimes waves costs. Iskandar323 (talk) 09:36, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Hello @Jeppiz, I linked this from NIH which does it's own third party peer-review vetting via three departments as part of a triple blind review process. The Office of Extramural Research, the Office of Management Assessment, and the Office of Federal Advisory Committee Policy comprise the Center for Scientific Review. You can learn more about it here [2]https://www.oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-01-19-00160.asp - it is a solid source. Dr. Raphael Falk was the chair of the International Society of Genetic Genealogy at one point iirc and the head of Genetic studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His paper [3]https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/genetic-analysis/A37A6BD3657B8AC2B6B1C12F33D8BC4C - continues in the original vein of the other but links the association of genetic markers to social demographics ie Jewish people, to the theories regarding the genetics of social demographics in Chapter 10 - From evolution to population genetics. He was a Holocaust Survivor and worked with Curt Stern who wrote The Race Question [4]https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000128291 which was a 9 page document UNESCO put together to discredit Nazism, ie the ideology that there genetic markers which determine specific demographics such as African-Americans, Jews, Irish, etc.

I noticed that his Frontiers paper was cited to substantiate the claim that genetic markers can be used to determine the Jewishness of a genetic marker. "From the mid-1970s onwards, RNA and DNA sequencing enabled the comparison of genetic relationships, and during the 1980s, it also became possible to examine genetic polymorphism across multiple sites in DNA sequences.", open paragraph four of the History section of this article. The very next sentence in the citation is, "Once again the presumed relationships among Jewish communities, as well as their relation to non-Jewish communities were examined.", whereafter the paper goes on to discredit the arguments made by the rest of this paragraph in the Wikipedia article. "Both the early studies on blood markers and later studies of the monoallelic Y chromosomal and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplotypes revealed evidence of both Middle Eastern and local origin, with indeterminate levels of local genetic admixture. The conclusions of the diverse studies conducted turned out to be "remarkably similar", providing both evidence of shared genetic ancestry among major diaspora groups and varied levels of local genetic admixture.", is addressed in the paper in the last paragraph of the section "Who is a Jew?" where he identified it as Nazism and cited it. He then explained the citation in Footnote 3 - "It is noteworthy that even the Nazis, after mobilizing the most advanced means and methods of science of their time for identifying Jews, reverted to using the yellow star patch attached to the garment as the identifying device.". The same thing happens in paragraph five "In the 1990s, this developed into attempts to identify markers in highly discrete population groups. The results were mixed. One study on the Cohanim hereditary priesthood found distinctive signs of genetic homogeneity within the group. At the same time, no unusual clustering of Y-haplotypes was found relative to non-Cohanim Jews." is quoted but the paper said the exact opposite of this. The very next sentence, "However, such studies did show that certain population groups could be identified. As David Goldstein noted: "Our studies of the Cohanim established that present day Ashkenazi and Sephardi Cohanim are more genetically similar to one another than they are to either Israelites or non-Jews."" has the same issue. This citation does not say that anywhere in-fact it said the exact opposite of this.

It is really out of place to have this citation in the framing the article is using it in. At least in that location. I used the NIH re-publish because your right Frontiers is not the best but again NIH does triple-blind reviews before they reprint. It is also acceptable in the framing where it is used in paragraph two and three of the History section because in that location it is used to cite that this sort of genetic research is bogus.

I wanted to point out that in this same section the citation from H. Skorecki Ostrer is {{COI}} they attended Einstein University which claims to be a 'Jewish' medical college making their research inherently subjective and not objective. Medical studies must come from blind sources. Please see Wikipedia:No original research section Reliable Sources for what is required for a medical citation. Dr. Raphael Falk's paper received a triple blind review at the NIH while H. Skorecki Ostrer did not. Additionally, Einstein College of Medicine as well as H. Skorecki Ostrer were involved in the same COVID-19 scandal Nicholas Wade was in. I removed it from the section I added after someone told me about it, trying to put together a good article here. Anyway the source isn't valid and several others have the same issue.

I wanted to add a controversy section to this article and had over 50 sources from places like NIH, the Human Genome Project, The American Society of Human Genetics, The National Insitute of Health, etc which very recently targeted the theories about the genetics of the Jewish people this article contains as racist ideologies without scientific merit. For that reason as well as all of this content warring there should be a controversy section added to the article, but User:Skllagyook and I are having a content war as they have reverted my entire section more than three times without addressing it in the talk or providing any input on how we should arrange this section or anything else mentioned we should do in Wikipedia:Dispute resolution. This article is highly toxic and highly triggering for many which is why I reported it for content warring. I am hoping we can get decent moderation on it who will verify the content as several times over I have been able to point out misrepresentation of citations and bias in research while others have been removing triple-blind citations from government and international agencies in charge of regulating the field.

Additionally, both Illumia and Thermo Fisher Scientific who are the two largest manufacturers of the equipment used in genetic testing and only manufacturers who have units in the labs from the citations in the article were required to distribute warnings related to the proper use of their equipment identifying the information in this article as eugenics after losing the lawsuit against the family of Henrietta Lacks. Just wanted to point that out. 2603:7000:4600:358A:72EF:92A0:CA76:7CCB (talk) 05:48, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

@Jeppiz Sorry to double reply. I wanted to add because of the dispute submission I am not making edits to the article. Just trying to work this out in the talk until that is done. 2603:7000:4600:358A:72EF:92A0:CA76:7CCB (talk) 05:50, 7 June 2023 (UTC)