Re: Ancient and Modern Genealogies: Genealogy As an Academic Discipline

V. Chris and Tom Tinney, Sr. wrote:
Todd A. Farmerie wrote:

V. Chris and Tom Tinney, Sr. wrote:

"As seen, the number of publications in the exact
sciences largely outgrows those in the fields more
traditionally associated with genealogy."
http://www.avotaynu.com/wagner.htm

Flawed analysis - a single-keyword search of a database that is poorly representative of actual genealogical publishing.

taf, with all due respect,
"Scientists Take Inspiration From Wikipedia
To Create Tree Of Life: Genealogy And Study
Of All Specie" [as of 20 FEB 2006]
http://technocrat.net/d/2006/2/20/766
[The Web-based Tree of Life project,
a massive collaboration among scientists from
all over the world, is growing more "leaves"
and "branches" all the time. The project is
basically a genealogy of life on Earth coupled
with information about the characteristics of
individual species and groups of organisms.]
http://www.tolweb.org/tree/

And this is PRECISELY why an analysis based on nothing but the presence of the word "genealogy" it is flawed. The title of this example article has the word "genealogy" in it, and hence would have been included in the analysis. However, the word is being used in an entirely different sense than that which we all use here. This is NOT an example of using a novel DNA-based approach to address the type of genealogical question this group discusses, it is addressing the evolutionary phylogeny of bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes - reconstructing events 4.5 billion years ago. To suggest that this is indicative of bad techniques destroying "genealogy" as we know it is ridiculous.

[from another article]
"Despite the quagmire in which their present
efforts have landed them, biologists have not
in any way despaired of confirming the conventional
thesis, that life evolved on earth from natural
chemical processes." http://www.samsloan.com/eukarya.htm
[rearranged for clarity]

Not that it is on-topic for this group, but this is an example where a New York Times writer tried to 'spice things up'. There is no quagmire and there wasn't at the time he wrote the article. There never was one and things have only become more clear in the intervening 8 years. God only knows why he chose that word, but no scientist would have. The failure of a journalist to understand science (or to use more appropriate language to describe it) is not a failure of the science itself. Anyhow, it no longer bears any resemblance to the current state of things. 8 years may not seem like much, but in genomic research, it is the difference between having the complete sequence of one bacterium to having the complete genomes of a hundred species in all kingdoms of life, including humans. The field has moved so rapidly this article might as well be talking about outlines of hands and prehistoric buffalos on cave walls. It is ancient history, scientifically speaking (and as I said, it wasn't a quagmire then).

> How thrilling to place
> genealogy and family history research in this
> quagmire of uncertainty.

Surely even you recognize some degree of difference between sequencing entire genomes to investigate how one bacteria is related to another four billion years ago (what this article dealt with), and the way Y-chromosome typing is being applied to the genealogy on historical humans.

> Flawed analysis, taf?

Yes, flawed analysis.

taf
.

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