Talk:List of R1a frequency by population

Untitled
Folks, this article has clearly involved a lot of work, but in my view it is not far off a candidate for speedy deletion in that it completely fails to identify the significance of the topic. This may be obvious enough to a geneticist, but it requires some explanation for the general reader. Ben  Mac  Dui  18:29, 23 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Please explain a bit more about what you think it needs. This is a new article that has been split out from R1a, so indeed most discussion about it is there on the original article. Would adding some introductory remarks help?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:10, 18 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Another editor here, I agree with user Ben MacDui above that this article fails to identify the significance of the topic - although I do not believe the entire article should be deleted. Let me explain. The articles title is: List of R1a frequency by population and so when you click on this article from the main article on R1a you expect to find the populations with the highest amount of R1a, but instead you are confronted by a table listing the different subgroups / subclades of R1a with their frequencies across Eurasia instead. Is there any source with data on the TOTAL AMOUNT of R1a found across all these population groups and if so can the person with access to that data please include it in the same table, but in a separate column with the appropriate heading in this regard? I am no expert in archeology, or genetics, but the large difference in sample sizes between population groups would also seem like a concern. Might this not affect accuracy of the results?--41.147.76.217 (talk) 12:47, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

discussion about this article, and new data not yet in it
Editors interested in this article might note the following discussion:, .--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:09, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

For the record: concerning apparent attempt to begin edit war
Because User:Rudrasharman has started a cycle of deleting all reference to the Sharma 2009 paper from the article, for the record:
 * For discussion about this, apparently failed, wikipedians can refer to the discussion on the same subject on the R1a main article, Talk:Haplogroup_R1a_(Y-DNA). There had been an earlier discussion at another article:,.
 * Following is a list of the repeated blanket deletes in the present article, along with the changing edit summaries:-
 * (rm bogus numbers such as fractions (72.22% of 30 WB Brahmins = 21.67), the paper is garbage) (Note: 21.67 refers to a formatting error in the original article being cited and is not being used here.)
 * (rv incompetence in arithmetic)
 * (rv per WP:ENC, WP:REDFLAG, WP:UCS,WP:NOCLUE and WP:OWN)

I'll keep adding to the list as it may be handy for future reference.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:16, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

For those wondering what goes into, ahem, "formatting errors", see this, which is the "dataset" published by Sharma et al, converted into a contingency table (which also happens to be the academically and professionally correct way to report such data).

Now, for most of the world, who are not arithmetically challenged, 72.22% of 30 West Bengal Brahmins is 72.22x30/100 = 21.67 (twenty one and two-thirds) West Bengal Brahmins. That's for most of the world. For Andrew Lancaster, it's a "formatting error". For most of the world, 5.56% + 72.22% + 22.22% indeed adds up to 100%, and so the distribution of 30 West Bengal Brahmins is: 1-2/3 WB Brahmins positive for H1, 21-2/3 WB Brahmins positive for R1a1, and 6-2/3 WB Brahmins positive for R2. Oh right. Formatting errors. The plain fact, that these bozos completely FUBAR-ed their data set, is obvious to most of the world. But not to Andrew Lancaster.

And there's more. They published this trash in this journal (which was recently dropped by Springer, but Andrew Lancaster will not want to go there). According to the information provided by the journal (see the page linked to above, under the section heading "Impact Factor") Thomson Reuters gives it an impact factor of 2.431, for a rank of 74th out of 138 journals in the field of "genetics & heredity". That is a below median ranking. (Andrew Lancaster may need help with this, as 69, a rank higher than 74, requires dividing 138 by 2, but that would be arithmetic, not his forté.)

So, to most of the world, this is a blah paper with a bollixed data set published in a podunk journal. In a word, junk. But what is it to Andrew Lancaster? Why, lo and behold, a "major survey". A major survey? (What do we do, then, with a survey from a Top-20 journal, keel over in stupefied awe to save ourselves from having run out of adjectives?)

So, did Andrew Lancaster make this "major survey" business up, or does he truly think so? Clark's Law applies, I think, given Hanlon's razor. rudra (talk) 02:25, 19 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Rudra, I'll avoid answering in kind. The main problem I have responding seriously is that your argument is not actually clear and never has been. You arrived on the R1a talk page telling me that you did not have to explain anything, and that is where the problems started. Unlike you I do not go off and study other Wikipedian's editing histories for hours and then spend even more time developing fantasy scenarios about their motives, conspiracies and talk page styles. So here is a list of arguments you seem to imply are all yours in various places (readers wanting to try to follow can see here). Please note that some of them are at least at first sight logically impossible to have at the same time...
 * Common sense tells us the article is bad. And whatever we know with high certainty to be true or false must certainly over-rule policies like WP:Neutral. To be frank, this does seem to be your main argument. Obviously experienced Wikipedians will recognize it as a standard problem argument.
 * The article in discussion is simply not covered by WP:Neutral because it is not "significant" at all. (And in order for you to proclaim this, because you have no feeling for the field, you cite an index you found which covers all genetics journals. Nevertheless, in this field of specifically human population genetics, every new survey this big is taken seriously and the journal is not a fringe journal even if it wins no popularity awards. It has a few quite important articles such as this one which are currently used in Wikipedia. Should mention of that article be forbidden?
 * The article is too significant. It makes extreme claims, and extreme claims need stronger sourcing than less extreme claims. (And yet as others have pointed out to you, it is not so exciting at all.)
 * I could understand that all of these look like reasonable arguments for debating the "fine points" of what weight should be given to the data, but none seem to justify deleting all mention of it, which BTW is the only point I have tried to discuss with you, time and again. Indeed on his talk page User:Dbachmann apparently misunderstood that this was your argument and specifically said that such an argument has no case.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:27, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Merge proposal
I notice the person who proposed the merge has made no remark to explain the proposal. The argument against merger can be explained simply by looking at why the article was created in the first place, which is that the R1a article kept getting too long, and efforts to decide on which data should be removed always turned into troll wars between India/South Asia enthusiasts and Slavic/Balkans enthusiasts. I believe the same argument is still in play. Of course all sides have their arguments about each others sources (but not about their own. The biggest one is that the whole field can only be written up by citing primary literature. This is not really totally against Wikipedia policy, but it is problematic. So a simplistic proposal would be to delete all haplogroup discussion from Wikipedia. It is very hard to think of a fair middle ground between inclusion and complete erasure, because, as shown by Rudra's edits on R1a "bending" WP:Neutral always turns into an excuse for POV pushing eventually. People always want to make exceptions for their favorite stuff and be strict about other people's favorite stuff.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:50, 21 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Comment. I think a merge amounts to deletion: it's absurd to incorporate all these minutiae into the R1a article, either as a humongous table or as interminable prose. So it essentially amounts to keeping what is already in the R1a article and simply tossing the rest. The issue here, then, is the need to preserve the "rest".  I have sympathy for the idea that this article can be a lightning rod to catch crackpot and troll attacks, but I'm not convinced that's good enough a reason for WP:PRIMARY policy non-compliance. rudra (talk) 00:42, 22 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Comment. I am very happy that Rudra is talking about the job at hand, without sweeping messy aspects of the problem under the carpet. I believe his summary is pretty right. The choice is probably between deletion and the ugly compromise I think he has correctly created now by tagging this article more heavily. The problem with deletion is that it means that for R-M17, the main type of R1a, there would then be almost NO information at all in Wikipedia about where it can be found. The problem we hit in the past (and yes you can blame trolls if you want but what they argue about has often got something real behind it) is that all attempts to summarize all this data are very difficult to make in an un-controversial way. For example, do we need to mention specific sub-populations with very high R1a levels (Sorbs, some Indian populations etc etc)? Common sense says yes, because population genetics is all about populations, but then if one is mentioned, why not another? And in order to understand population dispersions, don't you also need to explain where R1a is NOT common (especially the areas that are in between high frequency areas)? The naive inclusionist approach stopped a lot of real problems and did improve the article at least in a relative sense, according to all comments I ever heard about it. My current thinking is still for a messy compromise which keeps Wikipedia as good as I think it can be on this subject until someone comes up with a better solution. Obviously one background issue is how "dangerous" the Sharma data is given the problems Rudra has shown exist in its data tables. I do not think it is very dangerous. Trolls do not get anything from Sharma that they can get from many places. Warning tags seem fine though.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:00, 22 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Comment. Yeah... I don't agree with merging or deletion, as it would only be detrimental to the quality and neutrality of the article(s) concerning R1a. I think it would be better to leave the studies with the sample number and frequencies (%), add in age estimates and the method used.  Probable  would solve many of the problems here.  HonestopL 13:45, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090304100323/http://dirkschweitzer.net/E3b-papers/HG-05-428-Poland-Germany.pdf to http://dirkschweitzer.net/E3b-papers/HG-05-428-Poland-Germany.pdf
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20031125151213/http://hpgl.stanford.edu/publications/Science_2000_v290_p1155.pdf to http://hpgl.stanford.edu/publications/Science_2000_v290_p1155.pdf

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June 2023
This research you added, the full citation is not viewable, even as a free member of research gate. Nor anything is there in the abstract. Do you have another link to of the research?. Unverifiable data shouldn't be added, see WP:V. Also do not replace the existing entry of Underhill 2009 on Andhra Brahmins samples. - Fylindfotberserk (talk) 09:34, 25 June 2023 (UTC)


 * Hi, I'm not able to verify this research (as a free member at ResearchGate), added in this revision by Anonymousdichloride. I've removed it for being unverifiable at the moment, also if verified, it should be added in a separate row instead of replacing a well known study. And I don't agree to the comment that this research is more reliable than Underhill 2009 which is peer reviewed. I couldn't find this specific research at Pubmed or NCBI- Fylindfotberserk (talk) 09:57, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
 * It exists, from a evidently good University. But shows only one citation and of course  it's never been published in a journal, so I would never use it as a source.  Doug Weller  talk 11:37, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Technically, just because something is not published online we do not say this makes it unverifiable, but in this case that is not the most important problem. I agree with Doug that the problem here is that the article has not yet been through any kind of checking process such as peer review. Perhaps this is something for the future.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:42, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your inputs. - Fylindfotberserk (talk) 13:02, 25 June 2023 (UTC)