The Arnaiz-Villena controversy

The Arnaiz-Villena controversyAn often-cited study from 2001 by Arnaiz-Villena et al.[1] which maps 28 world population based on the HLA DRB1 locus, concluded that "the reason why Greeks did not show a close relatedness with all the other Mediterraneans analyzed was their genetic relationship with sub-Saharan ethnic groups now residing in Ethiopia, Sudan, and West Africa (Burkina Faso)." Later that year, the same data was used in another study by the same author published in a different journal.[2]

This second paper dealt specifically with the relatedness of Palestinians and Israelis and was subsequently "deleted from the scientific literature" because, according to the editor-in-chief Nicole Suciu-Foca, it "confounded the elegant analysis of the historic basis of the people of the Mediterranean Basin with a political viewpoint representing only one side of a complex political and historical issue".[3]

Erica Klarreich's report on the controversy further quotes Sucio-Foca as saying that the reaction against the paper was so severe that "We would have had mass resignations and the journal would have been destroyed if this paper were allowed to remain." [4] The controversy was further reported on in numerous locations including The Observer.[5]

Shortly after this, three respected geneticists, Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Alberto Piazza and Neil Risch, argued that the scientific limitations of Arnaiz-Villena's methodology.[6]

They stated that "
USING RESULTS FROM THE ANALYSIS OF A SINGLE MARKER, PARTICULARLY ONE LIKELY TO HAVE UNDERGONE SELECTION, FOR THE PURPOSE OF RECONSTRUCTING GENEALOGIES IS UNRELIABLE AND UNACCEPTABLE PRACTICE IN POPULATION GENETICS.",

making specific allusion to the findings on Greeks (among others) as

"ANOMALOUS RESULTS, WHICH CONTRADICT HISTORY, GEOGRAPHY, ANTHROPOLOGY AND ALL PRIOR POPULATION-GENETIC STUDIES OF THESE GROUPS."No multiple-marker analysis has ever duplicated Arnaiz-Villena's results.

In The History and Geography of Human Genes (Princeton, 1994), Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi and Piazza grouped Greeks with other European and Mediterranean populations based on 120 loci (view MDS plot[7). Then, Ayub et al. 2003[8] did the same thing using 182 loci (view dendrogram[9).

THE DISPUTED DATA CONTINUES TO BE CITED ALL OVER THE INTERNET, MOSTLY BY WHITE SUPREMACISTS, AFROCENTRISTS AND MACEDONISM NATIONALISTS WHO HAVE POLITICAL MOTIVATIONS TO RELATE MODERN OR ANCIENT GREEKS TO BLACK AFRICANS. HOWEVER, IT'S NO LONGER REFERENCED BY POPULATION GENETICISTS IN CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH, MAINLY DUE TO THE CRITICISM OF CAVALLI-SFORZA ET AL.


Footnotes
1. Arnaiz-Villena et al.
2. Abstract
3. Human Immunology, Vol: 62, Issue: 10, October, 2001, pp1063
4. Nature
5. The Observer
6. Nature
7. MDS plot
8. Ayub et al. 2003
9. dendrogram