Genetics Studies in the Greek Population vs Pseudoscience

January 10, 2011.
Christos Karatzios¹, Stephen G. Miller², Costas D. Triantaphyllidis*³

Abstract

Arnaiz-Villena et al. published five papers making the claim of a Sub-Saharan African origin for Greeks. Hajjej et al. essentially published copies of Arnaiz-Villena's studies using the same methods, and data sets. World leading geneticists have rejected Arnaiz-Villena's methodology (the primary defect is that they relied on too few genetic markers to reliably compare populations). Numerous studies using proper methodology and multiple genetic markers are presented, showing that Greeks cluster genetically with the rest of the Europeans, disproving Arnaiz-Villena's claims. History, as well as genetics, have been misused by Arnaiz-Villena's (and by extension Hajjej's) unprofessional statements and by their omissions and misquotations of scientific and historical citations. The abuse of scientific methods has earned Arnaiz-Villena's research a citation in a genetics textbook as an example of arbitrary interpretation and a deletion of one of his papers from the scientific literature. In order to protect science from misuse, the related papers of Arnaiz-Villena et al. and Hajjej et al. should also be retracted from the ...

 scientific literature.


  Table of Contents
  I. INTRODUCTION
        The Arnaiz-Villena Studies
  II. GENETICS
        Studies that Claim the Opposite
        Arnaiz-Villena Contradicts his Conclusions
        The Studies that Copied Arnaiz-Villena
        Arnaiz-Villena's Faulty Methodology
                i. Single Locus Gene Studies are Inappropriate for Population Genetics
                ii. The Congolese Cluster with the Basques and Icelanders?
        Arnaiz-Villena's Confusing Charts
        Criticism and Rejection by the Scientific Community
                i. The Textbook that Calls it "Arbitrary Interpretation":
                ii. The three Geneticists that Call it "Unreliable and Unacceptable":
                iii. The Retraction
        The Article that Calls it "Scientific Hubris"
        Proper Methodology
        Faulty Methodology, Faulty Studies
        The Curious Omissions
                i. The Japanese appear to cluster with Sub-Saharans
                ii. The Japanese appear to cluster with Africans and Italians
                iii. African genes are present in numerous non-African populations
                iv. Misquoted Data
        Dörk does not support Arnaiz-Villena
        Greeks Cluster Genetically with other Europeans
        The African Origins of all Humans
        Arnaiz-Villena's Answer to his Critics
        Proposed Retractions
  III. HISTORY
        Arnaiz-Villena's Misquotations of Ancient Sources
        Citations of Modern Sources in Support of Inaccuracies
        Inaccurate Statements Without Ancient Documentation
        Contradictory Statements on History
  IV. CONCLUSIONS
  References

1- McGill University Health Centre, Division of Infectious Diseases, Montreal Children's Hospital, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

2- University of California, Berkeley, California, USA.

3- Department of Genetics, Development and Molecular Biology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Macedonia, Greece.

Christos Karatzios MD, Assistant Professor of Paediatrics and Costas Triantaphyllidis, Professor Emeritus of Genetics and Human Genetics co-wrote the genetics part, while Stephen Miller, Professor Emeritus of Classical Archaeology wrote the history part of the article. Christos Karatzios participated in the design of the article

*Corresponding author: C. Triantaphyllidis, e-mail: triant@bio.auth.gr

Cosigner and author of the editorial:

George P. Patrinos

Assistant Professor of Pharmacogenomics, University of Patras,

School of Health Sciences, Department of Pharmacy, Patras, Greece;

Communicating editor, Human Mutation