The Pith: Honorable intent and punctilious adherence to proper form and method does not guarantee a set of results which flesh out a genuine phenomenon. Much of science is tragic.
Most of the time I point to and review papers on this weblog which excite me. But in the interests of “balance” and dampening the bias toward material I find interesting and salient I thought it would be interesting to look at a paper which I thought wasn’t too interesting. It’s in the Journal of Human Genetics, part of the Nature Publishing Group empire. Also, it is open access, so you can read it yourself and make your own individual judgments.
The Soliga, an isolated tribe from Southern India: genetic diversity and phylogenetic affinities:
India’s role in the dispersal of modern humans can be explored by investigating its oldest inhabitants: the tribal people. The Soliga people of the Biligiri Rangana Hills, a tribal community in Southern India, could be among the country’s first settlers. This forest-bound, Dravidian speaking group, lives isolated, practicing subsistence-level agriculture under primitive conditions. The aim of this study is to examine the phylogenetic relationships of the Soligas in relation to 29 worldwide, geographically targeted, …