A brief history of the lies of Ugo Perego: the author of the Church’s Book of Mormon and DNA Studies essay.

[I Have Questions]

6. Undermining the power of autosomal DNA
Perego’s area of expertise is mitochondrial DNA, not autosomal DNA. He has repeatedly tried to downplay the power of autosomal DNA studies to trace human ancestry. He has claimed that a person’s genome only retains DNA from about 12 percent of their 1,024 genealogical ancestors at ten generations[6] and “It is increasingly likely around 6+ generations back that you have no DNA in your genome at all from many of your ancestors in that generation.”[7] Both claims are false. According to distinguished Harvard professor David Reich, who discovered Denisovan DNA, we are likely to carry DNA from about 500 of our 10th generation ancestors and from all 64 of our 6th generation ancestors.[8]

Perego focusses attention on the loss of autosomal DNA while overlooking that we lose over 99.9% of our ancestor’s mitochondrial DNA over the same 10 generations! We only carry mitochondrial DNA from 1 of our tenth-generation ancestors. On this metric alone autosomal DNA is 500 times more powerful than mitochondrial DNA. Perego’s 12% figure comes from speculative numbers spread around the internet by DNA genealogy influencers, and is not grounded in fact.

There are a number of issues with Southerton’s assertions within this paragraph. As an example - David Reich did not discover Denisovan DNA. I’d suggest interested readers fact check for themselves the assertions Southeron makes in this paragraph, and then fact check the claims Perego makes that Southerton highlights here.

[simon southerton]

There are a number of issues with Southerton’s assertions within this paragraph. As an example - David Reich did not discover Denisovan DNA. I’d suggest interested readers fact check for themselves the assertions Southeron makes in this paragraph, and then fact check the claims Perego makes that Southerton highlights here.

Let me guess. You did a quick google search and an AI bot told you Svante Pääbo discovered Denisovan DNA? So you immediately concluded Southerton was wrong and therefore totally untrustworthy.

I must confess that for a brief moment you had me worried. Maybe I got it wrong. I was certain Reich had done a lot of work with Denisovans but maybe he wasn't the first to discover Denisovan DNA. So I checked.

Svante Pääbo was the head of the research team that discovered Denisovan DNA back in 2010 and he was the senior (last) author of the paper. However, the first author of the paper, and the person who did the bulk of the actual work, was David Reich.

Here's a link to the paper. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4306417/

My claim that David Reich discovered Denisovan DNA is absolutely correct.

But notice how he posts once, then never engages again? Does he not allow criticism?

I'm quite happy to respond to criticism. I just don't pop in every day. I'm also in Canberra Australia, so I am asleep when the board is most active.

I posted in the forum 4 days ago and after a couple of days there hadn't been many responses. Then it took off a little. I'll respond to a few of your comments tomorrow. Its late here and I'm off to bed.

Cheers.

[Gadianton]

I gather that’s your area of interest/research, but I assure you that I am only an apologist for not calling people liars without knowing that they are actually liars. I’m guilty of that.

You mean Mopologetics? Yes, that is my area of research.

A subtle move and well played The Before. One of the rules of Senior Tier Mopologetics is to never admit guilt about anything no matter how trivial no matter what, not even when it would be advantageous to a greater deception.

[I Have Questions]

There are a number of issues with Southerton’s assertions within this paragraph. As an example - David Reich did not discover Denisovan DNA. I’d suggest interested readers fact check for themselves the assertions Southeron makes in this paragraph, and then fact check the claims Perego makes that Southerton highlights here.

Let me guess. You did a quick google search and an AI bot told you Svante Pääbo discovered Denisovan DNA? So you immediately concluded Southerton was wrong and therefore totally untrustworthy.

I must confess that for a brief moment you had me worried. Maybe I got it wrong. I was certain Reich had done a lot of work with Denisovans but maybe he wasn't the first to discover Denisovan DNA. So I checked.

Svante Pääbo was the head of the research team that discovered Denisovan DNA back in 2010 and he was the senior (last) author of the paper. However, the first author of the paper, and the person who did the bulk of the actual work, was David Reich.

Here's a link to the paper. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4306417/

My claim that David Reich discovered Denisovan DNA is absolutely correct.

Being the first author of something, doing the bulk of the work on something, is not the same as being the discoverer of something. Can you quote from the paper you’ve linked to where it identifies Reich as the person who discovered Denisovan DNA? Because the Nobel committee credited Svante Pääbo with it. You even credit him with it your response to me.

You say that Perego’s statement “It is increasingly likely around 6+ generations back that you have no DNA in your genome at all from many of your ancestors in that generation.” Is “false”. Are you saying then that you retain the DNA in your genome from ALL 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th…(and so on) generation ancestors?

[Physics Guy]

If several co-authors report a discovery, the rule is that they are all its discoverers, unless the paper itself stipulates otherwise. So it is probably indeed correct that the first author discovered Denisovan hominids. The Nobel committee was no doubt also right to credit Pääbo for the discovery. Pääbo’s 2022 prize citation lists other major contributions as well, so it isn’t that Reich would have shared the prize. Denisovan DNA alone wasn’t enough.

[I Have Questions]

If several co-authors report a discovery, the rule is that they are all its discoverers, unless the paper itself stipulates otherwise. So it is probably indeed correct that the first author discovered Denisovan hominids. The Nobel committee was no doubt also right to credit Pääbo for the discovery. Pääbo’s 2022 prize citation lists other major contributions as well, so it isn’t that Reich would have shared the prize. Denisovan DNA alone wasn’t enough.

Ah, okay. Thanks PG.

[simon southerton]

Being the first author of something, doing the bulk of the work on something, is not the same as being the discoverer of something. Can you quote from the paper you’ve linked to where it identifies Reich as the person who discovered Denisovan DNA? Because the Nobel committee credited Svante Pääbo with it. You even credit him with it your response to me.

As PG has pointed out, a lot of people involved in this paper would be entitled to say they helped discover Denisovan DNA, something you would have known if you had any experience in scientific research.

By the time this research was done, David Reich was a professor at Harvard with his own research team and lab. He had published in the field of paleogenomics for over a decade. He didn't do the lab work. He was involved in the analysis of the data and he wrote the paper. David Reich was clearly a major driving force in the research. Its almost certain Svante Pääbo and David Reich were co-leaders of the research and they undoubtedly planned it and resourced it together.

Svante Pääbo won the Nobel Prize for his pioneering work in kicking off the field of paleogenomics. The biggest breakthrough was the sequencing of the Neanderthal genome. The Denisovan DNA research was one of many discoveries in a very distinguished career. David Reich is also a very distinguished scientist with over 800 publications and over 100,000 citations.

You say that Perego’s statement “It is increasingly likely around 6+ generations back that you have no DNA in your genome at all from many of your ancestors in that generation.” Is “false”. Are you saying then that you retain the DNA in your genome from ALL 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th…(and so on) generation ancestors?

No, I did not say that. Beyond the 6th generation some ancestors drop out. By the 10th generation you carry DNA from about 500 out of 1024 ancestors, not 120 as Perego has stated.

[The Before]

I gather that’s your area of interest/research, but I assure you that I am only an apologist for not calling people liars without knowing that they are actually liars. I’m guilty of that.

You mean Mopologetics? Yes, that is my area of research.

A subtle move and well played The Before. One of the rules of Senior Tier Mopologetics is to never admit guilt about anything no matter how trivial no matter what, not even when it would be advantageous to a greater deception.

I’m afraid I haven’t the slightest idea what you mean. And, well, it doesn’t matter I guess.

I was merely bothered by what I perceived as one highly respected scientist attacking another, so I felt like speaking out. I haven’t seen a post by Ugo Perego attacking Simon Southerton, so I suppose I was also curious about the whole thing.

I do apologize if i have offended you with something I’ve said.

Edit: it has only just occurred to me that I’m a complete stranger on your discussion board here. How I came to learn of this place is, shall we say, a shared love of the lolcow “imetatronink.”

[Marcus]

You mean Mopologetics? Yes, that is my area of research.

A subtle move and well played The Before. One of the rules of Senior Tier Mopologetics is to never admit guilt about anything no matter how trivial no matter what, not even when it would be advantageous to a greater deception.

I’m afraid I haven’t the slightest idea what you mean. And, well, it doesn’t matter I guess.

I was merely bothered by what I perceived as one highly respected scientist attacking another, so I felt like speaking out. I haven’t seen a post by Ugo Perego attacking Simon Southerton, so I suppose I was also curious about the whole thing.

I know you were responding to Gad (so my apologies Gad, if i am overstepping), but I found your comment curious so I just wanted to ask if you had read point 8 from the OP?

In case you missed it, I highlighted Perego's attack that Southerton is responding to:

8. Falsely claims that I deliberately hurt Scott Woodward’s career at BYU

When I was struggling with the DNA evidence in 1998, I briefly corresponded via email with BYU Professor Scott R. Woodward. Scott told me he had tested the mitochondrial DNA of about 5,500 Native Americans from Peru and found that 98% were derived from Asia. He defended the Book of Mormon on the basis of the Limited Geography Theory that was accepted by some scholars at BYU. A few months later I shared this correspondence with an Area leader who had requested a copy.

In 2003 President Gordon B. Hinckley personally intervened to shut down Scott Woodward’s entire research program at BYU and Scott lost his full professorship. He was deeply hurt by this.

On a FAIR blog created in 2009, Ugo Perego, who worked with Woodward at the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation (now closed), made the following false claim.

“Woodward’s emails from 1998 were eventually edited by Southerton and forwarded to LDS Church leaders in Utah, with the objective of hurting Woodward’s teaching position at BYU. This event greatly upset Woodward.”[15]

The citation goes to a Fairmormon entry, titled:

Current Biology, SMGF, and Lamanites
February 6, 2009 by Ugo Perego, PhD

[simon southerton]

Where I think this goes too far is the repeated conclusion that Perego is lying. A lie isn’t simply a statement we think is wrong, misleading, poorly qualified, or apologetically motivated. It requires knowing that a claim is false and deliberately presenting it as true. That is a much harder case to establish than showing that two statements appear to be in tension.

First up, the audience for my posts are not interested in long drawn-out explanations for all of the points I am making. I deliberately trim them so more people read them. I don't care if apologists nitpick over things I say (like my outrageous (true) claim that David Reich discovered Denisovan DNA /s) because they are hardwired to do that. If you want to get in a drawn-out dissection of everything I have written then I will disappoint you. But I will respond to a couple of your comments.

For example, saying that Lehi’s lineage could theoretically fall within a lineage already present in the Americas is not the same as claiming that one of the founding Native American haplogroups originated with Lehi. If a lineage existed thousands of years before Lehi, that obviously means the lineage itself cannot be evidence for Lehi. But a later immigrant could still possess that same broad haplogroup. Whether that possibility is useful apologetically is another question.

There are five founding mitochondrial DNA lineages found in Native Americans. Lineages A, B, C, D and X (X2a). Ugo Perego was an author on two papers that accurately dated how long these lineages have been present in the Americas.
Achilli et al 2008. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18335039/
Perego et al. 2009. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19135370/

In Achille et al. They estimated the age of the lineages to be 18,000 to 21,000 years. Their “estimate indicates a human entry and spread of the pan-American haplogroups into the Americas right after the peak of the Last Glacial Maximum and comfortably agrees with the undisputed ages of the earliest Paleoindians in South America.”

In Perego et al. 2009 they determined the age of the X2a and D4h3 lineage families and concluded that the “paths of migration from Beringia led to the Paleo-Indian dispersal approximately 15-17 kya. Haplogroup D4h3 spread into the Americas along the Pacific coast, whereas X2a entered through the ice-free corridor between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets.”

Clearly, by 2009 Ugo Perego knew that all 5 founding lineages, which make up over 98% of mitochondrial lineages among Native Americans, originated in Asia over 15,000 years ago. The other 2% are lineages that entered Native American populations through admixture with people of African or European origin.

Ugo Perego knows that the A, B, C, D, and X lineages are not found in the Middle East. They are Asian lineages. Lehi cannot possibly have carried a 15,000-year-old Asian lineage. But Perego claims in 2014 “It is possible that the DNA of Lehi’s group is one of the most prominent lineages in the American continent but that we do not recognize it as such due to lacking knowledge of their mtDNA profile.” In my view this is extremely deceptive.

Likewise, the ancient West Eurasian ancestry found in Native Americans isn’t evidence for the Book of Mormon, and the Church’s essay actually acknowledges that this ancestry entered the Native American gene pool thousands of years before Book of Mormon times. We can debate whether mentioning it was helpful or potentially confusing, but that seems different from concealing what the science says.

Mormon apologists wet their pants when the author of a National Geographic article reported on Raghaven’s research on the genome of an ancient Siberian child. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24256729/ The NG author claimed “Nearly one-third of Native American genes come from west Eurasian people linked to the Middle East and Europe, rather than entirely from entirely from East Asians as previously thought” according to a newly sequenced genome.” https://www.nationalgeographic.com/scie ... a-genetics

If it wasn’t for this popular science article, Raghaven’s paper would have passed unnoticed by Mormon apologists. Perego knows full well the research is irrelevant to the Book of Mormon because the ancient Siberian remains predate the Book of Mormon by about 18,000 years. But he included it because of its historical apologetic value.

I also wouldn’t say that the Book of Mormon requires Lehi to have a uniquely identifiable “Jewish” genetic signature. The text gives Lehi an Israelite ancestry, but ancient Israelites were populations, not genetically uniform categories, and genealogy and genetic inheritance aren’t interchangeable. After thousands of years, identifying the DNA of one particular Israelite family would be an extraordinarily difficult proposition.

There are no “orphan” mitochondrial DNA lineages among Native Americans that can be connected up to Lehi. They are either Asian, African or European. If Lehi had some weird non-Jewish DNA, it hasn't been found yet.

Regardless, the mitochondrial, Y-chromosome and autosomal DNA of Jewish populations are well characterised and they are easily distinguished from Asian DNA. Clear links can be seen between modern and ancient Jewish populations.

Using the extraordinary power of autosomal DNA, Scientists have detected Jewish DNA throughout South and Central America. But they dated the arrival of this DNA to exactly the same time that Spanish DNA arrived. The Jewish DNA was derived from Converso Jews living on the Iberian Peninsula. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30568240/

The narrower historical model defended by many LDS scholars makes a different claim: that a relatively small Near Eastern population could have entered an already populated hemisphere and eventually left little or no clearly identifiable genetic signal. That proposition shouldn’t be confused with positive genetic evidence for the Book of Mormon. It is an argument about what the existing genetic evidence can and cannot exclude.

I’ve written a pile of posts in response to the limited or vanishing geography models that a few scholars have espoused. I’ve provided some links below. I’m not interested in rehashing them here.

The idea that THREE Middle Eastern groups (Jaredites, Mulekites and Lehites) travelled to the Americas, each established large civilisations, and then their DNA vanished (THREE times), is utterly preposterous. Claims that the Book of Mormon mentions others in the New World are apologetic nonsense. I've read the Book of Mormon about a dozen times. I know what it says.

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