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

[Physics Guy]

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?

When Simon says he did not say that, I think he is answering the question in your second sentence, not denying that he wrote the first part in which he called Perego's statements false. I admit that the "did not" tense is confusing; matching the present tense of your question with "I am not saying that" might have made it clearer. In his same response, though, immediately following "I did not say that", Simon went on to acknowledge that distant ancestors do drop out of our DNA. So for me this makes Simon's meaning clear.

Simon's beef with Perego seems to me to be not that Perego says that DNA loss happens when it doesn't, because it does, but that Perego significantly exaggerates how fast the ancestors drop out. "It is increasingly likely around 6+ generations back that you have no DNA ... from many ... ancestors" is kind of vague, but for me it still takes a lot of weaseling to reconcile it with the fact that at 6 generations you are likely to have DNA from all of your ancestors, and from nearly half of them at ten generations. That's not what I think a reasonable person would infer from Perego's statement.

And I don't think this is just an academic quibble over a possible careless slip on Perego's part. Perego's statements were made in works that were precisely about the relationship between the Book of Mormon and DNA evidence, and the implications for the Book of Mormon of finding no Middle Eastern DNA in Native Americans now, when the Book of Mormon portrays large Lamanite populations in the Americas after AD 400, depend critically on just how many generations it takes for DNA to be lost. At least by my estimate, the available time span between the end of the Book of Mormon and the present day is only about eight to ten generations. So for the Book of Mormon to dodge the DNA bullet, it seems to me that DNA has to fade out of a genome at least as fast as Perego claims it does. Apparently it doesn't actually fade out nearly that fast.

Does this mean that Perego has to be lying? Well, he's defending the Book of Mormon against DNA evidence, and I reckon his case is like contesting a speeding ticket for going seventy in a fifty zone by saying you were only going forty-plus. If you weren't specifically trying to beat a ticket for going over fifty, then maybe describing seventy as "forty-plus" could be let slide as mere excessive vagueness, but in the context of contesting a ticket for exceeding fifty, I think we have to be stricter than that. If the truth is that you were doing seventy, calling it "just forty-plus" counts as lying, even if you weren't doing ninety.

In this case I think that the context also makes it hard for Perego to plead innocent ignorance rather than deliberate deception. Suppose I told you that I am a professor of physics, and I really know this stuff, and the Sun is definitely 10% ionized iron. In fact this is nowhere near true. If I had only said, "I like reading about stars on the internet and guess what ...", then my statement could indeed have been an innocent error, but by prefacing it as I did, with a claim to authority, I wasn't just saying that the Sun is 10% iron: I was saying that I had competently verified that it is 10% iron. Even if at the time I did kind of figure that the Sun contained so much iron, I couldn't have properly verified it, because it just isn't true—and I would have had to know at the time that I hadn't properly verified it. So my statement would have been an outright lie, because of its claim to authority, even if it could otherwise have been an innocent error.

I don't want to put words in Simon's mouth. This is just how I read his posts.

[I Have Questions]

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?

When Simon says he did not say that, I think he is answering the question in your second sentence, not denying that he wrote the first part in which he called Perego's statements false. I admit that the "did not" tense is confusing; matching the present tense of your question with "I am not saying that" might have made it clearer. In his same response, though, immediately following "I did not say that", Simon went on to acknowledge that distant ancestors do drop out of our DNA. So for me this makes Simon's meaning clear.

Simon's beef with Perego seems to me to be not that Perego says that DNA loss happens when it doesn't, because it does, but that Perego significantly exaggerates how fast the ancestors drop out. "It is increasingly likely around 6+ generations back that you have no DNA ... from many ... ancestors" is kind of vague, but for me it still takes a lot of weaseling to reconcile it with the fact that at 6 generations you are likely to have DNA from all of your ancestors, and from nearly half of them at ten generations. That's not what I think a reasonable person would infer from Perego's statement.

Simon calls 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.” false. It isn’t false. The complete loss of all DNA from some ancestors does increase the further you look back from 7th generation ancestors onwards. One might quibble that Perego should have used “some” instead of “many” but that quibble doesn’t make the statement “false”.

[Physics Guy]

This is the kind of thing I meant by "weaseling". "Increasingly likely" can indeed be technically true even if the likelihood starts very low and increases very slowly. The most natural interpretation of Perego's statement, as by a non-expert reading a statement from an expert, is that DNA dies out quite fast starting from six generations back, especially when the context of all of this is an argument that there could have been millions of Lamanites in the Americas around 500 AD, and yet all their DNA has been lost in the intervening 1500 years.

A rate of DNA loss that was too low for anyone to make that argument wouldn't be worth mentioning at all in either of Perego's cited publications, so the presumption that any non-expert reader has to make is that "increasingly likely" means "fast enough increasingly likely to have wiped out all that Lamanite DNA"—or else why would an expert like Perego have brought up DNA loss in a defense of the Book of Mormon?

If I say something as an expert that can be defended as technically true, but I say it in an argument that only works if it is interpreted in a way that is not true, and I am expert enough to know this, then I'd call that a lie.

[drumdude]

context of all of this is an argument that there could have been millions of Lamanites in the Americas around 500 AD, and yet all their DNA has been lost in the intervening 1500 years.

The limited geography theory says all of the Book of Mormon took place in a single house. It’s kind of like an old stage play where the whole thing takes place in one room.

That easily solves the problem. The 2-3 people in the Book of Mormon had their DNA swallowed up by the 100 million pre-existing inhabitants of the Americas.

[I Have Questions]

This is the kind of thing I meant by "weaseling". "Increasingly likely" can indeed be technically true even if the likelihood starts very low and increases very slowly. The most natural interpretation of Perego's statement, as by a non-expert reading a statement from an expert, is that DNA dies out quite fast starting from six generations back, especially when the context of all of this is an argument that there could have been millions of Lamanites in the Americas around 500 AD, and yet all their DNA has been lost in the intervening 1500 years.

A rate of DNA loss that was too low for anyone to make that argument wouldn't be worth mentioning at all in either of Perego's cited publications, so the presumption that any non-expert reader has to make is that "increasingly likely" means "fast enough increasingly likely to have wiped out all that Lamanite DNA"—or else why would an expert like Perego have brought up DNA loss in a defense of the Book of Mormon?

If I say something as an expert that can be defended as technically true, but I say it in an argument that only works if it is interpreted in a way that is not true, and I am expert enough to know this, then I'd call that a lie.

I agree, it’s mealy mouthed. Like saying “she was in her 15th year” to refer to a 14 year old. But it’s not “false”. Saying something is deliberately vague so as to allow wriggle room, is different to one professional calling a fellow professional a liar.

[Gabriel]

If I say something as an expert that can be defended as technically true, but I say it in an argument that only works if it is interpreted in a way that is not true, and I am expert enough to know this, then I'd call that a lie.

I agree, it’s mealy mouthed. Like saying “she was in her 15th year” to refer to a 14 year old. But it’s not “false”. Saying something is deliberately vague so as to allow wriggle room, is different to one professional calling a fellow professional a liar.

I found this on Reddit. It's a post from 8 years ago.

Hinckley fired BYU Prof. Scott Woodward over his Native American DNA research

tl;dr

In 2003 President Gordon B. Hinckley personally intervened to fire BYU Professor Scott R. Woodward and move his research group off campus to the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation (SMGF) in Salt Lake City. By that time Woodward had DNA tested ~6000 Native Americans and determined >98% of their DNA was derived from Asia. Ugo Perego, who worked in Scott’s team, blames me (Simon Southerton) for Scott’s ousting; however, Perego's defamatory accusations against me have confirmed President Hinckley’s actions were motivated by Scott’s DNA research on Native Americans.

A TRUE STORY

In August of 1998 I asked to be released as Bishop of the Enoggera Ward in Brisbane Australia after discovering DNA research that revealed Native Americans did not have Hebrew ancestors. In an attempt to resolve my questions Area leaders put me in touch with Scott Woodward, who at the time was Professor of Microbiology at BYU. Scott and I corresponded for a few weeks and at one point were trying to identify a suitable apostle we could discuss the DNA research with. Interestingly, Russell M. Nelson was the first apostle to be ruled out by Scott, presumably because of his ignorant comments about evolution.

Area Leaders asked me for a copy of my email correspondence with Scott. Since I was still an active and respectful member I shared copies of my brief correspondence with Scott Woodward, which had been cordial, and then thought nothing more about it until Perego opened his mouth.

UGO PEREGO OUTS THE PROPHET

On a FAIR blog created in 2009 Ugo Perego, who worked with Woodward at the SMGF (now closed), made the following outrageous and 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.”

You can read the full extent of Perego’s attack on me on the FAIR site. His claims are largely false or misleading.

https://www.fairmormon.org/blog/2009/02 ... -lamanites

What possible motive could I have had to hurt Scott? I hardly knew him. I didn’t alter a word in Scott’s emails so it must have been something Scott wrote that caused his troubles. In amongst Scott’s lengthy molecular apologetics, he admitted he had found it difficult to talk to people about the DNA work but after a few years of struggling he had reconciled most of the issues it raised. Scott also revealed his team had tested over 6,000 Peruvian Native Americans and at least 98% of their mitochondrial DNA lineages were Asian. The results of this research remain unpublished to this day.

Scott’s failure to detect Lamanite DNA among so many Peruvians would have alarmed the Brethren reading his emails. Scott claims he wasn’t looking for Lamanite DNA, but this is very hard to believe. At the time Woodward did his research most ordinary Mormons believed the hemispheric geography and Lehi arrived in the “land southward” on the coast of Chile or Peru. There can be little doubt that Woodward’s DNA research on native Peruvians, like his earlier search for dinosaur DNA, was a hunt for lost Lamanites. How else could he justify the scale of the work he had done. At the time only 2000 Native American tests had been published. Even by todays standards, 6000 people tested represents a massive amount of work.

My email correspondence probably reached senior leaders of the church in 1999. By 2001 Scott Woodward had met one on one with President Hinckley. Scott admitted this to his BYU ward when he was released as bishop. By 2003 Scott Woodward was fired from his full professorship and his research relocated to SMGF in Salt Lake City. All ties with BYU were cut. At the time they gave two reasons for their departure from BYU. One was they had run out of space at BYU and the other was concerns expressed by non-Mormons that there may be a religious agenda to their work. By this time Woodward’s research was focused on using DNA to trace family history.

But why was it necessary to fire Woodward? We know from staff in his BYU department that Scott was deeply upset about losing his professorship. Was it because he wasn’t publishing enough? Was it because of his dinosaur DNA research that was debunked? We wouldn’t have known until Ugo Perego’s slanderous and illuminating FAIR post. Clearly Woodward blames the Downunder apostate for the loss of his academic position. But its obvious who caused his pain. President Hinckley didn’t want his very own university uncovering evidence that challenged the religion's keystone scripture. Hinckley wasn’t content with just moving the research off campus to SMGF where Scott could have remained tied as an adjunct or visiting professor. He wanted all ties to be cut and the problem erased. So he arranged for Scott Woodward to be fired.

Thanks must go to Ugo Perego for revealing the behind the scenes actions of this “prophet”. By blaming me, Ugo has directly linked Hinckley’s actions to Scott’s Native American DNA research.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comme ... _over_his/

[huckelberry]

context of all of this is an argument that there could have been millions of Lamanites in the Americas around 500 AD, and yet all their DNA has been lost in the intervening 1500 years.

The limited geography theory says all of the Book of Mormon took place in a single house. It’s kind of like an old stage play where the whole thing takes place in one room.

That easily solves the problem. The 2-3 people in the Book of Mormon had their DNA swallowed up by the 100 million pre-existing inhabitants of the Americas.

Perhaps to repeat the obvious. An individual may have lost DNA markers of a particular individual so many generations back but not of the community. DNA is replaced from community having children together not just invented new.

Drumdude, your exaggeration shows through the basic problem.

[Marcus]

When Simon says he did not say that, I think he is answering the question in your second sentence, not denying that he wrote the first part in which he called Perego's statements false. I admit that the "did not" tense is confusing; matching the present tense of your question with "I am not saying that" might have made it clearer. In his same response, though, immediately following "I did not say that", Simon went on to acknowledge that distant ancestors do drop out of our DNA. So for me this makes Simon's meaning clear.

Simon's beef with Perego seems to me to be not that Perego says that DNA loss happens when it doesn't, because it does, but that Perego significantly exaggerates how fast the ancestors drop out. "It is increasingly likely around 6+ generations back that you have no DNA ... from many ... ancestors" is kind of vague, but for me it still takes a lot of weaseling to reconcile it with the fact that at 6 generations you are likely to have DNA from all of your ancestors, and from nearly half of them at ten generations. That's not what I think a reasonable person would infer from Perego's statement.

Simon calls 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.” false. It isn’t false. The complete loss of all DNA from some ancestors does increase the further you look back from 7th generation ancestors onwards. One might quibble that Perego should have used “some” instead of “many” but that quibble doesn’t make the statement “false”.

No, as a statistician, I disagree. "Some" has a significantly different meaning than "many," in this context from a geneticist, and using it so loosely is not honest.

Taking what's been agreed upon; we already know we have 100% of our 64 ancestors represented in gen 6, and about 50% in gen 10 (~500/1024).

Using simple extrapolation, going from 100% to 50% in 4 generations would mean a loss of 12.5% each generation.

So, 7th generation: loss of 12.5% to 87.5% represented. That loss is not "many" compared to what's retained.

8th gen: loss of 25%, 75% retained. That loss is definitely "some" but stll not "many."

9th gen: loss of 37.5%, 62.5% retained. Still "some" but not "many" unless you add that "many more" were retained.

10th gen: loss of 50%, 50% retained.

Finally, in the 10th generation I might agree "many" ancestors' inputs may have been lost, but only in the context of saying "and many" were retained.

So it's not a quibble, it's a matter of specificity and accuracy one can expect from a geneticist. Especially since "quibbles" like this are time-honored ways for Mormons to ease what the rest of the world considers a lie into their research.


Eta:

If I say something as an expert that can be defended as technically true, but I say it in an argument that only works if it is interpreted in a way that is not true, and I am expert enough to know this, then I'd call that a lie.

Couldn't agree more.

[I Have Questions]

Simon calls 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.” false. It isn’t false. The complete loss of all DNA from some ancestors does increase the further you look back from 7th generation ancestors onwards. One might quibble that Perego should have used “some” instead of “many” but that quibble doesn’t make the statement “false”.

No, as a statistician, I disagree. "Some" has a significantly different meaning than "many," in this context from a geneticist, and using it so loosely is not honest.

Taking what's been agreed upon; we already know we have 100% of our 64 ancestors represented in gen 6, and about 50% in gen 10 (~500/1024).

Using simple extrapolation, going from 100% to 50% in 4 generations would mean a loss of 12.5% each generation.

So, 7th generation: loss of 12.5% to 87.5% represented. That loss is not "many" compared to what's retained.

8th gen: loss of 25%, 75% retained. That loss is definitely "some" but stll not "many."

9th gen: loss of 37.5%, 62.5% retained. Still "some" but not "many" unless you add that "many more" were retained.

10th gen: loss of 50%, 50% retained.

Finally, in the 10th generation I might agree "many" ancestors' inputs may have been lost, but only in the context of saying "and many" were retained.

So it's not a quibble, it's a matter of specificity and accuracy one can expect from a geneticist. Especially since "quibbles" like this are time-honored ways for Mormons to ease what the rest of the world considers a lie into their research.

Eta:

If I say something as an expert that can be defended as technically true, but I say it in an argument that only works if it is interpreted in a way that is not true, and I am expert enough to know this, then I'd call that a lie.

Couldn't agree more.

I’ll have a final stab at defending Perego’s statement. When he says “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.” he is correct that the amount of ancestors DNA dropping out of your genome does increase from zero to “many” as you track back from 7 generations onwards. It may not be “many” at 7 generations but it becomes an increasingly larger proportion with each generation until it reaches the threshold of “many” (whatever proportion is designated by Perego as “many”).

A Dr Antonio Tonneli reviewed the book in which Perego makes that claim, and said “ Although I am not in a position to vouch for the historical and religious aspects presented in this volume, I consider the principles of population genetics and the scientific approach described in this volume by Dr. Ugo Perego and Dr. John Butler as carefully outlined and a useful resource for anyone interested in learning more about ancient expansion and migratory events that contributed to the first peopling of the Americas.”

Has any other geneticist taken issue with Perego’s statement?

It’s worth noting that Perego was writing for a layman, Mormon audience, not presenting a paper to a geneticist convention. Of course he will dumb it down. His main point that Lamanite DNA might have disappeared from today’s population on the basis that 100% of some ancestors DNA drops out of today’s populations DNA is accurate. It is also accurate, within that context, to say that the number of ancestors whose DNA drops out of your own record increases the further back you look. 10 ancestors is, what, a 250 year timespan? Lamanite ancestors would be what 1,500 years ago. Looking over that timespan, many of your ancestors DNA traces would be completely missing. (I think this paragraph is arguably to strongest argument in defence of Perego’s statement).

[I Have Questions]

During the last 70 years the historicity of the Book of Mormon has come under sustained attack because of advances in science. Mormon apologists, John Sorenson and Ugo Perego, have played a major role in defending the book in the face of this onslaught. But only one of them has wilfully lied in their apologetics.

John Sorenson was the leading defender of the Book of Mormon for half a century. He was also Professor of Anthropology at BYU for many years. But Sorenson was an academic nobody in the anthropology community outside of BYU. His publication record in peer-reviewed academic journal is virtually non-existent. Sorenson was first and foremost an apologist. He may not have been right, but he was consistent.

When DNA arrived, Ugo Perego became the leading apologetic authority on DNA and the Book of Mormon, and he was the principal author of the Church’s 2016 DNA essay. Unlike Sorenson, Ugo Perego has an impressive academic record. He has published over 30 scientific papers in the field of human population genetics, many in leading scientific journals. He is an authority on the ancestral origins of Native American mitochondrial DNA lineages.

But over the last 15 years I have noticed a disturbing trend in Perego’s apologetics. He says one thing for a scientific audience, and something completely different when he is writing for ordinary Mormons. Perego fully accepts humans first evolved in Africa 200,000 years ago and that Native Americans first entered the Americas over 20,000 years ago and are descended from Asians.[1] Clearly, Ugo Perego does not believe Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden in Missouri just 6,000 years ago, or that there was a global flood 4,500 years ago. But when Ugo is speaking to regular Mormons, especially in the DNA essay, he not only conceals these beliefs, he deliberately misleads.

Here are some examples of the duplicitous work of Perego.

1. Claimed Lehi’s mtDNA could be one of the five Native American founding lineages
In 2014 in the shoddy Interpreter magazine, Ugo Perego, claimed “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.”[2]
By the time this claim was made, Perego knew for a fact that all 5 mitochondrial DNA lineages (A, B, C, D and X) found in Native Americans had been in the Americas for close to 20,000 years. Perego’s own research from as early as 2009 helped demonstrate that fact.[3] There are no other prominent lineages. You simply cannot reconcile his scientific and apologetic writing. He knew the claim he was making in Interpreter was false.

2. Fuelled the false X lineage lies of Rodney Meldrum
Most Mormons have heard the false X lineage claims that Rodney Meldrum makes. But few would be aware that Ugo Perego’s own speculation about the origin of the X lineage once fanned the flames of these false claims. In a 2011 BYU publication[4] Perego went to great lengths to point out the absence of the X lineage in Asia and its presence among the Druze near Israel. He also claimed there was uncertainty about the accuracy of the molecular clock used to date mitochondrial DNA. These are now Rodney Meldrum’s main arguments for his spurious X lineage claims.

In 2009 Ugo Perego knew that the X lineage had been in the Americas for just as long as the A, B, C and D lineages (about 15-17,000 years). So why was Perego even hinting at the possibility the X lineage could possibly be evidence to support the Book of Mormon? Perego knew the presence of the X lineage predated the Book of Mormon by well over 10,000 years. He only publicly changed his tune after the X lineage was discovered in the 9,000-year-old remains of the Ancient One (Kennewick Man) in 2015.

3. Promoted idea that one third of Native American DNA came from Europe or West Asia.
In the Church’s DNA Essay, Perego wrote “as much as one-third of Native American DNA may have originated anciently in Europe or West Asia.” The claim is based on a 2013 discovery by Raghaven that one third of the DNA of a 24,000-year-old Siberian child originated in West Asia or Europe[5]. While Perego clarifies in the essay that this ancestry reflects migrations across Asia “millennia before the events described in the Book of Mormon”, most uneducated readers will assume this could be evidence for a Near Eastern contribution to Native American ancestry.

Perego knows the Raghaven paper makes perfect sense in the context of humans colonising Europe and West Asia over 40,000 years ago and then migrating into Asia 30,000 years ago. Perego knows perfectly well this paper is irrelevant to the ancestry of Book of Mormon people, so why even mention it? He includes the reference to prop up faith, even though he knows it provides no evidence for the Book of Mormon.

4. Suggests Lehi’s DNA may be Asian rather than Jewish
In the Church’s DNA Essay, Perego suggests that Lehi’s genetic lineage may be atypical of the Near East, thus hinting at the possibility that his DNA may in fact be Asian. This is utter nonsense. The canonized title page of the Book of Mormon says it was “Written to the Lamanites, who are a remnant of the house of Israel. The Book of Mormon text describes Lehi as Jewish, ‘a descendant of Manasseh, who was the son of Joseph who was sold into Egypt’ (Alma 10:3). Lehi’s DNA was undoubtedly Jewish.

5. Panders to Creationist views in the Church
In the Church’s DNA essay, Perego is deliberately vague about how long Native Americans have lived on the American continent. He says “Scientists theorize” the migration to America occurred “in an era that predated Book of Mormon accounts”. Perego knows many Mormons believe all people alive today are descended from the family of Noah who stepped off the ark after the universal Flood 4,500 years ago.

Yet, from his own research Perego knows humans have lived continuously on the Eurasian continent for at least 40,000 years and in the New World for about 20,000 years. He uses vague wording in the essay so as not to offend countless members who hold Creationist beliefs.

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.

7. Claims mitochondrial DNA is better than autosomal DNA for tracing deep human ancestry
In 2025 Perego claimed mitochondrial DNA is better suited for “making ‘long-distance’ associations into the deep levels of generational inheritance” because recombination “complicates attempts to trace genetic signals back through the generations because one parent’s signal gets merged with the other parent’s”.[9] No modern geneticists would agree with these assessments. He also asserts that natural selection and genetic drift (bottleneck and founder effects) can often lead to autosomal DNA signals being lost. However, mitochondrial DNA is far more susceptible to extinction due to these forces than autosomal DNA, largely because recombination allows autosomal DNA variants to spread much further within populations.[10]

Perego is plainly being dishonest with his Mormon audience. In a paper he coauthored with John Lindo in 2017 he has acknowledged the superiority of autosomal DNA in population genomic studies.[11] Mitochondrial DNA analysis had previously suggested significant population replacement or external gene flow in Pacific Northwest populations during the last 10,300 years. However, analysis of autosomal DNA from four ancient individuals revealed the population had been relatively stable over that period.

There are many examples of the extraordinary power of autosomal DNA research to shed new light on “deep levels of generational inheritance”. Whole genome studies have revealed our Neanderthal and Denisovan ancestry[12], traces of the DNA of Iberian Jews throughout Central and South America[13] and minute traces of Indigenous American (Zenu) DNA scattered across several Eastern Polynesian islands.[14]

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]

Given Ugo Perego’s track record of lying to protect the church, it is easy to see what really happened. The only person to blame for Scott’s removal from BYU was the prophet of the church. President Hinkley clearly didn’t want researchers at his university uncovering evidence against the Book of Mormon. So he personally intervened to close Scott’s research group and move it off campus into the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, an organisation funded by James Sorenson, a close friend of President Hinkley’s.

Conclusion
There is a very disturbing and consistent pattern in Ugo Perego’s work. He frequently says one thing in a scientific setting and the complete opposite in a Mormon setting. Perego is an apologetic chameleon. He has demonstrated over the last 15 years that he is prepared to sacrifice his scientific and personal integrity on the altar of Mormon apologetics. Ugo Perego is quite prepared to lie for the church.

Simon Southerton

References
[1] Ugo A. Perego, “The Book of Mormon and the Origin of Native Americans from a Maternally Inherited DNA Standpoint,” in No Weapon Shall Prosper: New Light on Sensitive Issues, ed. Robert L. Millet (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2011), 171–217. https://rsc.BYU.edu/no-weapon-shall-pro ... standpoint
[2] Ugo A. Perego and Jayne E. Ekins, “Is Decrypting the Genetic Legacy of America’s Indigenous
Populations Key to the Historicity of the Book of Mormon?” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 12 (2014): 237-279. https://scholarsarchive.BYU.edu/cgi/vie ... nterpreter
[3] Perego, Ugo A., Alessandro Achilli, Natalie Angerhofer, Matteo Accetturo, et al. 2009. "Distinctive Paleo-Indian Migration Routes from Beringia Marked by Two Rare mtDNA Haplogroups." Current Biology 19 (1): 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2008.11.058.
[4] Ugo A. Perego, “The Book of Mormon and the Origin of Native Americans from a Maternally Inherited DNA Standpoint,” in No Weapon Shall Prosper: New Light on Sensitive Issues, ed. Robert L. Millet (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2011), 171–217.
[5] Raghavan M, Skoglund P, Graf KE, Metspalu M, et al. Upper Palaeolithic Siberian genome reveals dual ancestry of Native Americans. Nature. 2014 Jan 2;505(7481):87-91. doi: 10.1038/nature12736. Epub 2013 Nov 20. PMID: 24256729; PMCID: PMC4105016.
[6] Perego, Ugo A. 2016. "Finding Lehi in America Through DNA Analysis." In A Reason for Faith: Navigating LDS Doctrine & Church History, edited by Laura Harris Hales, 173–89. Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book. https://rsc.BYU.edu/reason-faith/findin ... a-analysis
[7] Butler, John M., and Ugo A. Perego. 2025. Let's Talk about Misconceptions with DNA and the Book of Mormon. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company. https://www.deseretbook.com/product/605 ... ZzTrBXU48k
[8] Reich, David Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past Oxford University Press UK, 2018. https://heb.fas.harvard.edu/publication ... human-past. See also: https://gcbias.org/2013/11/11/how-does- ... over-time/
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[10] Hagelberg E, Hofreiter M, Keyser C. Introduction. Ancient DNA: the first three decades. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2015 Jan 19;370(1660):20130371. https://doi: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0371. PMID: 25487324; PMCID: PMC4275880.
[11] Lindo J, Achilli A, Perego United Airlines, Archer D, et al. Ancient individuals from the North American Northwest Coast reveal 10,000 years of regional genetic continuity. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2017 Apr 18;114(16):4093-4098. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1620410114. Epub 2017 Apr 4. PMID: 28377518; PMCID: PMC5402414.
[12] Nielsen R, Akey JM, Jakobsson M, Pritchard Jenn Kamp, Tishkoff S, Willerslev E. Tracing the peopling of the world through genomics. Nature. 2017 Jan 18;541(7637):302-310. doi: 10.1038/nature21347. PMID: 28102248; PMCID: PMC5772775.
[13] Chacón-Duque JC, Adhikari K, Fuentes-Guajardo M, Mendoza-Revilla Jet al. Latin Americans show wide-spread Converso ancestry and imprint of local Native ancestry on physical appearance. Nat Commun. 2018 Dec 19;9(1):5388. doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-07748-z. PMID: 30568240; PMCID: PMC6300600.
[14] Ioannidis AG, Blanco-Portillo J, Sandoval K, Hagelberg E, et al. Native American gene flow into Polynesia predating Easter Island settlement. Nature. 2020 Jul;583(7817):572-577. doi: 10.1038/s41586-020-2487-2. Epub 2020 Jul 8. PMID: 32641827; PMCID: PMC8939867.
[15] https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/blo ... -lamanites

Simon, what are you hoping to achieve by posting all this here?