Via Dienekes I found this important new paper on Finnish genetics, Regional differences among the Finns: A Y-chromosomal perspective. This is a meaty paper, so I put it up in the GNXP forum files (“finnY”). Here is the abstract:

Twenty-two Y-chromosomal markers, consisting of fourteen biallelic markers…eight STRs…were analyzed in 536 unrelated Finnish males from eastern and western subpopulations of Finland…These results suggest that the western and eastern parts of the country have been subject to partly different population histories, which is also supported by earlier archaeological, historical and genetic data. It seems probable that early migrations from Finno-Ugric sources affected the whole country, whereas subsequent migrations from Scandinavia had an impact mainly on the western parts of the country. The contacts between Finland and neighboring Finno-Ugric, Scandinavian and Baltic regions are evident. However, there is no support for recent migrations from Siberia and Central Europe.

Points of note.

1) mtDNA and Y lineages often give different results. As the paper emphasizes this may be because of different population histories (e.g., Mestizos tend to exhibit Western European Y chromsomal profiles and Amerindian mtDNA because of their ethnogenesis), or, it may be because of sociological dynamics (patrilocality tends homogenize mtDNA distributions while fostering local Y substructure). Other factors like selective sweeps on mtDNA could also result in a difference.

2) There is a east to west gradient in markers. This shouldn’t surprise too much. About 10% of the variation was accounted for by this population vs. population difference (80% was intragroup, while 10% was between groups within the subpopulation).

3) I’ve noted before that R1b, which is modal in much of western Europe, is rather rare in Finland (and is found in moderate frequencies in Sweden). Also, M17, which is associated with Slavs in a European context, is also found at moderate levels in Finland (M17 in England seems to be associated with settlement in the Danelaw by Norwegians and Danes).

4) I am a bit confused as to whether these data included Finns of Swedish ethnicity.

5) The authors note that they do detect the signature of migrations to areas where there is recent attested resettlement by Finns from a particular locale.

6) The authors reiterate findings that the Finnish Y lineages show no evidence of some found at high frequencies in Siberian groups which also carry the common Finno-Ugric Tat C marker. In other words, we can probably eliminate the possibility of a recent admixture event with a Siberian group to explain the peculiarities of the Finnish Y chromosomal profile (either the Siberians received Tat C from Finland, or, I think more likely there are particular similarities amongst the circumpolar peoples of Eurasia which have a deep time depth before their later diversification and admixture).

7) The nonrecombinant portion of the Y chromosome has a lot more sequence to analyze than the mtDNA. This gives researchers more information to work with, but, my understanding is that the molecular clock is far less precisely calibrated than on the mtDNA, so the time frame tends to be sketchier.

Overall, this paper reinforces the idea that Finns are distinct from the peoples of Western Europe, seeing as they have little evidence of R1b, but that they share considerable continuity with other Scandinavians, as well as peoples to the East (Slavs). One issue that I think needs to be addressed is that the mental model people have in regards to the genesis of the Finns is often of a group of Siberian tribes hurtling through “Slav space” and settling amongst a bunch of Scandinavians and slowly admixing. I think it is easy for people to imagine “clumps” of populations in a larger distinct matrix, and then model the mixture of clumps resulting in the peoples we see around us. I suspect that the reality is that many of the genetic gradients are the result of more prosaic deme-to-deme mate exchange and movement over time. Large migrations might have played a role, but the introgression of M17 into Finland (if it wasn’t indigenous to Finland in the first place) need not be explained by a few movements of Slavic tribes, rather, it might have been due to the long term residence of Slavs along the southern edge of the Finnish world and the inevitable bleeding over of marriage networks.

In any case, the paper has a lot of historical context and conjecture, and I’m curious what some of the Finnish readers think about those points.

Purely out of sociological interest, here is a picture of Britney’s crack. (That got your attention, didn’t it?)

You may not be interested in Big Pharma, but Big Pharma is interested in you.

PLoS Medicine has an issue on the pharmaceutical industry’s disease mongering. I liked this article on serotonin & depression, namely the disconnect between the muddy consensus within neuroscience (it may or may not be somehow involved) and the boastful direct-to-consumer advertisements (if you’re depressed, you’ve probably got low levels of stuff we’re happy to sell you). Given how little we understand about the brain compared to other organs; given how little we understand of the long-term effects of brain drugs; and given that we have recent evidence that — prepare to be shocked — Big Pharma honchos will try to keep harmful side-effects under wraps lest their profits suffer; I’d say it’s a good bet to stay away from the stuff.

That raises the question: should we keep others from using such things as well? It’s their body and their money, correct? Yes, but under the present circumstances, a good case could be made against their use — namely, that they wouldn’t have seen a doctor and asked for medicine had not the PR & advertising industries knowingly mislead them as to the status and/or cause of their condition. Again, this is crucial if they’re being mislead as to the long-term consequences, which are potentially great when we’re talking about drugs that affect an organ we understand poorly. Since it’s easier to screw up a complex system than to improve it, we should adopt that as the null hypothesis for brain drugs, which only longitudinal studies could disconfirm.

Now, if the disease were life-threatening, like liver failure, you could argue that if the patient consents, dire measures could be taken — after all, they face imminent death in any event, and basic work (where doctors will break some eggs) is needed in order to fine-tune the art of liver transplants before they become safe. In such cases, maybe. But anxiety and depression, let alone the conditions treated by “lifestyle drugs” such as Viagra, are not in the same league as liver failure. Moreover, you could make a similar argument to one for closing up most plastic surgery offices: that is, they represent a failure of the market to allocate resources where they’re needed. The smartest, most highly motivated doctors should be where health is lowest (mainly the elderly and poor), not making Orange County housewives look like space aliens with shotput boobs.

On the other end of the spectrum in the PLoS issue, there’s this review of Female Sexual Dysfunction from a feminist / social constructionist p-o-v. Typical of critiques against “reductionist” approaches, it gets some of it right but for the wrong reasons. She’s right that FSD is mostly made-up by Big Pharma and that men & women are different, though not due to social forces but to different biology. If natural selection allowed the average female to have a sexual appetite equal to that of the average male — say bye-bye to the advantage of female choice. Ditto for reliability of orgasm — if it were as simple as the male version, any old bum could win her over provided his body was warm.

In any case, what do the readers think the best strategy is for keeping Big Pharma on a tight leash? Clearly, it’s not rationally arguing the issue with them, as they already understand the shortcomings but don’t care. So, some sort of force or threat of force is needed — not physical, obviously. I should clarify: what can we do? Surely the FDA could enact harsh measures, but they’ve proven to be wimps.

There’s a hilarious, and often thoughtful, comment thread over at The American Scene. Ross Douthat is a Roman Catholic, and many of his readers are serious intellectual Christians. So, I am always interested when they object to the bizarre and obviously anthropogenic hocus-pocus of Mormonism. Some snips of interest:

dude, mormans are weird. let’s just face it. the whole thing makes me giggle when I talk about it. golden tablets . . . the whole thing is goofy-times.
[later]
Because the theology is “weird,” and the history is even weirder. Captain Moroni? Golden tablets? Steve Young gets his own universe? I mean . . . this just doesn’t sound serious.
I can’t get past “Moroni.” It just sounds like a name that a 19th Century quack would invent.

Response:

Weirder than, say, believing that a man who died two thousand years ago can be eaten in convenient wafer form as a requirement to getting into heaven?

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There’s a hilarious, and often thoughtful, comment thread over at The American Scene. Ross Douthat is a Roman Catholic, and many of his readers are serious intellectual Christians. So, I am always interested when they object to the bizarre and obviously anthropogenic hocus-pocus of Mormonism. Some snips of interest:

dude, mormans are weird. let’s just face it. the whole thing makes me giggle when I talk about it. golden tablets . . . the whole thing is goofy-times.

[later]
Because the theology is “weird,” and the history is even weirder. Captain Moroni? Golden tablets? Steve Young gets his own universe? I mean . . . this just doesn’t sound serious.

I can’t get past “Moroni.” It just sounds like a name that a 19th Century quack would invent.

Response:

Weirder than, say, believing that a man who died two thousand years ago can be eaten in convenient wafer form as a requirement to getting into heaven?

Hear, hear! Now, Michael Brendan Dougherty:

Also, I don’t think Mormons will take well to scrutiny about their history – putting aside polygamy and the other aspects of Mormon faith that have been abrogated by continuing revelation (like excluding blacks from the major priesthood) – early Mormon rhetoric is deeply rooted in 19th century Amerian Anti-Catholicism, there are of course continuing controversies over the LDS baptizing the dead – particularly holocaust victims. Let’s also not forget the very bizzare (most Christians would say gross) interpretations about the conception of Christ.

I may be willing to vote for a Mormon – but I would have to think about it. To be honest, I trust better the sense of atheists than I do someone who would hold to such a mish-mash of doctrines as Mormonism.

There you have it!

Please note a point of irony, to some extent Mormon theology is materialistic. God is a being of flesh and bone, constrained by logic and the laws of the universe. Mormons need to make less recourse to bizarre semantic philosophical circumlocutions because their idea of God stays pretty close to our “cognitive machine code.” This is the problem though, the Mormon god seems more like science fiction than supernaturalism because he is a creature of this universe more than a creator of the universe.

Related: One Nation Under Gods.

Is washed up 80s TV star Jan-Michael Vincent a Finnish adoptee? Note the similarity in appearance to “famous” Finn, Esa-Pekka Salonen. Suspiciously they both have hyphenated first names, and likely have had “grandfathers” who were made into cuckolds by Chinese sailors. Additionally, Vincent is a known drunk, a vice that Finns are all too familiar with. Raised by non-Suomi parents Vincent’s genotype was subject to a different norm of reaction than might be have been the case in Finland. With its suffocatingly introverted and maladjusted culture Vincent might have flourished as a withdrawn curiosity. As it is, in the glamor seeking non-Suomi cultural milieu of the United States he withered under a harsh glare which evolution in the cool northern climes did not prepare him for….

The lion roars…by the way, in case anyone cared, my evil black cat is only up to three birds this spring. I think the worst is over.
Update: More cat below the fold.

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Over at John Hawks, Has the dam broken on mtDNA selection?. I don’t know if this matters that much scientifically since non-human phylogeography tends to be more cautious than the field of historical human population genetics, but it matters a lot for the public which has been habituated to a steady stream of mitochondrial data being interpreted by popularizers and the press since African Eve.

I was talking to Greg Cochran a few months ago, and we were talking about memory. Greg has described himself as having a “pack rat mind.” I’m somewhat similar, all sorts of obscurities lurk back there, to show up periodically in the weirdest ways. But, I don’t have a photographic memory, nothing close. People have asked me before if I have a photographic memory because I tend to remember details pretty well (I did weird things as a kid like memorize all the capitals in the world), but of course I knew very well my memory wasn’t photographic. I’ve always wondered where the people with the photographic memory were, I’d have liked to meet them (I’d read about photographic memories in fiction of course). Anyway, this article in Slate offers a lot of evidence (or highlights the lack of evidence) that we should be skeptical about the idea of perfect photographic memories, or, at least that they are very very rare (as in 1 in millions). Also, reading Daniel Schacter’s books makes me really wary of thinking of memory as a unitary cognitive process which we understand really well on a reflective level. Finally, those with a broad historical perspective will probably find the method of the loci of interest.

There is a preprint in the website of The American Journal of Human Genetics titled “Genetic variation in the CCL18 – CCL3 – CCL4 chemokine gene cluster influences HIV-1 transmission and AIDS disease progression.” The title is a mouthful, but the short of it is what we’ve known for a long time, that human genetic variatian responds differently to HIV infection (or the risk of infection). This is surely going to be important, not because the science is a priori killer, but because AIDS is a big public policy issue. Back in the 1990s some people were talking about HIV resulting in the extinction of the human race (OK, I’m mostly talking about my teachers), but real knowledge of evolution would have implied that this is ridiculous. Plagues and pandemics come and go, but the species always bounces back, and we are a numerous large mammal so operational immunity is almost certainly going to be found amongst a small minority (as it has been).
In any case, since the paper is a preprint there isn’t an abstract. Rather, the major points seem to be this: some SNPs are correlated with faster disease progression, and Europeans are also characterized by lower polymorphsim and greater linkage disequilibrium than African Americans on the region of the genome of interest. The linkage disequilibrium manifests in “haplotype blocks” that may be the product of recent powerful selection on loci around which recombination has not had time to break apart the associations generated by the hitch-hiking effect.