Thread by @tjoseph0010

If you are going to comment on matters of Science, read the research papers. It may be a tad difficult, but possible. Don't go by half-baked media reports

It may be unfair to blame @AshaRangappa_ for her conclusions based on a 'news report'. How would she know that the report blatantly contradicts the studies it is reporting on, unless she reads the studies? So here they are:
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
scholar.harvard.edu/files/vagheesh…

If you want to know how this - and other - 'news reports' directly contradict the studies, you can read the studies linked above yourself, or read this article of mine, with direct quotations from the two studies:
thehindu.com/society/histor…

Or you could listen to this interview with V. Narasimhan, lead author of ‘The Formation of Human Populations in South & Central Asia,’ written by 117 scientists. Note the map showing the migrations & the spread of Indo-European languages around the world
podcastaddict.com/?id=80871393

Or you could read this interview with Prof. David Reich, well-known population geneticist and author of ‘Who We Are and How We Got Here’, on the two studies that he co-directed and what they mean for South Asian prehistory:
economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/science/s…

So how did 'The Week' and many other apparently 'credible' news sources fall for this blatant twisting of the research reports? The answer lies in journalistic incompetence or jounalistic deceit, or a combination of the two, depending on which publication we are speaking of.

But let's be magnanimous and just say that they were just incompetent, and were led astray by the sources they talked to, and they didn't have either the competence or the good sense to read the research papers themselves - or even just their summaries!!

The deceit lies in suggesting that the 'lack of Steppe ancestry' in the Harappan genome is proof that there was no 'Arya' migration. This is beyond ridiculous, because it was always known that the 'Arya' migration POST-DATES the Harappan Civilization!

In other words, it was always known that there were no 'Arya' in the Harappan Civilization. The lack of Steppe ancestry in Harappa - unlike its robust presence in the Indian population today - is, therefore, STRONG evidence that the 'Arya' migration occurred later.

Here is the full Twitter thread I did on the two genetic stuies, on the day they appeared last year:

Those who are wondering why some people go to all this trouble to distort scientific findings may find this video useful:

They may also find this piece interesting:
indianexpress.com/article/opinio…