CronoDAS comments on Differential reproduction for men and women. - Less Wrong

5 Post author: NancyLebovitz 02 April 2013 11:48AM

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Comment author: CronoDAS 02 April 2013 07:41:08PM 8 points [-]

I've actually read more details about this. Apparently, it comes from studies of Y-chromosome DNA and mitochondrial DNA that indicate that the female common ancestor of all living humans is a lot older than the male common ancestor of all living humans. However, this past year, researchers discovered a man with a Y-chromosome that threw off the timeline drastically - which throws the conclusion of sex-based differential reproduction into question.

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 02 April 2013 09:29:27PM 5 points [-]

Yes, the common ancestor is sensitive to single observations. It is idiotic to base conclusions on such non-robust statistics, and indeed, Wilder et al do not.