Comments on: To Tell an Englishman From an Irishman, Look at Their Genes

By: Neil

Neil — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 07:11:31 +0000

Actually as a scot living in London who has lived in Ireland for over 10 years I can easily tell an englishman from an irishman or a scot or even a welsh person with a fair degree of accuracy. They do look quite different.

By: @pconry

@pconry — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 22:34:59 +0000

@pconry:

So your saying that they made all this up? What about the study they conducted? Are you just going to ignore it?

I don’t get how you can just say that you can’t tell them apart without any statements to back it up.

By: pconroy

pconroy — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:35:28 +0000

Again, you did NOT “get it right” – these tests cannot easily distinguish the Irish from the English – the statement you referenced from the study, does NOT back up your inference.

You are prematurely jumping to unwarranted conclusions.

By: Eliza Strickland

Eliza Strickland — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 18:20:04 +0000

@pconroy:

According to the Nature study, I got it right. That’s what’s so remarkable about this study– even though there aren’t major genetic variations between the Irish and the English, researchers were able to distinguish between these populations based on the accumulation of tiny differences.

From the journal article: “The data reveal structure [i.e. identifiable differences] even among French-, German- and Italian-speaking groups within Switzerland, and between Ireland and the United Kingdom.”

By: pconroy

pconroy — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:58:00 +0000

You say:
researchers can determine with surprising accuracy where on the continent each person comes from, easily distinguishing the Irish from the English, for example.

This statement is incorrect. The Irish and English almost completely overlap, so no, you could not tell an Irish person from an English person with this test. Similarly you could not tell a Portuguese person from a Spanish person, or Scottish from Dutch and so on.