David, You are right that FAMILIA is not like Science, Nature or the PNAS. We chose it however because its readership was mainly in Ireland and Scotland, because they have started to publish papers on Y-DNA analysis and how it works with pedigrees and genealogy, because it contained so many surnames of interest in that area of the world, and because of the great enthusiasm of the editor when we showed him preliminary drafts. Another reason was that the Journal of Genetic Genealogy had had a change of editors and it was taking a very long time to publish presumably because the editor was a working lawyer, and we were looking for an alternative. The three journals you mentioned appear to specialize in areas that did not coincide with the interface between genealogy and genetics. Just today we learned that our two papers on Gordons and the phylogenetic tree have been JoGG-approved, but we had already submitted the two to FAMILIA. And, of course, the JoGG, although an on-line journal, ! does referee their submittals using referees who are well-versed in both genetics and genealogy. The two seminal papers about the RCC technique have already appeared in a refereed JoGG edition, and references to those two papers have been communicated in the past to this list. Some of the list have commented favorably on the approach, but of course, when you are breaking new ground with new techniques, there will always be skeptics. None of the skeptics have pointed out any fundamental problems with this approach, and I find that many skeptics show that they don't understand the approach, have not thought deeply about the contents of the papers, or have not read the FAQs that address the questions that they have. I hope this explains our motivation in this new and fascinating area of genealogy and genetics. - Bye from Bill Howard On Oct 11, 2011, at 1:11 PM, DAVID MACLENNAN wrote: > Dear Bill, > I would like to comment on your statement "We are publishing our results > in a refereed journal, so it will be a part of our scientific legacy". The > journal FAMILIA published by the Ulster Historical Society is not a high > impact journal like Science, Nature or PNAS, where rigorous standards of > peer review are upheld. I may believe your RCC model and your assertions > that you can get an age of a mutation from a mix of haplotypes, some of > which have the mutation and some of which don't, when your results are > reproduced and published in a high profile journal. > > David