Here are links to a couple of the items that have been mentioned recently, which seem to me to be of higher quality than much of what I have seen. King et al, Identification of the remains of King Richard III, Nature Communications, 2014 (ncomms6631) http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/141202/ncomms6631/pdf/ncomms6631.pdf Larmuseau et al, Genetic genealogy reveals the true Y haplogroup of House of Bourbon contradicting recent identification of the presumed remains of two French Kings, European Journal of Human Genetics 22 (2014):681-7. http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v22/n5/pdf/ejhg2013211a.pdf I have recently read a number of items on the subject of using DNA to trace early Irish families. Not too surprisingly, there is a lot of junk out there on the subject, much of which seems to be jumping to premature conclusions based in part on the following three studies. Brian McEvoy & Daniel G. Bradley, Y-chromosomes and the extent of patrilineal ancestry in Irish surnames, Human Genetics 119 (2006): 212-9. Moore et al, A Y-Chromosome Signature of Hegemony in Gaelic Ireland, The American Journal of Human Genetics 78 (2006): 334-8. McEvoy et al, Genetic Investigation of the Patrilineal Kinship Structure of Early Medieval Ireland, American Journal of Physical Anthropology 136 (2008): 415-22. Although these papers are generally well done, my main concern about them is that the necessary caveats about the preliminary nature of this research were not stated clearly enough for non-experts to understand. Although the presence of Katherine Simms as a co-author on two of these papers is encouraging, it is seems likely to me that the usual audience of these papers can easily misinterpret the limitations of the historical evidence from the descriptions given in these papers. Appropriately, no claim is made in these papers that there is a DNA test for descent from the shadowy figure of Niall of the Nine Hostages (as has been too often claimed), but it is certainly an easy misinterpretation to make. The two best papers that I have seen on the subject of using DNA to trace the genealogy of early Irish families are the following papers by Bart Jaski and Catherine Swift. Bart Jaski, Medieval Irish genealogies and genetics, in Duffy (ed.), Princes, prelates and poets in medieval Ireland: essays in honour of Katherine Simms (2013), 3-17. Catherine Swift, Interlaced scholarship: genealogies and genetics in twenty-first century Ireland, in Duffy (ed.), Princes, prelates and poets in medieval Ireland: essays in honour of Katharine Simms (2013), 18–31. I am glad to hear that the Journal of Genetic Genealogy is going to resume publication, but I hope that the opportunity will be taken to raise the standards of research on the genealogical/historical side of the aisle. To see what I am talking about, I list below three papers on the subject of early Irish families which appeared in the Journal of Genetic Genealogy. Edwin B. O'Neill & John D. McLaughlin, Insights Into the O'Neills of Ireland from DNA Testing, Journal of Genetic Genealogy 2 (2006): 18-26. Dennis M. Wright, A Set of Distinctive Marker Values Defines a Y-STR Signature for Gaelic Dalcassian Families. Journal of Genetic Genealogy 5(1) (2009): 1-7. Bradley T. Larkin, Larkin DNA Project - Ancestral Parish Sampling on the Shannon River, Journal of Genetic Genealogy 6(1) (2010): 1-29. In my opinion, none of these three articles are up to the standards which ought to be observed by a peer review journal. Although I do not have the necessary expertise to judge the DNA aspect of these articles, they are all very deficient with regard to their use of the historical and genealogical evidence. For example, the O'Neill-McLaughlin paper refers to Niall of the Nine Hostages as the "127th king of Ireland," and the Wright paper cites O'Hart's Irish Genealogies as its principle genealogical source, a clear indication that the authors lack familiarity with modern scholarship on the subject. The Larkin paper states that "... an emerging view is that Maine was the last son of ... Niall of the Nine Hostages," citing as a source an e-mail which was sent to the author, hardly the kind of statement or citation which ought to appear in a scholarly paper. The author has already been mentioned in this thread with regard to an absurd statement about the Tudor surname. I'm not suggesting that these three papers have no value. There could be worthwhile results there despite the problems that I have mentioned, but this type of material is best suited for amateur publications. In my opinion, a peer-review journal ought to set the bar higher, and this requires ensuring that sufficient expertise is available on both the genetic/scientific and genealogical/historical sides. Stewart Baldwin