BenKenobi: "How does this address my point?"
TexasFreeper2009 gets it -- the statistics don't add up.
Someone has a decimal point out of place, or possibly is ignoring simple math in order to make some political point.
I don't know the answers, but don't like what I'm seeing.
We are told the human genome consists of about 3 billion "base pairs" -- those are the chemical building blocks which make up our DNA.
Of the 3 billion, Neanderthals are said to differ in 3 million "base pairs," or one-tenth of one percent.
Chimpanzees differ in 30 million to 50 million "base pairs" -- about one percent to 1.7 percent.
But how much diversity is there within the human population?
"The nucleotide diversity between humans is about 0.1%, which is 1 difference per 1,000 base pairs.[4][5][6]
"A difference of 1 in 1,000 nucleotides between two humans chosen at random amounts to approximately 3 million nucleotide differences since the human genome has about 3 billion nucleotides.
"Most of these SNPs are neutral but some are functional and influence phenotypic differences between humans through alleles.
"It is estimated that a total of 10 million SNPs exist in the human population of which at least 1% are functional "
I read this to say that within the overall human population are about 10 million "base pair" differences.
That's still only 1/3 of one percent, and means that normal variations among humans is greater than the supposed variations between humans and Neanderthals.
All I'm saying is that it seems scientists are doing some pretty serious DNA analysis, but the statistics we are reading don't make much sense.
I am totally not a math person and so even more totally not a statistics person. I try, I really do, because I think math is really important to understand, especially in science (and it’s why physics often leaves me in the dust). I taught biology (yes, I understand the problem with that).
My Dad and 2 of my sons are mathy, so I generally ask them to explain it to me. Anyway, I have been (slowly) reading thru an interesting article in a magazine I get called Science News (an interesting altho sometimes annoying little mag that believes heart and soul in mad made global warming and other liberal causes) that I have subscribed to for years because it has all the most up to date science news generally in short articles.
This particular article talks about the shortcomings of statistics in sciences, and while it’s tough reading for someone like me who is not a statistics person, I was thrilled to see that someone is addressing the subject. If you are interested, it is online here.
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/57091/title/Odds_Are,_Its_Wrong
A little off topic, but still, perhaps interesting to you.