Y and mtDNA are not Adam and Eve: Part 1
9th August 2013
I was interviewed by two different science writers to comment on this paper, and in both interviews I stressed how inappropriate the “Adam Y” and mitochondrial or “mtDNA Eve” analogies are. You can see how well they took that into consideration: here and here. I really enjoyed talking with the journalists, so hope they won’t think I’m picking on them either because, to be fair, nearly every popSci article used this analogy (see here, here, here, and here). I’ll take a sentence here to especially note the article by Francie Diep, here, that took a different approach.
While I have several reasons to disliking this analogy, I cannot fault the journalists completely for using it in this instance. Aside from my protests, there is no reason science journalists should think that it is a bad analogy, because it was used in the manuscript (without context or explanation).