Posted: Jul 24, 2011 9:12 pm
Galaxian wrote:http://www.sciencemag.org/content/322/5908/1634.2.full
Probably the worst Science paper I ever read. But to be fair the authors seem recognize that the results are in fact non-conclusive!
Rodrigo Labouriau and António Amorim wrote:Although the results discussed here are expected from the theory of inbreeding and outbreeding depression (2–4, 13), they are hard to document in human populations. Reliable, sufficiently large human data sets, as in the two studies discussed here, are uncommon. Moreover, it is difficult to eliminate the possibility of spurious associations due to effects of socioeconomic factors unequivocally.
In fact I have a question: Is there possible that women who married their cousins, do it because of specific religious or social reasons? And that the same religious or social reasons explain why these same women have in average, more children?
Oh and Brazil doesn't seem to have suffered from a demographic collapse! And I'm not aware of any evidence of reduced fertility or health among the Métis! That's not the case for the Lion-Tiger hybrids!