Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) effectively called President Donald Trump a welcher after she took a DNA test as he demanded on national television on the promise that he would donate $1 million to her favorite charity. While the test by a Stanford professor showed only that she was between 0.097 per cent and 0.156 per cent American Indian, it was still a DNA test. Warren called on Trump to donate to the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center. President Trump however initially denied that he ever made the offer and then changed the offer retroactively to require his testing Warren.
Many of us have wondered why Warren did not simply take a DNA test after she was challenged on her long-standing claim of being part Cherokee. Her alleged Indian status was noted by prior faculties, though as I have previously stated her credentials as an academic more than warranted her work on various prestigious law schools. Former colleagues have reaffirmed the view that Warren was added to these faculties on the merits of her considerable academic record. That academic career began with a debate scholarship at George Washington University.
If was not until this year that Warren publicly acknowledged a DNA test, but it was done not by one of the leading companies but by a single Stanford professor. Nevertheless, Stanford University Professor Carlos D. Bustamante is a respected academic in the field who has consulted on the national testing programs.
According to his analysis, Warren has a Native American ancestor from six to ten generations back. If Warren’s great-great-great-grandmother were Native American, she would be 1/32 Native American but it could date back further to 10 generations — making her only 1/1,024 Native American. Even a 1/32 heritage may not translate into what most people would view as being Native American, However Cherokee Nation principal chief Bill John Baker is 1/32 Cherokee by blood. Warren claims Cherokee and Delaware heritage.
Yet, it is the test that it is important issue for the quid pro quo offer. During a July 5th campaign rally , Trump declared “I will give you a million dollars, to your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test and it shows you’re an Indian. I have a feeling she will say ‘no.’ ” She didn’t.
Trump can certainly argue that as little as 1/1,024 heritage should not be the basis for calling yourself Native American to any degree, but, as Professor Bustamante concluded, she does have Native American blood. The important thing, however, is not to deny the undeniable.
“Who cares?” he said. “I didn’t say that. You’d better read it again”:
ABC News
@ABC
Pres. Trump on Sen. Elizabeth Warren releasing results of DNA test: “Who cares?”
The results show “strong evidence” Warren had a Native American ancestor dating back several generations, The Boston Globe reported today. https://abcn.ws/2yDPztu
Trump denies he owes Warren either an apology or money. In the meantime, Warren critics are citing the statement of Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin Jr. that ‘Senator Warren is undermining tribal interests with her continued claims of tribal heritage . . . Using a DNA test to lay claim to any connection to the Cherokee Nation or any tribal nation, even vaguely, is inappropriate and wrong. It makes a mockery out of DNA tests and its legitimate uses while also dishonoring legitimate tribal governments and their citizens, whose ancestors are well documented and whose heritage is proven.” Others have noted that current DNA tests do not even distinguish whether a person’s ancestors were indigenous to North or South America.
That still leaves the fact that she took a DNA test and a leading academic found Native American blood.
Should Trump pay up?
Just a reminder that The Washington Post has a short piece, linked below, that vindicates Elizabeth Warren.
It doesn’t vindicate her at all. She lied repeatedly and calculatingly for years on end.
Another falsehood, or rather, two from the expert prevaricator.
“Just a reminder that The Washington Post has a short piece, linked below, that vindicates Elizabeth Warren.”
It doesn’t do anything of the sort, but David feels if he piles up enough manure to to hide reality he can vindicate Elizabeth Warren and thereby vindicate himself. No David. That is not how it works. In the end you are left with nothing more than the pile of manure.
What we have is the science.
You are simply one of the unenlightened never having learned The Enlightenment. Too bad about that. 0
Oh boy, the “Enlightenment” that’s a god that failed. LOL.
Even Voltaire mocked it while it was underway
where’s Dhili, disciple of John Locke, did he quit the blog? I had a fun dustup with him about the glorious ideologies spun from Enlightenment naivete.
The Enlightenment, ha, that’s a good one.
David, I love your little quips on how others are unenlightened while you act the part. It highlights your blogging activity where you draw conclusions on the basis of what feels good to you. If I had to guess what type of courses you taught, based on your actions on this blog, I would guess basket weaving or some other similar activity but certainly not anything in the sciences. You sound too limited.
David Benson is the King of Making Stuff Up and owes me seventeen citations (one from the OED) and the source of a quotation, after nineteen weeks, and needs to cite all his work from now on. – nothing will vindicate Elizabeth Warren,
From the article to which you linked:
“(Note: Bustamante did not have access to Native American DNA because of mistrust in the community that DNA results could affect tribal identity, so he relied on samples of indigenous people from Mexico, Peru and Colombia — populations in the Americas with high native American genetic ancestry. There is research showing that using these groups as references is accurate when differentiating between genetic ancestries at a worldwide level. But no tribe for Warren could be identified, only that she had an ancestor or ancestors descended from indigenous people.)”
“Researchers studied a fraction — far less than 1/1000th — of Warren’s DNA, and then compared it to the DNA of 148 people from Finland, Italy, Spain, China, Nigeria and North and South America. Additional comparison was done with 185 individuals from Utah and Great Britain.”
She was compared with 333 people. Only a few people were considered representative of entire countries and regions.
Elizabeth Warren claimed that OC Sarah Smith was Cherokee and Delaware. This test most emphatically did not substantiate that claim. In addition, it has been discovered that Central and South Americans have some Polynesian DNA, because, like the Vikings, those guys got around. This introduced a whole new part of the world, although I do not know if it affects the sequence used for comparison.
In addition, the reference set was a relatively small group of people from Utah. Do you know why they would use people from Utah as their baseline for European Americans? Because the state has a high percentage of Mormons, who practiced polygamy in their early days. That concentrated their genetic pool, and there were exponentially less risk of marrying outside of European American ancestry. It did not in any way compare her with the average European American. In addition, the article stated that non European genetic material remained static, regardless of how many years between the subject and relevant generation. Her ancestors came from Sweden, part of the Viking homelands. If anyone would have had access to introducing exotic genes to the gene pool, it would be the Vikings.
A note about the article’s explanation that genes do not diminish over time. If you inserted a Mendelian trait such as blood type, you either have it or you don’t. AA or AB blood type. Through the generations you don’t have 1/1024th type A blood type. That type keeps winding its way through generations as AA, AB, AO. But no one has said that such inherited genes are diluted.
Karen S – there is also the problem with gene self-modification.
Except the comparison turned out to NOT be native american but south or central American and NOT indigenes. I guess that technician is not as respected as one would hope for … more Bensonite.
I’ll stick with the tribal councils. Over some gringo’s personal definition.
But this is about Elizabeth Warren and the DNA test:
Just about everything you’ve read on the Warren DNA test is wrong
Glenn Kessler
2018 Oct 18
The Washington Post
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/politics/2018/10/18/just-about-everything-youve-read-warren-dna-test-is-wrong/
The takeaway is that she has 10 times the indigenous American DNA than the sample from Utah.
David Benson is the King of Making Stuff Up and owes me seventeen citations (one from the OED) and the source of a quotation, after nineteen weeks, and needs to cite all his work from now on. – a geneticist for the Navajos flat out says there is no way she has Injun blood. He wrote his article in The Atlantic.
You didn’t provide a reference or a link.
The Navaho are Athabaskans. Elizabeth Warren is in small part Amerindian. So am I and, it appears, more so than she.
In any case, I will trust that the Stanford geneticist knows what he is doing.
Oh, I didn’t notice earlier. The Atlantic. Ha, ha, ha.
And no more than me and my siblings. Your utter arrogance at trying to sell this fraud in these threads would amaze anyone not familiar with you.
No, competence in science.
Something far removed from your ken.
Your competence is in a strange sort of chutzpah born of sheer social awkwardness. Everyone here knows you’re not a biologist and everyone here knows it wouldn’t matter if you were in this case. That she had an Indian ancestor 8 generations back is of no account. But she scammed people for years.
I’m surprised the Washington Post didn’t discuss the DNA of the family camel and compare that to Elizabeth Warren so that we could see she was less closely related to a camel than to the American Indian.
Allan………:)
The sample from Utah would have virtually zero non European DNA. Historical Polygamy, intermarrying within a small isolated group, and no outside crosses from the Mormon population of Utah would ensure a very closed group, which is why it is used as baselines in such studies.
Just dropping this here as a place to put it:
The genetic prehistory of the Andean highlands 7,000 BP through European contact
John Lindo et al.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/07/31/381905
The authors I recognize are Cynthia Beall and John Novembre.
About 8,500 years ago the indigenees adapted to the highlands and differently than the Tibetans had earlier adapted to highland living, taken mostly from an earlier publication by Cynthia Beall.
To repeat the obvious, this has nothing to do with Elizabeth Warren.
“To repeat the obvious, this has nothing to do with Elizabeth Warren.”
David, you are right, those events have nothing to do with Elizabeth Warren but Elizabeth Warren used false Indian heritage and their sad events to promote her own career.
It’s vaguely amusing watching David Benson wave his arms and repeat himself in order to try to distract everyone from the central element of the story: she lied her tuchus off and did so calculatedly for purposes of career advancement and self-dramatization. (It’s also amusing that he fancies black box references in a discipline irrelevant to his own will impress anyone. How many of his relatives find him insufferable?).
The central element is the genetic study. The rest is just unsubstantiated beliefs.
David, Elizabeth Warren lied. The genetic study is only a part of that lie and you promoted it.
Senator Warren needs to stop dropping so much deoxyribonucleic acid.
Darren:
More like peyote. Used by the North American indigenous tribes, you know.
mespo – loco weed?
That was awesome.