GENEALOGY-DNA-L Archives

Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2001-03 > 0985125913


From: Alan Savin <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] New Yorker article
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 22:05:13 +0000
In-Reply-To: <4d.8fed2ab.27e8e383@aol.com>


>The March 26 issue of the New Yorker is on the newstands now ($3.50), with
>the article by John Seabrook getting top billing on the tear-off wrapper
>"Who Am I? A powerful new science is moving genealogy out of the library and
>into the lab." Actually, the article covers plenty of traditional
>genealogical research routes, but DNA testing plays a major role.
>
>Now I can see why Alan believes this should be an interesting article! He is
>mentioned, albeit in one parenthetical sentence on page 68, which I can
>probably quote without fear of copyright violations.
>
>"(Alan Savin, an amateur genealogist in Britain who has conducted a similar
>study [referring to Sykes], of British Savins, did not find evidence of a
>single progenitor.)"
>
>Alan, do you have any more background to give us? Did Seabrook interview you
>for hours and distill the conversation down to a single sentence? <g>

Dear Ann and List,

John e-mailed me several months ago and enquired about my book "DNA for
Family Historians" www.savin.org/dna/dna-book
so I sent him a copy. We swapped a few brief e-mails and had a 10 minute
phone call. Then recently the "fact checker" for the magazine phoned me to
check a few things which turns out to be the factual content of the above
sentence.

I would like to think my book gave John a good background education, I will
have to see when my promised copy of the article turns up. Then I will
contact John again as I am sure he will have a little bit more of
information to share.

Alan



This thread: