Phoenician science. A Lebanese medical scientist (who does not want to be identified) read the article by P. Zalloua et al and sent me this comment:
"OK, here is my take on this article (which I enclosed for you). I am not a geneticist so some of the methods are unfamiliar to me, but some important points emerge nontheless:
1. He looked at 926 Lebanese men from Beirut, mount Lebanon, Bekaa, North and South. He does not say from where nor how many were from each geographical area (this will be important, see below)
2. He excluded the Beirutis because "of their diverse recent origins". So obviously according to him, they were not "true" Lebanese or had so much intermixing that they shot his theory to smithereen and did not have enough "muslim" or "crusader" blood in them.
3. Where are the Greek Orthodox or catholics? he only reports on the maronites, druze, sunnis, and shiaa
4. Despite all the extensive testing, and despite STATISTICAL significance (though definitely not "clinical" significance), there was extensive similarities between all religiuos groups (again, the Greek orthodox/catholics seem not to be "true" Lebanese according to our esteemed reasearcher): The arab genes are found more commonly in the muslims than the maronites (25% vs 15%), meaning 75% of the muslims and 85% of the maronites did NOT have those genes (I do not recall that most of us came from SA, Qatar, Yemen, UAE, and Oman). Too bad for him, the Western european genes were found in ONLY 16% of the maronites vs 10% in the muslims. So ya haram, 84% of the maronites did NOT come from Western Europe (he should have checked some Syrian genes) and 90% of the muslims did not either (this will not make Faris Seid happy either). The Levant was the melting pot until the Ottomans came, so it is not a surprise at all that no group was i mmune to genetic mixing.
What does this all mean: unlike his conclusion, he should have concentrated on what makes the Lebanese ALIKE and not what makes them different from each others. His conclusion that different religious groups have been living in enclaves with "no" mixing for over 1300 yrs is not proven by his findings.
5. For the LF crowd, they can still use that paper that the maronites (again the absence of the Greeks is no mistake most likely because they share haplotypes more with the muslims than the maronites in my opinion) came from Western Europe. A careful read of the paper shows that this theory lays waste to their claim."