Anna Anderson's claim to be Grand Duchess Anastasia

[Elspeth]

Originally Posted by ChatNoir

If it could be proven that the intestine sample really came from AA, if it could be proven that Carl Maucher really was maternally linked with Frau Schanzkowsky, if the sample from Philip really could be proven to come from him etc etc. The chains of custody are far too unreliable to determine this case.

Attorneys have become pretty good at trashing DNA evidence on the basis of claims about chains of custody, contamination, tampering, and what have you. Since the results of DNA analysis are usually so conclusive, that's one of the only lines of attack that attorneys have.

A lot of scientific results wouldn't stand up in court because the standard for scientific confirmation is different from the standard for legal proof. That doesn't mean the scientific results are wrong. In this case, you had work being done independently in two labs in different countries and giving consistent results, and you had different techniques also giving results that supported each other.

And yes, I think we can be pretty sure about the sample from Prince Philip. The mtDNA sequence from Prince Philip's sample was used in another study by the same people to see if he was related through matrilineal descent to any of the bodies retrieved from the grave near Ekaterinburg, and it was consistent with the existence of a relationship. However, when a sample from Prince Philip was checked against a DNA sequence retrieved from the intestinal sample from Mrs Anderson, it didn't show a relationship.

Now, you can claim that the intestinal sample wasn't in fact from Mrs Anderson, but I don't see much scope for claiming that the sample from Prince Philip wasn't genuine, given the results from the other study.

As far as the intestinal sample is concerned, there was also DNA from a hair sample that was supposed to have come from Mrs Anderson and that was, as far as I can gather, collected by someone who was a supporter of her claim, which suggests that it was indeed from her. The intestinal sample and the hair sample were analysed in different labs, which means that cross-contamination is exceedingly unlikely. If the intestinal sample was actually from someone else, the DNA sequences would be different.

So in order to claim that the intestinal sample from the hospital wasn't from Mrs Anderson, you're going to have to explain why its DNA had the same sequence as that of a hair sample obtained by different people - people who were sympathetic to her claims.

Maybe this wouldn't stand up in a court of law, but you'd pretty much be arguing technicalities.

[Jo of Palatine]

I like the approach that Grand Duke Andrew described in his letter - obviously there is a real possibility that one of the daughters survived and that Anna Anderson was her.

But for some reasons or the other the family decided not to recognize her. As AA did not leave children, one should think that the whole story ended with her death.

But at that time the family rejected AN's claim, there was no knowledge about what DNA testing could prove, so the family based their decision on either honest belief or on whatever motives they might have had.

But when DNA- testing became a possibility and was used on the bones of the rest of the family, I think that's when the whole thing started to get fishy. For I don't buy into the Schanzkowska-story. My grandfather had been a teacher in Silesia (then German, today it's part of Poland) after WWI and what my mother and her brothers and sisters told me of life there, about what it took in time and money to give a child more than an average education and what an average education was at that time: sorry, I can't believe for a moment that a former factory worker from Poland or East Germany could fool people who had lived at court in Russia. That's so way beyond reality! Don't give me a Pygmalion story - it simply doesn't work that way.
While I can imagine that after what a potentially surviving Grand Duchess had been through, after all that horror she is traumatized and not always up to portray herself as herself out of fear. Could be.

So when I see that it could be proven that AN in fact was this factory worker (who, as I have read, was still back in her hometown when AN surfaced) I believe there has been machinations behind the scene. Alas, in this case there is no Mo Al-Fayed with tons of money and the wish to spend them on getting information, so we won't find out the truth behind it. But while the DNA-testing was surely scientifically reliable, I doubt the source.

How fitting that there turned up two samples after all the rest of AN was gone. How wonderful that they got samples from a maternal relative of Schanzkowska. I personally believe that the whole bunch of samples came from the Schanzkowska-family - in order to solve the riddle once and for all. Because if it could have been proven that AN in fact was Anastasia, what an eclat - for the Romanovs, their German relatives but for Russia as well, as they are reestablishing their relationship with the Romanovs at the moment and simply want to let the murdered members rest in peace and in state, but best forgotten as much as possible.

But - we will never know for sure.

[fee]

While I believe quite honestly in the DNA findings and have always doubt AA's claim, I have to admit that what Jo brought up (the perfect pygmalion story) is a very interesting point.
Simply all the questions in AA's case are just too many coincidences to make th idea of a hoax easily digestable.
A quite profund physical resemblance (even ignoring the foot deformation), an extraordinary knowledge of both family history and trivia (way before the royal watchers on the Net were invented) of several languages, of etiquette and behaviour coupled with an ability to act within the role for her entire life (never slipping) and paired with charisma and persuasion to convince a good many people.
So whoever made the hoax up, (the Yul Brunner of reality) hit gold with his main character, but stayed he with her? Where was this informant?
Could it much rather be, that the woman was already on the inside of the royal palace walls? As a servant, daughter of a higher palace employee? A confidente of the company striven girls? A secret friend? Someone who was with them a lot without ever being really noticed by others (royals and their likes hardly ever noticed the servants, even thinking they wouldn't understand a word?) ...

[ChatNoir]

And yes, I think we can be pretty sure about the sample from Prince Philip. The mtDNA sequence from Prince Philip's sample was used in another study by the same people to see if he was related through matrilineal descent to any of the bodies retrieved from the grave near Ekaterinburg, and it was consistent with the existence of a relationship. However, when a sample from Prince Philip was checked against a DNA sequence retrieved from the intestinal sample from Mrs Anderson, it didn't show a relationship.

From Shay McNeal's book: "The plots to rescue the Tsar":

(This is about the bones found in Pigs Meadow and presumably belonging to the IF.)

Consequently the emphatic announcement of the conclusive DNA analysis obscured some vital facts. Among those was that, in reality, only a tenuous match at one point in the complicated DNA chain rendered the same results as a sample from Prince Philip of England, who has a familial relationship to the Romanovs.
These tenuous results were presented to the press as a match and persuaded the media, especially in the West, to announce closure to this long running mystery.

The issue at the heart of the entire controversy is that both the FSS and the AFDIL have consistently refused to release their full case file to the members of RECA, so that the Commission, which has served as a watchdog committee, can release the full case file for independent peer review and the legal procedure of discovery by a truly independent body.

ChatNoir

[Kanga]

I understood Carl Maucher was not maternally linked to FS - he is the grandson of Gertrude S. who was herself a half sister of FS . (FS father was married twice and FS and Gertrude had different mothers. )

Chat - ITA will all you posts.

[ChatNoir]

Originally Posted by Kanga

I understood Carl Maucher was not maternally linked to FS - he is the grandson of Gertrude S. who was herself a half sister of FS . (FS father was married twice and FS and Gertrude had different mothers. )

Chat - ITA will all you posts.

Here's another problem: All the children came from the first marriage, but Gertrude's birth certificate has never been found. That has led to speculations that she was a child out of wedlock and thus not maternally linked to the Schankowsky family.

What does your last sentence mean, I cannot make heads or tails of it.

ChatNoir

[Russophile]

Originally Posted by lucien

Dear Chat,your world would crumble to dust if you would galantly admit that the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolayevna was murdered in july 1918.

AA was a lone soul,not quite mentally developed,which was not her fould ofcourse,and then used and misled by every fool and his dog.
Some made a living out of that.I find that appalling,an insult to AN,and the Imperial Family,her family that is.

And your proof is what?
Sources please and please cite real ones not that stuff that is tainted from you know where Lucien.

[Elspeth]

Originally Posted by ChatNoir

From Shay McNeal's book: "The plots to rescue the Tsar":

(This is about the bones found in Pigs Meadow and presumably belonging to the IF.)

Consequently the emphatic announcement of the conclusive DNA analysis obscured some vital facts. Among those was that, in reality, only a tenuous match at one point in the complicated DNA chain rendered the same results as a sample from Prince Philip of England, who has a familial relationship to the Romanovs.
These tenuous results were presented to the press as a match and persuaded the media, especially in the West, to announce closure to this long running mystery.

The issue at the heart of the entire controversy is that both the FSS and the AFDIL have consistently refused to release their full case file to the members of RECA, so that the Commission, which has served as a watchdog committee, can release the full case file for independent peer review and the legal procedure of discovery by a truly independent body.

ChatNoir

The results I quoted are directly from the research papers themselves. The researchers used standard techniques which, in the case of mtDNA testing, aren't vastly different from current techniques. The DNA from Prince Philip showed a close enough resemblance to a sample from the remains of one of the skeletons to indicate a high likelihood that they were related. The same DNA did not show a relationship to the two samples from Anna Anderson, one of which was provided by (or via) someone who was a supporter of her claims to be the Grand Duchess. The data are in the papers if you want to try and get hold of them (Nature shouldn't be that hard to track down in a good library, especially a university library).

[Elspeth]

Originally Posted by Jo of Palatine

How fitting that there turned up two samples after all the rest of AN was gone. How wonderful that they got samples from a maternal relative of Schanzkowska. I personally believe that the whole bunch of samples came from the Schanzkowska-family

One of the samples (the hair sample) was, according to the authors of the paper, provided with the help of Peter Kurth, who is strongly opposed to the notion that Anna Anderson was Franziska Schankowska. I can't imagine why he'd be party to an attempt to indicate the exact opposite of what he believes.

Or are you saying that the researchers were given hair samples from Anna Anderson, substituted them with hair samples from Franziska Schankowska, and claimed that they were from Anna Anderson? I mean, Mark Stoneking is one of the world's leading researchers on mtDNA. Is there some reason why he'd be a party to something like this? I don't see that it would matter to him one way or the other if Anna Anderson turned out to be Grand Duchess Anastasia, so I'm having a hard time trying to figure out the motivation for him to risk his career by engaging in what would be, by any definition, criminal fraud.

[ChatNoir]

As Dr. Gill said: If one accepts these samples as coming from Anna Anderson.....
And that is the problem: We cannot be sure where they came from. At the first request for samples from Anna Anderson/Manahan, the hospital answered that they had nothing of interest there. Then, after three months, presto, the samples turned up. Makes one wonder, doesn't it.
As for the reliability of DNA, please see the following link.

Titanic.com - News

"It's very easy to say you got this wrong, but nevertheless that is how science works, and you do change your ideas and you do change your theories," said Ryan Parr, the Canadian expert and educational researcher at Lakehead University in Ontario.

Yes, indeed.

ChatNoir

[Elspeth]

Originally Posted by ChatNoir

As Dr. Gill said: If one accepts these samples as coming from Anna Anderson.....
And that is the problem: We cannot be sure where they came from. At the first request for samples from Anna Anderson/Manahan, the hospital answered that they had nothing of interest there. Then, after three months, presto, the samples turned up. Makes one wonder, doesn't it.

Not really. I mean, considering the inefficiency of some of these large hospitals, I'm impressed they finally found anything.

I'm still waiting for a response to my question about the hair sample. Why would supporters of Anna Anderson provide a sample that wasn't from her? And why would the DNA from that sample match the DNA from the intestinal sample if they weren't from the same person? And why would DNA from Prince Philip match that of some of the bones from the grave near Ekaterinburg and not match the Anderson samples? And why would Dr Gill go ahead with doing the research and publishing a paper if he wasn't at least reasonably sure that his samples were genuine?

As for the reliability of DNA, please see the following link.

Titanic.com - News

"It's very easy to say you got this wrong, but nevertheless that is how science works, and you do change your ideas and you do change your theories," said Ryan Parr, the Canadian expert and educational researcher at Lakehead University in Ontario.

Yes, indeed.

ChatNoir

Right, so you're saying that because someone screws up once in a while, therefore an entire technique is worthless? If not, please elaborate on your point because I don't know what else you're trying to infer.

If you've got some information that the researchers who were working on the Anna Anderson DNA were the ones who misidentified this child, please provide it because I certainly can't find anything about who did the DNA tests on the child. If it wasn't the same people, then what possible relevance does it have? Yes, once in a while someone screws up. No news there. Does that make the technique itself worthless? Of course it doesn't. This is inductive reasoning run mad. It's the sort of tactic that people use when they want to discredit something without any real evidence, and it's very common in creationist and anti-global-warming arguments. If that's the level of the objections to the DNA results, I'm not impressed.

So are you accusing the scientists of gross incompetence, or of criminal fraud? Pretty much has to be one or the other, doesn't it?

Oh, and just so you know - I'm a PhD scientist although I left research fairly early on to go into science publishing. My husband and most of our friends are scientists, and my father was also a scientist. In my job, I've been working with research scientists for decades. So, Mr Executive Butler, I'll put my knowledge about scientists and the scientific method up against yours any day, and I'd just like to mention that I really take a dim view of casual accusations of fraudulent behaviour on the part of scientists by people who simply don't like the results they come up with. I've been involved in creationism-evolution debates for years, and this stuff is beginning to look a lot like the way creationists argue against science they don't like.

[ChatNoir]

Originally Posted by Elspeth

Not really. I mean, considering the inefficiency of some of these large hospitals, I'm impressed they finally found anything.

You are? Maybe I should include a link to mislabelling by hospital personnel...

I'm still waiting for a response to my question about the hair sample. Why would supporters of Anna Anderson provide a sample that wasn't from her?

The sample was found by a woman in a book shop and given to Peter Kurth. He and nobody else had no idea from where it came, the envelope it was found in, had "Princess Anastasia's hair" written on it. So much for chain of custody.

And why would the DNA from that sample match the DNA from the intestinal sample if they weren't from the same person?

Very good question, and I think it makes a very good reasoning for the samples coming from the same person.

And why would DNA from Prince Philip match that of some of the bones from the grave near Ekaterinburg

A very tenuous match, according to Shay McNeal. A result that would not hold up in any court.

and not match the Anderson samples?

Again, a very dubious chain of custody. Who was present when the sample was taken?

And why would Dr Gill go ahead with doing the research and publishing a paper if he wasn't at least reasonably sure that his samples were genuine?

He was the one who said: If one accepts etc etc. Not me.
And his paper has been disputed by other scientists.

Right, so you're saying that because someone screws up once in a while, therefore an entire technique is worthless? If not, please elaborate on your point because I don't know what else you're trying to infer.

Once in a while, yes, and this is the one we heard about. How many go by unnoticed by the general public? What it means, is that DNA is not infallible.

If you've got some information that the researchers who were working on the Anna Anderson DNA were the ones who misidentified this child, please provide it because I certainly can't find anything about who did the DNA tests on the child. If it wasn't the same people, then what possible relevance does it have? Yes, once in a while someone screws up. No news there. Does that make the technique itself worthless? Of course it doesn't. This is inductive reasoning run mad. It's the sort of tactic that people use when they want to discredit something without any real evidence, and it's very common in creationist and anti-global-warming arguments. If that's the level of the objections to the DNA results, I'm not impressed.

And you have every right not to be.

So are you accusing the scientists of gross incompetence, or of criminal fraud? Pretty much has to be one or the other, doesn't it?

All I am doing, is showing that nothing is infallible.

Oh, and just so you know - I'm a PhD scientist although I left research fairly early on to go into science publishing. My husband and most of our friends are scientists, and my father was also a scientist. In my job, I've been working with research scientists for decades. So, Mr Executive Butler, I'll put my knowledge about scientists and the scientific method up against yours any day, and I'd just like to mention that I really take a dim view of casual accusations of fraudulent behaviour on the part of scientists by people who simply don't like the results they come up with. I've been involved in creationism-evolution debates for years, and this stuff is beginning to look a lot like the way creationists argue against science they don't like.

So, we are getting personal now, how very, very professional. Yes, I am an Executive Butler, not at all an intelligent person by your standards. But as long as you or any of your scientist friends cannot legally produce a proof that AA was FS, I am free to believe what I want. And there is nothing you can do about it.

Here is a tidbit from Peterkurth.com

Food for thought:

The DNA does not prove anything in this case. It [did not] confirm the identities of Nicholas and Alexandra and the three children, but merely showed that Hessian and Romanov DNA was present in those remains. Thus saying that `DNA proves this is Nicholas, Alexandra, etc.,' isn't really correct -- what it shows is support for the hypothesis that the remains were theirs, and were related to their families. It does not show or confirm actual identity. … Where DNA is concerned, it is important to stress not only that in this case it did not identify anyone, but also that the very tests conducted in 1992-94 are now so out of date they are no longer used. For example -- using a 6 point STRDNA test, Anna Anderson was shown not to have been a child of Nicholas and Alexandra. By 1999, 10 point STR testing had shown that 6 point tests were not only inaccurate but also gave false positive and negative results; they were replaced with 12, then 16, and now 20 point STR tests. So the 6 point STR test which shows Anna Anderson wasn't a Romanov cannot be considered valid any longer, and is, indeed, subject to proved false results. The same can be said of mtDNA testing as well -- methodology has vastly changed, and we now know that the same mtDNA patterns are shared by perhaps 18-20% of the population -- it is not the discriminating factor it was described as seven or eight years ago. It is so inaccurate and so common that it is no longer used in court cases for identity and paternity tests -- they use nuclear DNA rather than mtDNA, which is subject to too many variables.

[Lakshmi]

There were many women claiming to be Anastasia. I don't know if this article from Yahoo.com was posted, if so, feel free to delete.
DNA tests may solve mystery of Anastasia - Yahoo! News
So, maybe really soon it can be resolved if Anastasia could have possibly survived the execution.

[windsorbrides1]

First of all the fact that Dr. Gill said what he said about if you accept that these samples are from Anna Anderson, had NOTHING to do with him questioning that or thinking otherwise, it's just a scientists way of announcing findings - especially DNA. It was done before that and will be done again.

As far as the Titanic identity that was pointed to as an example. The original identity was made from Nuclear DNA which degrades faster. When the Mitachondrial DNA was extracted and PCR tested, it proved who the boy was.

Dr. William Maples. stated that considering the trauma that the bones had suffered (stabbing, acid soaked, underground) that the bones were in excellent shape. Most teeth and most of the skeletons were present for all of the 9 original skeltons found. The other thing is that you must remember that 8 of the skeletons were also identified by their teeth. Which is one of the ways skeletons are still identified by forensic scientists.

Dr. Peter Gill used the PCR method of DNA sampling, which first came in to use in the early 1990's, to identify the Romanovs. It has been known to have the ability to recover DNA information from very small (or degraded) starting samples. In fact, not only did Dr. Gill identify the bones, but, Sir Alec John Jeffreys, the man considered to be the foremost DNA expert at the time, did similar tests on the same pieces of bone and found the same result. Dr. William Maples extracted the teeth when he was working with them and took one from each skull to to Dr. Marie Claire King. She also identified the bones as the Romanovs and had the exact same findings as Gill and Jeffreys. US Military Scientists were called in as backup to Gill and Jeffreys and their findings were the same as well.

The thing that did it for me as far as the identification of the Romanovs is the prescence of a hetroplasmy in the DNA sample of the Tsar. Which of course is why Dr. Gill has been quite lambasted over time. The truth is that once the body of Nicholas's brother George was disinterred from the grave in the Cathedral of St.Peter and Paul in St. Petersburg a sample of DNA was taken from the remains to see whether skeletal remains allegedly belonging to his older brother, the last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, were legitimate or not. The DNA sample obtained from the remains was an exact match with those obtained from the remains of Nicholas II.

Dr. Alec Knight denied the Romanovs were the bones that were removed from the grave. He stated he tested the supposed finger of Princess Elizabeth, the sister of Princess Alexandra, and it did not match. Princess Elizabeth died in a mine with several other people - tossed there by the Cheka. Varvara Yakovleva was also tossed into the mine with Princess Elizabeth. So, until a DNA test is set up for Varvara Yakovleva's relatives, we cannot be sure that the finger tested was not that of Varvara Yakovleva, nor that the finger that Dr. Alec Knight tested belonged to Princess Elizabeth. The Princess was also known to have worked with Tubeculosis victims. As a paralegal I know that a TB carrier or victim cannot be identified using DNA sampling. Something about the molecular structure of the blood. I don't remember the technical stuff, but I'll look it up and see if I can find it.

[BorisRom]

Who knows, what was a degree (%) of reliability of comparative researches of DNA in 1990th years and what degree of the reliability is now?
Boris

[ChatNoir]

So a TB carrier cannot be identified using DNA sampling. This is indeed interesting news, for as we know, AA suffered from tuberculosis for many years. Could anybody throw more light on this information?

ChatNoir

[lexi4]

Originally Posted by ChatNoir

So, we are getting personal now, how very, very professional. Yes, I am an Executive Butler, not at all an intelligent person by your standards. But as long as you or any of your scientist friends cannot legally produce a proof that AA was FS, I am free to believe what I want. And there is nothing you can do about it.

Chat,
I have learned that just because one is a moderator does not mean that person is above a personal attack. Watch this post disappear.
Lexi

[lexi4]

Originally Posted by Lakshmi

There were many women claiming to be Anastasia. I don't know if this article from Yahoo.com was posted, if so, feel free to delete.
DNA tests may solve mystery of Anastasia - Yahoo! News
So, maybe really soon it can be resolved if Anastasia could have possibly survived the execution.

Interesting article. But it fails to mention that the samples have now been sent to the U.S. for testing because the Russians could not get the chemicals needed to do the DNA work. I believe an announcement is expected at the end of April or sometime in May.
Lexi

[lexi4]

Originally Posted by windsorbrides1

First of all the fact that Dr. Gill said what he said about if you accept that these samples are from Anna Anderson, had NOTHING to do with him questioning that or thinking otherwise, it's just a scientists way of announcing findings - especially DNA. It was done before that and will be done again.

As far as the Titanic identity that was pointed to as an example. The original identity was made from Nuclear DNA which degrades faster. When the Mitachondrial DNA was extracted and PCR tested, it proved who the boy was.

Dr. William Maples. stated that considering the trauma that the bones had suffered (stabbing, acid soaked, underground) that the bones were in excellent shape. Most teeth and most of the skeletons were present for all of the 9 original skeltons found. The other thing is that you must remember that 8 of the skeletons were also identified by their teeth. Which is one of the ways skeletons are still identified by forensic scientists.

Dr. Peter Gill used the PCR method of DNA sampling, which first came in to use in the early 1990's, to identify the Romanovs. It has been known to have the ability to recover DNA information from very small (or degraded) starting samples. In fact, not only did Dr. Gill identify the bones, but, Sir Alec John Jeffreys, the man considered to be the foremost DNA expert at the time, did similar tests on the same pieces of bone and found the same result. Dr. William Maples extracted the teeth when he was working with them and took one from each skull to to Dr. Marie Claire King. She also identified the bones as the Romanovs and had the exact same findings as Gill and Jeffreys. US Military Scientists were called in as backup to Gill and Jeffreys and their findings were the same as well.

The thing that did it for me as far as the identification of the Romanovs is the prescence of a hetroplasmy in the DNA sample of the Tsar. Which of course is why Dr. Gill has been quite lambasted over time. The truth is that once the body of Nicholas's brother George was disinterred from the grave in the Cathedral of St.Peter and Paul in St. Petersburg a sample of DNA was taken from the remains to see whether skeletal remains allegedly belonging to his older brother, the last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, were legitimate or not. The DNA sample obtained from the remains was an exact match with those obtained from the remains of Nicholas II.

Dr. Alec Knight denied the Romanovs were the bones that were removed from the grave. He stated he tested the supposed finger of Princess Elizabeth, the sister of Princess Alexandra, and it did not match. Princess Elizabeth died in a mine with several other people - tossed there by the Cheka. Varvara Yakovleva was also tossed into the mine with Princess Elizabeth. So, until a DNA test is set up for Varvara Yakovleva's relatives, we cannot be sure that the finger tested was not that of Varvara Yakovleva, nor that the finger that Dr. Alec Knight tested belonged to Princess Elizabeth. The Princess was also known to have worked with Tubeculosis victims. As a paralegal I know that a TB carrier or victim cannot be identified using DNA sampling. Something about the molecular structure of the blood. I don't remember the technical stuff, but I'll look it up and see if I can find it.

I believe there was an article in Science Magazine in 2005 that discussed using DNA to identify a TB carrier. It can be done.
You present o good defense of the bodies found in the mass grave belonging to the Romanovs. I don't think too many people question those findings. Or at least I don't. I think the heart of this dispute is the chain of custody involved in the samples which came from Anna Anderson. That seems to be at the heart of every debate.
Lexi

[Elspeth]

Originally Posted by ChatNoir

The sample was found by a woman in a book shop and given to Peter Kurth. He and nobody else had no idea from where it came, the envelope it was found in, had "Princess Anastasia's hair" written on it. So much for chain of custody.

So unless you're accusing the scientists of switching samples, the hair did in fact come from the same person as the intestinal sample? Which suggests that the intestinal sample wasn't some random sample from someone completely different and relabelled as coming from Anna Anderson.

A very tenuous match, according to Shay McNeal. A result that would not hold up in any court.

As I said - a lot of scientific results, including correct ones, wouldn't hold up in court because the standards of proof (if you can even use the word "proof" in science) are different. The match was good enough for the paper to make it through the peer review process at a major journal, whose purpose is to catch overstated results, among other things. If the conclusions made by the authors were inconsistent with the data, the peer review process should have caught it. To what extent is Shay McNeal an authority on DNA testing?

BTW, this is the wording from the paper:

"No sequence differences were observed between duplicate samples from the same individual. In general, 380 nucleotides in the first hypervariable region (bases 16020 to 16400) and 360 nucleotides in the second hypervariable region (bases 48 to 408) were determined from the amplified bone DNA extracts. The quality of the sequence was generally comparable to that produced from the fresh blood samples (Fig 2). Pairwise comparisons from the nine bone samples indicated that six different sequences were present in the group which varied on average by six nucleotides and identical sequences were generated from the putative Tsarina and three children (Table 2). HRH Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, is a grand-nephew of unbroken maternal descent from Tsarina Alexandra (Fig 3). He provided a sample of blood for comparison purposes which enabled us to confirm the sibling status of the children and the identification of the mother; all of the mtDNA sequences were the same (Table 2)."

The results from Table 2 are as follows. The standard reference sequence used for mtDNA testing is at the top, the sequence of the DNA from the putative Tsarina is in the middle, and the sequence of the DNA from Prince Philip is at the bottom. Nucleotides that don't match the reference sequence are in red.


CTCCCCACCTTT ATTA...
TTCCCCACCTTC ATTG..C
TTCCCCACCTTC ATTG..C

(the dots are where there's no data)


As you can see, every time the other two sequences don't match the reference sequence, the difference is the same for both. In other words, they're identical to each other. Please explain how this match is tenuous.

Again, a very dubious chain of custody. Who was present when the sample was taken?

Presumably the person who collected the sample, unless you're suggesting that Prince Philip drew his own blood. And since the sample matched a sample from the putative Tsarina (see above), it would appear that it was genuine.

He was the one who said: If one accepts etc etc. Not me.
And his paper has been disputed by other scientists.

Which other scientists?

Once in a while, yes, and this is the one we heard about. How many go by unnoticed by the general public? What it means, is that DNA is not infallible.

No, it doesn't. There's nothing wrong with the technique. If it's used correctly, it gives correct results. As with all techniques, if it isn't used correctly, it'll give incorrect results. Doctors occasionally misread mammograms; it would be utterly foolish to dismiss mammography as a useful technique on the basis of a few mistakes by a few individuals, yet that's what you're trying to do here. The people who are so casually dismissing the results of these analyses are so far not addressing how the same results were obtained independently in two labs (actually, I think it was three labs because the analyses were also being done in Russia). Are you seriously trying to say that the exact same mistakes were independently made by two different groups in two different labs on two different continents? The probability of that scenario is remote to say the least. The alternative would be some sort of conspiracy between them to fudge their results so they appeared correct when they weren't - and that's where we're getting into the realms of accusation of criminal wrongdoing, which is something I hope you have good grounds for making.

All I am doing, is showing that nothing is infallible.

No, you aren't. You're trying to use mistakes in another case to cast doubt on these particular results. I think everyone would agree that any analysis technique has at some point given wrong results because the technician screwed up, the machine wasn't calibrated, the samples were contaminated or wrongly labelled, or whatever other reason. However, in order to cast doubt on the Gill-Stoneking results, you need to show that they were doing something wrong, not that someone else was doing something wrong in a totally unrelated case ten years later.

So, we are getting personal now, how very, very professional. Yes, I am an Executive Butler, not at all an intelligent person by your standards.

If you're casting doubt on scientific research, your scientific credentials and your understanding of science are entirely relevant. You're accusing highly regarded scientists of (at the very least) serious incompetence and at worst criminal conspiracy and fraud, and it would be nice to know how deeply you understand the science and, if you don't, why you're so confidently trashing the reputations of these researchers.

But as long as you or any of your scientist friends cannot legally produce a proof that AA was FS, I am free to believe what I want. And there is nothing you can do about it.

I don't especially care what you believe. I care about these allegations you're making against highly reputable research scientists.

Here is a tidbit from Peterkurth.com

Food for thought:

Peter Kurth would be another world-renowned expert on genetics like Shay McNeal, would he?

More food for thought, from some of the actual scientists involved in the analyses:

From Terry Melton:

"Multiple labs got the same results on different tissues (hair/intestinal tissues) at different times. Independent testing such as this is best practice in forensic testing, especially when the results are going to be scrutinized at the level of this case. It is highly unlikely that the same results would be obtained in different labs if the work was shoddy. More likely, the labs would have gotten different results that made no sense compared to each other.
The science that was used is basic, and the methods, while becoming more sensitive and streamlined since the time of the original tests, were and are designed to get at the most basic building blocks of human identity: the DNA sequence. The DNA sequence cannot change when the methods change. There is no more elemental level of inspection."


From Mark Stoneking:

"Terry Melton and I carried out mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis of
hairs that were purported to be those of Anna Anderson. We found
that the mtDNA sequence from the hair did not match the mtDNA
sequence of a known maternal relative of Anastasia and hence the
hairs could not have come from Anastasia. At the same time, and
completely independently, Peter Gill and his associates carried out
mtDNA analysis of a tissue biopsy specimen purported to be from Anna
Anderson. The mtDNA sequence that they obtained also did not match
that of the known maternal relative of Anastasia, so they also
concluded that the tissue specimen could not have come from
Anastasia. Now, one could of course argue that the hairs and the
tissue specimen did not come from Anna Anderson, but the mtDNA
sequence from the hairs matched the mtDNA sequence from the tissue
specimen, indicating that they most likely came from the same
person. Moreover, as Peter Gill demonstrated, the mtDNA sequence
from the hairs and the tissue specimen also matched the mtDNA
sequence of a maternal relative of Franzisca Schanzkowska. These DNA
tests therefore indicate that Anna Anderson was not Anastasia, and
most likely she was Franzisca Schanzkowska. I would further add that
these sorts of DNA tests are considered highly reliable and are used
routinely in the forensic DNA community."