Sir

Online publication of high-profile papers ahead of print is a great facility for speedily alerting the community to important research results. But these advance online publications rarely carry an accompanying editorial comment, either in Nature or in other journals. In traditional print format, such an authoritative perspective not only serves to clarify technical aspects of the paper and to put it into a wider context, but also acts as an informative back-up to the press release, thereby promoting more responsible reporting by the media of controversial papers.

An example of a paper that notably needed simultaneous online publication of such a comment, given its politically loaded subject matter, is 'Genes mirror geography within Europe' (J. Novembre et al. Nature doi:10.1038/nature07331; 2008). This paper is remarkable, but are journalists likely to take the point that the two genetic components revealed by the authors represent just 0.45% of European genetic variability? That is, that 99.55% of the genetic variability is left aside in the figures and is not correlated with geography? Will they realize that the genetic maps were drawn from a subset of 1,387 in 3,192, from which individuals had been removed who had grandparental ancestry encompassing different regions?

The recent history of ethnic violence in Europe and elsewhere makes it doubtful whether the 'promise of ancestry tests' mentioned by Novembre and colleagues is likely to be a blessing for humanity. Such tests would be ideal tools for implementing discriminatory policies.