The Genetic Genealogist

As you all know, I have high hopes for the genetic profiling company 23andMe. Although 23andMe has not officially launched a product available to the public, it turns out that the founders have chosen a great name for their company.

Nancy Friedman, a name developer and corporate copywriter based in Oakland, has written a lengthy analysis of the name ‘23andMe’ on her blog ‘Away with Words.’ She suggests that the name was deftly crafted and is even better than the oft-suggested name ‘46andMe.’ Ms. Friedman’s post is also the first place I’ve ever seen a pronunciation for Anne Wojcicki’s last name (which is wo-JIT-skee). Turns out I wasn’t too far off!

Here they are, the “First 10″, the first ten volunteers of the Personal Genome Project, announced today:

• Misha Angrist, Ph.D. is Senior Science Editor at the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy in Durham, N.C. His work has appeared in The Michigan Quarterly Review and the Best New American Voices anthology, among other places. Dr. Angrist is also an independent consultant to the life sciences industry. He earned his M.S. in biology from the University of Cincinnati and his Ph.D. in genetics from Case Western Reserve University. His doctoral work focused on the complex inheritance of Hirschsprung disease. Following completion of his post-doctoral in 1998, Dr. Angrist covered the life sciences industry as an analyst for The Freedonia Group and was portfolio manager for the hedge fund Biotech Horizons Fund, LP. Dr. Angrist also holds a M.F.A. from the Bennington Writing Seminars. His firm, Ars Vita Consulting, Inc., provides insight to clients in the biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and broader healthcare arenas. For recent news by or about Dr. Angrist, see The New Atlantis and Future Medicine.

• Keith Batchelder, M.D. is the founder and CEO of Genomic Healthcare Strategies. Dr. Batchelder received an MD from Hahnemann University School of Medicine, an MS in Materials Science from New York University, a DMD from the University of Connecticut School of Dental Medicine, and a BA in physics from Middlebury College. Dr. Batchelder has been a consultant for personalized health and wellness companies such as Lineagen and an officer in several health-care organizations. He was chief technical officer of Worldcare Clinical Trials, and was a core member of the team that created Harvard Salud Integral, a new HMO in Mexico City, where he helped secure angel funding in a newly privatized healthcare environment and helped to grow the plan to cover 150,000 patients. He was also an early principal with Amicas, a company that was successfully sold for approximately $30 million cash and stock equivalents. For recent news about Dr. Batchelder, see Nature, Mass High Tech, and an interview with our own EyeonDNA!

• George M. Church, Ph.D. is a Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Health Sciences & Technology at Harvard and MIT. With Walter Gilbert he developed the first direct genomic sequencing method in 1984 and helped initiate the Human Genome Project in 1984 while he was a Research Scientist at newly-formed Biogen Inc. He invented the broadly-applied concepts of molecular multiplexing and tags, homologous recombination methods, and DNA array synthesizers. Technology transfer of automated sequencing & software to Genome Therapeutics Corp. resulted in the first commercial genome sequence, (the human pathogen, Helicobacter pylori) in 1994. He initiated the Personal Genome Project (PGP) in 2005 and research on synthetic biology. He is director of the U.S. Department of Energy Center on Bioenergy at Harvard & MIT and director of the National Institutes of Health (NHGRI) Center of Excellence in Genomic Science at Harvard, MIT & Washington University. He has been advisor to 22 companies, most recently co-founding (with Joseph Jacobson, Jay Keasling, and Drew Endy) Codon Devices, a biotech startup dedicated to synthetic biology and (with Chris Somerville) founding LS9, which is focused on biofuels. He is a senior editor for Nature EMBO Molecular Systems Biology. See the Boston Globe, Technology Review, his departmental page, his lab webpage, and our very own PersonalGenome.

• Esther Dyson is an active member of a number of non-profit and advisory organizations. From 1998 to 2000, she was the founding chairman of ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. She has followed closely the post-Soviet transition of Eastern Europe, and is a member of the Bulgarian President’s IT Advisory Council, along with Vint Cerf, George Sadowsky, and Veni Markovski, among others. She has served as a trustee of, and helped fund, emerging organizations such as Glasses for Humanity, Bridges.org, the National Endowment for Democracy, and the Eurasia Foundation. She is also a member of the board for The Long Now Foundation, trustee for the Santa Fe Institute, the Advisory Board of the Stockholm Challenge Award and is a part-owner of the First Monday journal. She is a member of the President’s Export Council Subcommittee on Encryption and sits on the boards of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Scala Business Solutions, Poland Online, Cygnus Solution, E-Pub Services, Trustworks (Amsterdam), IBS (Moscow), iCat, New World Publishing and the Global Business Network. She is on the advisory boards of Perot Systems and the Internet Capital Group, and a limited partner of the Mayfield Software Fund. She has also been a board member or early investor in tech startups, among them Flickr, PowerSet.com, ZEDO, Medscape, Medstory, XCOR, Constellation Services, Zero-G,Icon Aircraft and Space Adventures. Ms. Dyson is the daughter of Freeman Dyson, a physicist, and Verana Huber-Dyson, a mathematician. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard University (1972). For recent news about Ms. Dyson, see The Huffington Post, Media Visions, MediaPost, and The Wall Street Journal.

• Rosalynn Gill-Garrison, Ph.D., is a founder and Chief Science Officer of Sciona, an international company that provides personalized health and nutrition recommendations based on an individual’s diet, lifestyle and unique genetic profile. Dr. Gill-Garrison is also on the panel of experts at Genelex. Dr. Gill-Garrison received her Ph.D. in Biological Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, where she focused on the DNA-damaging effects of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in animal and bacterial models. She went to the UK in1994 to the Department of Oncology at University College London before co-founding Sciona in 2000. For recent news about Dr. Gill-Garrison, see Time, MedScape, The Scientist, and the BBC.

• John D. Halamka, M.D., M.S., is Chief Information Officer of Harvard Medical School, Chief Information Officer of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Chairman of the New England Health Electronic Data Interchange Network (NEHEN), Chief Information Officer of the Harvard Clinical Research Institute (HCRI), and an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Halamka completed his undergraduate studies at Stanford University where he received a degree in Medical Microbiology and a degree in Public Policy with a focus on technology issues. Dr. Halamka received a medical degree at the University of California San Francisco while pursuing graduate work in Bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley, focusing on technology issues in medicine. For recent news about Dr. Halamka, see The Boston Globe, BIDMC News, Yahoo Finance News, a podcast about health information exchange, and a newscast about online medical records.

• Stanley N. Lapidus, B.S.E.E., is the President and CEO of Helicos, a company that develops genetic analysis technologies for research, drug discovery, and clinical diagnostics markets. Helicos is Mr. Lapidus’ third life-science startup. In 1995 he founded EXACT Sciences Corporation, an applied genomics company that develops and markets non-invasive, DNA-based methods for early detection of colorectal and other common cancers. He served as the CEO from 1995 to 2001 and Chairman of EXACT Sciences’ Board of Directors from 2000 until the end of 2005. Prior to EXACT, Mr. Lapidus founded Cytyc Corporation and was President and CEO from 1987 through 1994. In addition to his entrepreneurial activities, Mr. Lapidus holds academic appointments in the Pathology Department at Tufts University Medical School and MIT’s Sloan School of Management. He earned a BSEE from Cooper Union. He has served as a trustee of Cooper Union since 2002. Mr. Lapidus holds 30 issued patents. For recent news about Mr. Lapidus, see Flagship Ventures, MarketingVP, The Hazelton Group, and Technology Review.

• Kirk M. Maxey, M.D. is the President of Cayman Chemical, a research biochemical company he started while still a student. After receiving his B.S. in Chemistry from Colorado State University, Dr. Maxey worked as a chemist at the Upjohn Company in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He later received his M.D. from the University of Michigan. Dr. Maxey has been a consultant and expert witness for Alcon and Pfizer as well as a contributing editor and reviewer for Prostaglandins and Other Lipid Mediators. While a student in the 1980′s, Dr. Maxey was a frequent contributor at sperm banks. contributed For recent news about Dr. Maxey, see PBS and ABC News.

• James L. Sherley, M.D., Ph.D. was formerly an associate professor in the Biological Engineering Division at the Center for Environmental Health Sciences in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He earned an M.D. and a Ph.D. in molecular biology from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1988. Dr. Sherley’s laboratory addressed the problems that limit the development of adult stem cells for biomedicine. Dr. Sherley’s awards include the 2006 NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, an award from the Pew Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences, selection for the Pew Science and Society Institute, and the Ellison Medical Foundation Senior Scholar Award in Aging. For recent news about Dr. Sherley, see Future Health, Boston.com, Diverse Education, The Chronicle, and Boston.com.

The 10th participant has not yet given permission for the release of his/her name. From the announcement:

“Word in the newsroom is that InSequence will have a full feature story, with interviews of the participants, in tomorrow’s edition of the newsletter. If you’re a subscriber, you’ll be able to access it here.”

There’s a great recent article in Scientific American entitled “What Finnish Grandmothers Reveal about Human Evolution” highlighting the research of biologist Virpi Lummaa. I’ve mentioned before that while genetics is a useful tool for genealogical research, genealogy can also be a useful tool for genetic research! Dr. Lummaa’s research does exactly that.

Dr. Lummaa used 200 years of genealogical records to study the influence of evolution on reproduction”

“The 33-year-old Finnish biologist, aided by genealogists, has pored through centuries-old tomes (and microfiche) for birth, marriage and death records, which ended up providing glimpses of evolution at work in humanity’s recent ancestors.”

Dr. Lummaa proposes the following findings from her research of pre-modern Finns

• Male twins affect the mating potential of their female twins – the females are 25% less likely to have children and were 15% less likely to marry than female twins born with a sister. (Don’t worry, the article discusses many of the other variables that the study addressed). This finding is odd, because it suggests that there should be selection AGAINST opposite-sex twinning.

• Mothers who gave birth to sons had shorter life spans than those who gave birth to daughters. Dr. Lummaa proposes that this is due to larger birth weight, the testosterone that crosses the placenta, and the fact that boys tend to leave the nest while girls tend to stay close.

• Grandmothers are important to the survival of grandchildren. The presence of a grandmother might improve the reproductive potential of her grandchildren. This could, in part, explain why humans live so long after the end of their reproductive stage.

• Here’s another controversial finding – child mortality was higher in mainland towns than on the islands of Finland’s Archipelago Sea, presumably because mainland women replaced mother’s milk with cow’s milk much earlier.

It’s important to keep in mind, of course, that this research was carried out by studying the records of pre-modern people. Additionally, there are numerous cultural and social aspects that might influence the results, although Dr. Lummaa addresses some of them in the article.

(I just received a Google alert about this article – I’m not sure why it took so long for the article to be indexed. By the way, if you’re interested in the latest news about a certain topic, I highly recommend setting up a Google Alert. I don’t think a blogger could survive without it!).

Esther Dyson is a prominent force in the digital world, and is considered to be a member of the ‘digerati’ (a term for people who are the movers and shakers of everything technological). She is the daughter of the famous physicist Freeman Dyson and the mathematician Verana Huber-Dyson.

According to Wikipedia, the company that Ms. Dyson founded, EDventure Holdings, analyzes the impact of emerging technologies and markets on economies and societies. In addition, Ms. Dyson is on the board of the genetics company 23andme. Her interest in genetics and emerging technology is undoubtedly one of the main reasons she has decided to become one of the “First 10.”

The “First 10”

The “First 10” (or “First Ten”) references ten volunteers who are part of the Personal Genome Project, or the PGP. The PGP, headed by Dr. George M. Church of Harvard, aims to develop affordable personal genome sequences as well as user-friendly data applications. Initially, the project will start by releasing the sequencing and complete medical records of 10 individuals. Because of issues of risk versus benefit and informed consent, the first set of ten volunteers will be people who have a “master’s level or equivalent training in genetics or equivalent understanding of genetics research.” According to the PGP website, “[p]roduction costs per subject range from $8K for a limited subset of the genome to over $200K per subject to cover a significant fraction of their DNA.” According to a recent New York Times article, the “project’s volunteers will receive the one percent of their genome currently deemed most useful at a cost of $1,000.” This conflicts with the PGP’s description of the cost, and I’m not sure what the discrepancy is about.

Ms. Dyson’s Decision to Become One of the “First 10”

Ms. Dyson recently gave a short talk (the video is available here) at Fortune’s iMeme conference in San Francisco about her part in the Personal Genome Project. A summer of the talk was posted at Xconomy.com, “Learning from Esther Dyson’s Genome”:

“Famous venture capitalist Esther Dyson explained her reasons for being one of Church’s first ten volunteers last week at Fortune’s first iMeme conference in San Francisco. Church (who is also an Xconomist) hopes to gather enough data from the project to speed research into the links between gene variations and both common and rare human diseases, and to accelerate progress toward more individualized health care based on patients’ genetic profiles.”

In the comment section of the Xconomy.com post, you’ll find a thought-provoking conversation led by Willy Lensch, Ph.D. ThePersonalGenome.com pointed out that the Dr. Lensch’s first comment ended with a great sentence, so go check it out.

“Full Disclosure”

This week also saw an entire article in the Wall Street Journal titled “Full Disclosure” by Ms. Dyson. In the article, Ms. Dyson points out that sometime this summer or early fall, her genome, her answers to a substantial health questionnaire, and all her medical records will be posted on the Internet for the entire world to see:

“I’m one of 10 members of Harvard geneticist George Church’s Personal Genome project. We all come to this with slightly different motivations, histories and medical records. But we share, in theory, the equivalent of a master’s degree in genetics, an age between 30 and 100, and a willingness to come to Boston to give blood, get our faces professionally photographed and sit down with one another to discuss strategy.”

Ms. Dyson goes on to explain her motives for becoming one of the “First 10”:

1. She wants to show that there’s nothing especially magical about her genome – she’s actually more worried about releasing the questionnaire, which documents her behavior!
2. She doesn’t have any deep secrets or vulnerabilities;
3. She won’t get fired and she has insurance (i.e. low potential for discrimination);
4. She wants to examine the effects of personal genome sequencing on society;
5. She believes such sequencing is inevitable, and;
6. The project will generate useful data for others to use.

There is a great discussion of the project and Ms. Dyson’s decision to join it in the comment section of a post at Genome Technology. You can also find more at EyeonDNA.

Issue #3 of Volume 6 of Family Tree DNA’s “Facts & Genes” is available at their website. This issue highlights their new website and state-of-the-art Genomics Research Center, as well as their advanced genetic genealogy tests, the role of surnames, and mtDNA haplogroups.

Some interesting posts about DNA and/or genetic genealogy in the blogosphere:

• Hsien at EyeonDNA posted about genetic genealogy in the Middle East: “Eastern Biotech & Life Sciences in Dubai have signed an agreement to be part of the Genographic Project via Family Tree DNA. They plan to create a database for the Middle Eastern population.”

• ScienceRoll posted about the SNPedia wiki, which is a database of information about human genome SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms). The site has “a list about what kind of SNPs James Watson has. For example, his DNA contains a SNP that may implicate a risk for Alzheimer’s disease. Follow their blog for more!“

• Anthropology.net posted about an article by Freeman Dyson, ‘Our Biotech Future‘ in which Dyson “embarks on a fascinating discussion on a range of topics including how biology is now bigger business than physics, and how he believes that over the next 50 years, biotechnology will revolutionise our lives in much the same way same way as computers have done over the previous 50 years.“

While I was exploring Dr. Watson’s SNPs, I began to realize just how far we have to go before a list of SNPs provides useful or insightful information. When is a SNP more than just a simple mutation? When does a SNP mean more than just a propensity for disease? It will undoubtedly take many more lists and much more research before science can answer these question.

(Nonetheless, it would still be exciting to see a list of my SNPs, even without the useful information)

Dr. Mark A. Jobling at the University of Leicester published a study in 2005 that examined DYS464, a Y-DNA marker commonly sequenced for genetic genealogical purposes. As it turns out, sequencing DYS464 can inadvertently detect an AZFc deletion. Deletion of AZFc (azoospermia factor c) causes spermatogenic failure and subsequently, male infertility. This marker is tested by at least 6 firms.

Dr. Jobling pointed out that a previous study had concluded that an AZFc deletion could be found in 1 in every 4000 males. In Dr. Jobling’s study there were 3 cases in 3255 males tested, which he states is “not significantly different from 1 in 4000.” A story in the New Scientist stated that “a study by Jobling’s team suggests that 1 in 1000 men has the deletion,” but I think that is an overstatement by the media. I haven’t seen anywhere that Dr. Jobling made such a statement – he was merely listing some of his data. Elsewhere, Ann Turner has suggested that at FTDNA, the number is around 1 in 8,000. Although the exact frequency has not yet been determined, it appears that it is rather low.

The number of markers tested will undoubtedly continue to rise before we cross The Barrier, the move from individual STRs to full-genome sequencing. As a result, the probability that a tested marker could reveal more than just genealogical information will become more and more likely. It is, and always will be, important that individuals be aware of the possible consequences of DNA testing BEFORE they undergo DNA testing. Naturally, this awareness is the responsibility of both the DNA testing firm and the individual.

HT: Hsien, and thank you to the Journal of Medical Genetics for making this paper open access.

My great-grandmother belongs to Haplogroup H, and I always feel a little bad for her. Not that I have anything against Haplgroup H’ers, but they got the short end of the stick. You see, currently all mtDNA sequences are compared to the Revised Cambridge Reference Sequence (rCRS), an mtDNA sequenced derived in the early 1980’s and recently updated. Since the source of most of the mtDNA for that sequence belonged to Haplogroup H, people who belong to Haplogroup H often have no deviations at all and their sequencing results tend to be a little boring. Imagine if your mtDNA testing company sends your results and they say: “You belong to Haplogroup H, and your deviations from the rCRS are as follows: 0.” You see, a little dull.

Comparing everyone’s mtDNA to a randomly chosen sequence has always seemed so artificial to me. It was out of necessity of course, and maybe it will only be temporary. A recent paper in Nucleic Acids Research proposes that with the ready availability of many full-length mtDNA sequences, researchers can begin to compose a ‘consensus sequence.’ For the non-geneticists out there, a consensus sequence is sort of a master mtDNA sequence, the result of comparing many (or all) mtDNA sequences to create a single sequence that they can be used to describe them all.

The study used 827 recent high-quality full-length mtDNA sequences to create a consensus sequence and analyze the variability of human mtDNA. First and foremost, it is important that this is the very earliest stages of this type of study, and hopefully future research will use thousands of sequences from all over the globe (and from many different time frames using ancient mtDNA).

From the sequences studied, fully 84.1% of the mtDNA genome was invariant! Additionally, 43.8% of the variable sites were ‘personal mutations’, mutations found only in a single sequence. One of the most interesting pieces of information was that the sequences differed from the consensus by 21.6 nucleotides. Thus (if this number holds true with further research), if you were to randomly pick a person off the street, your mtDNA sequence will only differ, on average, by 21 or 22 nucleotides. The full range, however, was from 5 to 89 nucleotides, a pretty big range:

Another great piece of information was the variance between the rCRS and the human consensus generated by the study – 73, 263, 325+C, 750, 1438, 2706, 4769, 7028, 8860, 11719, 14766, and 15326. Interestingly, “[t]his list exactly parallels the changes necessary to go from the rCRS (Haplogroup H2a) through each of the intermediate haplogroups, to macrohaplogroup R.”

A recent paper in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology examined mtDNA extracted from the hair and nails of eight Inuit mummies. These essentially freeze-dried mummies were discovered in 1972 in a natural tomb at Qilakitsoq in the Uummannaq Municipality of Greenland. Using C14 analysis, the mummies have been dated to approximately 1460.

The bodies were found in two separate positions about 1 meter apart. In Grave I, there were five bodies:

1. I/1 = Male Infant #1 – about 6 months of age
2. I/2 = Male Infant #2 – about 4 to 4.5 years of age
3. I/3 = Female #1 – about 20-25 years of age
4. I/4 = Female #2 – about 25-30 years of age
5. I/5 = Female #3 – about 40-50 years of age

In Grave II, there were 3 bodies:

1. I/6 = Female #4 – about 50 years of age
2. I/7 = Female #5 – about 18-21 years of age
3. I/8 = Female #6 – about 50 years of age

The researcher’s primary goals were to sequence the HVR1 region of each individual’s mtDNA, and then to compare the results to determine possible relatedness of the remains. All 8 individuals fell into Haplogroup A2, but belonged to three different maternal lineages which were mixed between the two grave sites:

1. Male Infant #2, Female #1, Female #4, and Female #6
2. Male Infant #1, Female #2, and Female #5
3. Female #3

All of the remains had the following mutations – 16111, 16223, 16290, 16319, and 16362. Of course, this goes along VERY nicely with my hypothesis at my Haplogroup A website that, barring back-mutation, most A haplogroup HVR1′s should have exactly those mutations. That list was the haplotype of subgroup #1. Subgroup #2 had a mutation at 16311, and subgroup #3 had a mutation at 16265. For a description of the possible maternal familial relationships between the remains, click on the figure below.

I saw a recent article in the New York Times, “A Survival Imperative for Space Colonization” that grabbed my attention. I know it isn’t necessarily related to DNA, but I loved the article and the essence behind it, The Copernican Principle.

The Copernican Principle, is named after Nicolaus Copernicus, who stated that the Earth is not in a central, specially favored position. Although it might look like our galaxy is the center of the Universe, observers in all other galaxies would observe the same thing. This idea has been applied to the field of statistics. For example, if you are observing something and your location is not special, then you are observing the thing at a random point during its existence. That is, there is a 95% chance that you are seeing it in the middle 95% of its existence, and not during the beginning 2.5%, or the last 2.5%. That idea can be expressed using the following formula:

(1/39) tp < tf < 39 tp (P = 95% )

tp = past longevity (how long something has already existed)

tf = future longevity

Okay, now for an example let’s use my lifespan. If I’ve been alive for 377 months, then there is a 95% chance that I will continue to live between 9.67 months and 1225 years. Hopefully, 9.67 months is on the low side! If I’ve been married for 57 months, then there is a 95% chance that I will continue to be married between 1.46 months and 185 years. Note the Copernican Formula does not work well for the very young and the very old, people who are already in the beginning 2.5% or final 2.5% of their longevity.

Now when I first saw results like these, my thought was “so what, it’s such a large range how can it be useful?” But then I read about some of the applications of the formula by J. Richard Gott III, the subject of the New York Times article. In 1993, Mr. (Dr.?) Gott used the formula to predict the longevity of all 44 musicals currently on and off Broadway. To date, 40 of the 44 musicals have closed, and all 40 were within the timeframe predicted by the Copernican Formula. A few examples:

Kiss of the Spider Woman (tpast = 24 days, tfuture = 765days)

Miss Saigon (tpast = 777days, tfuture = 2803 days)

The Copernican Formula was also used to predict the longevity of the 313 world leaders in power in 1993. As of 2003, all but one of the cases has been decided, and the Formula was right in 295 cases and wrong in 17 cases. That is a success rate of 94.55%.

Here you can see a story from the New Scientist about the Copernican Formula, and here you can even use a calculator to predict longevity.

In the New York Times story, Mr. Gott discusses the vast importance of future spaceflight to the human race and then opines that there is a 50% chance that we are in the second half of the duration of spaceflight (which has been 46 years). I don’t agree with his reasoning here, as he seems to abandon the true usefulness of the Copernican Formula. So, I thought it would be more fun (and better math) to apply the Copernican Formula to predict the longevity of human spaceflight. Given that we have been in space for 46 years, there is a 95% chance that space exploration will endure between 1.18 years and 1,794 years. I wonder, though, if we’re still in the beginning 2.5% of spaceflight, suggesting that the Principle isn’t very useful for analysis in this situation. I guess we’ll know the answer to that in a few thousand years.

I also found an interesting post about the Copernican Principle at TierneyLab at the New York Times. Comment #80 to the post, written by PSD, contained a few interesting additions.

First, the Copernican Principle requires 3 assumptions:

“One, the given process has a definite beginning in time. Two, the given process will have a definite end. And three, the only information to be used concerning the given process is its known time of duration, regardless of what other information may exist about the process itself or similar processes. In essence, we treat the total (start to finish) duration as if it is completely random: not only could the end occur at any time, but it has an equal chance of ending at any given time. We do not assume to know what those chances are, only that they are constant with time for a given process. All of the examples (thus far) of supposed problems with Dr. Gott’s method are assuming non-randomness and a knowledge of how the chances (of the process ending) vary with time.”

Second, the Copernican Principle can be used in reverse:

“As an aside, Dr. Gott’s statistical method can be applied in reverse to find the statistical certainty associated with a process having begun within a given time span. The data point required to work backwards is the time span between when it became known that the process was occurring and the time at which the process ended.”

Can you come up with any useful predictions using the Copernican Formula?