New genetic evidence of positive selection for Ashkenazi diseases

Now that you've made me think about it I'm less sure how big of a concern it should be. My problem is that I just don't know the issues in population genetics well enough to know if my hypothesis is right. Maybe you can tell me. My sense is that a lot of the evidence that confirms Cochrane and Harpending's views is positive evidence demonstrating genetic divergence coincident with the development of agriculture. The discovery of any genetic divergence is interesting and is likely to be published. The absence of a divergence, on the other hand doesn't give us as much to talk about.

My sense with the Neanderthal stuff is that is is pretty conclusive. But one would expect evidence for Modern human- Neanderthal interbreeding to get a lot more publicity than evidence against it. You know, just because the former is weird and exciting.

The other thing is that Cochrane and Harpending contradicted the prevailing wisdom on a lot of the issues they brought up. Evidence that contradicts the consensus view seems 'newer' and is often more likely to get published and more likely to get picked up by science news outlets (as long as it doesn't contradict the consensus view too much). In contrast, evidence that simply confirms the dominant hypothesis seems more like a replicated study and is less frequently published and less frequently picked up by news outlets. Note that I'm trying to extend general notions about publication bias to population genetics. I don't really know much about the field, this is a very 'outside view' hypothesis.