Science refutes history??? No way ho-ZAY.

Totally predictably, an NYT article on Jewish genetics has compelled me to jumpstart the fallow blog. My only comment for now is regarding Nicholas Wade's claim that the new studies "refute" Schlomo Sand's argument in The Invention of the Jewish People that the "Jews have no common origin but are a miscellany of people in Europe and Central Asia who converted to Judaism at various times." I'm willing to concede that Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews are more likely to be genetically related to one another than to their geographical neighbors, but this in no way indicates a direct descent from Ancient Israel. I'm not against the State of Israel as a Jewish State, but it is highly problematic to try to attempt to defend or refute this argument using genetic evidence. There's no way to absolutely distinguish between science, history and politics, but I do wish that people would just give up on claiming that science is "value free" and that it therefore serves as "unbiased" evidence in political-historical arguments. Science has never been value-free and it never will be. This is not to say that all science is politically motivated, but rather that all science has the potential to be politically used and abused... from BOTH sides, ALL sides, in the past, present and surely in the future.