As far as genetic testing is concerned, after over 200 years I reckon it would be impossible to identify anyone, anywhere as a descendant of a small group of Wolverine survivors out of the entire Wolverine population:
To begin with, the Clans don't know who survived so they don't know who they're looking for. Except for the Warriors from the breeding program, the Wolverine members would be random guys, i.e. a very heterogenic group, from the Exodus whose genetic code would presumably not even be on file anywhere. And even if you have the entire Wolverine population's genetic codes stored, you're checking for descendants two centuries down the line, at least five generations. Even if there somehow are unique Wolverine genetic markers, they will not be identifyable anymore by this time. Keep in mind the human DNA is over 95% identical with chimpanzee DNA, and you'll see how small the differences between individual humans are in a potential pool of billions of individuals.
A book itself which may simply be a copy of in universe Society propaganda rather than in universe history.
No. As per the rules on Canon as laid out by then-LD Herb Beas, and by the description of the concept of "novel fiction" in the
25 Years of Art and Fiction tome,
Betrayal of Ideals is the absolute straight truth of what happened, period. You can take the novel at face value.
And if that wasn't enough, two Line Developers have since explicitly confirmed that, as described in
Betrayal of Ideals, Trish Ebon's group became the Minnesota Tribe. That much is undisputable canon.
That's interesting. I knew the published version added the new epilogue chapter. I hadn't realized it purged some of the serialized BattleCorps content.
There are two editions of the novel, the earlier BattleCorps serial and the print edition. The former has additional appendices while the latter has an additional prologue and epilogue. Both editions are fully canonical. There is an explicit ruling that as far as BattleTech canon is concerned, an omission does not equal a de-canonisation so the fact that all the epilogue scenes were published in the BattleCorps edition is enough for them to be canon, even when they weren't reproduced in print.