Posted on 10/16/2018 6:27:59 AM PDT by Drango
Blah, blah, blah...DNA stuff...~snip
(This is in the conclusion)
But to say that you are 20 percent Irish, 4 percent Native American or 12 percent Scandinavian is fun, trivial and has very little scientific meaning.
(Excerpt) Read more at scientificamerican.com ...
They seem to do a decent job on a continental level. They can find the presence of an African ancestor in a European or a European ancestor in an East Asian. But separating Norwegian DNA from a Spaniard is more difficult and separating Irish DNA from an Englishman is getting extremely hard.
Used to be good. 20 years ago
No sense in worrying about things out of our hands. You can decide not to get a test but if one of your close family members does, they got you.
An easier task may be to avoid doing anything that forces you to worry about any DNA left at a crime scene... :(
These days there are no ‘gold standard’ journals, including Nature, Science, Cell, etc. They all publish their share of tripe - particularly if he author is ‘known’ and has cache. There have been multiple papers now demonstrating the irreproducibility of results published in ‘top’ journals. I can get you the original articles, but this from Reuter’s gives a decent synopsis.
“... I’ve no desire to have my DNA tested. I believe something nefarious will come of it at some point.”
I agree 100% - I have a felon in my family and he’s just a BAD guy. I keep low as best I can. Still on occasion the Sheriff(s) come to my door and make me prove:
1) I am NOT him
2) He is not in the house (warrant) - I have nothing to hide so come on in...
Like I want any of his offspring to have ANY Idea that I even exist! And these DNA tests list your direct relatives!
Have not seen the creep for more than 35+ years and I plan on keeping it that way.
Separating Bill Clinton's DNA from an intern also proved to be a tricky task.
My dna sample results from ancestry match our family’s research and lore.
Recently the “new and improved” data eliminated both of those.
My “new and improved” data dropped my Southern Europe roots (namely, Italy), rolling that percentage into France / Germanic Europe.
Thing is, my Grandpa was 100% Italian. So were his parents... so, yeah... I thought my initial result was right on target, but now that they’ve “improved” it, it seems wrong.
Obviously, it’s SOOOOO imprecise that I don’t know how you could go back and say with any kind of certainty that someone 10 generations back is 1/1000th American Indian.
Take your word - I haven’t read any of those in quite a spell.
“Scientific America is a peer review journal that some hold up to be the gold standard.”
B.S. I subscribed to Scientific American for over two decades, and kept every edition in a large magazine collection, when it was then a good science magazine - until sometime in the 1990s when the “scientific” level of its front cover articles became no better than the History Channel’s “Ancient Aliens” cable TV show. I quit the subscription, and checked new editions at the magazine stand, remaining convinced I was right to cancel the subscription. After three or four years of that I quit checking it out. I would not rank it today as a “bronze” level science journal, much less “gold”. I don’t know who told you it was a “peer reviewed” journal. It isn’t.
My grandmother told me it was peer reviewed AND she was an American Indian. How DARE you doubt her!/s
How nice that the US population is voluntarily providing a database of its DNA, which (naturally) will be accessible to the government.
And Big Brother didn’t even have to ask...
This is a very good article that helps explain a few basics. First the DNA tests offered by Ancestry and 23 and Me provide you with an “ethnicity estimate”. This is marketing pap. The results are a function of their own databases and how they are applying probability to certain data. If you take both tests, you will get different results. I have gotten two very different results from one Ancestry sample as they have enlarged their own database and changed their methodology. Not serious science.
Two, I am very skeptical using these tests for medical analysis as is done by 23 and me. It’s another marketing trick, but one that could have detrimental downsides depending how the information is used.
Three, these tests are useful for genealogical purposes, especially among populations that share a common surname, lived in the same area, and family lore has confused who is whom. To do this, you need to share and compare results with other potential cousins, and you usually need to use third party software tools that will allow you to do the analysis. Ancestry, for example, doesn’t let you know how they are making the stew, you just have to trust their result. One downside is that other people get a copy of your results. It’s not your entire genome, but it’s the interesting bits and there is some risk. Since the DoD already has my DNA, this isn’t a big risk from my perspective, but others might have a different thought.
All I know is, Ancestry matched me up with relatives on both my mother’s and father’s side, and even knew the correct relationships. How would it know, unless there’s something to this?
I to have questions. I look at criminals caught because DNA samples were sent into these sites and come back with” you maybe related to”. Bingo our criminal is caught. Do you authorize the distribution of this data? What if insurance companies get the same information and next thing you know your premiums are $2,000.00 per month because you have a disposition to certain cancers and heart attacks.? .
Actually, the ‘analysis’ provided for Warren, and the online tests, are more like TAROT CARDS.
I took the Ancestry.com DNA test... it came out pretty much as I’d expected.
Yes, mine did the same. I had 8% Jewish, Native American 30%, East Asian 1%, etc... Now, they have all disappeared.
Which is something the general public does not understand. The public believes , based on TV SHOWS, that DNA testing can find EXACT MATCHES.
It cannot. It only finds groupings of certain 'traits' in 'similar' order in a small percentage of a tiny part of the overall DNA information.
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