How DNA Botched My Family’s Heritage...

[Word Nerd]

I thought this was interesting and wanted to share since there have been recent discussions about DNA testing at home: https://gizmodo.com/how-dna-testing-botched-my-familys-heritage-and-probab-1820932637

 

“These companies are asking people to pay for something that is at best trivial and at worst astrology,†said Rutherford.

[Word Nerd]

I’d still like to try it at some point. I suppose the key is having realistic expectations.

[Petrichor]

Interesting. Thanks for sharing!

[maize]

The genealogy/relative finder aspect is more useful for sure :)

[Farrar]

I also read something just recently about how they sometimes cave to people who want to prove they have a certain ancestry - in other words, some of these companies can be bought.

 

Dh has documented, matrilineal (so there's no milkman situation here) that didn't show up on his testing. After that, I was like, these things aren't as right as we think.

 

[maize]

I also read something just recently about how they sometimes cave to people who want to prove they have a certain ancestry - in other words, some of these companies can be bought.

 

Dh has documented, matrilineal (so there's no milkman situation here) that didn't show up on his testing. After that, I was like, these things aren't as right as we think.

May I ask how many generations back your dh's heritage that didn't show up is? And is it continent level or more specific?

[nixpix5]

Not surprising. They cannot take DNA and use it to map heritage. All they can do is compare a sample to all of the preexisting samples in a data base. The longer the company has been around, the closer your results will be to something in the correct ball park. It is not an exact science by any means.

[PeacefulChaos]

Aw, man.  I was hopeful that doing the 23andme one would be helpful.  Knowing only half of my lineage, it's always been a curiosity of mine what the other half could be.  

 

Bummer.

[MaeFlowers]

I’d still like to try it at some point. I suppose the key is having realistic expectations.

It seems to me that the author of the article didn't have realistic expectations.

[MaeFlowers]

Aw, man. I was hopeful that doing the 23andme one would be helpful. Knowing only half of my lineage, it's always been a curiosity of mine what the other half could be.

 

Bummer.

I would still take the test. It could still point you in a useful direction or connect you to realtives who do know your heritage.

[AimeeM]

We found the testing to be pretty darn accurate, actually. 

 

DH tested in at about 90% Italian (if I recall), which is about what we assumed, considering he is the first generation in his family born in the United States on his mother's side, second generation born in the United States on his father's side. Since he knew both sides of the family, and they lived close to each other his entire childhood and early adult years, and most of them were Italian immigrants, going back many generations, and we had papers that proved as much, it would have been a kick in the pants to hear otherwise, lol.

 

Mine were scattered, which also wasn't a surprise. What did show up was largely expected, considering what we know of our family history.

[Terabith]

I can't post links on the forum, but there's an interesting article on cracked.com called "Inside the Shady World of DNA Testing Companies" written by someone who works at one of them.

 

ETA:  That said, it was accurate for me and what I know of my family background.

Edited February 15, 2018 by Terabith

[Zinnia]

Aw, man.  I was hopeful that doing the 23andme one would be helpful.  Knowing only half of my lineage, it's always been a curiosity of mine what the other half could be.  

 

Bummer.

 

My friend is adopted, and she always wondered about her heritage  The results showed a heavy dominance of Scots-Irish.  For her, that's enough, and it is very satisfying to her to have an idea, a place, a people.  

[GoodGrief]

I haven't read the article yet, but people need to go into this realizing that they don't inherit DNA from every ancestor. You get 50% from each parent, but that 50% is not an even mix from each grandparent. Biological full siblings will not have the same mix.

[Tanaqui]

Biological full siblings will not have the same mix.

 

Well, I mean, unless they're identical twins.

 

[retiredHSmom]

I haven't read the article yet, but people need to go into this realizing that they don't inherit DNA from every ancestor. You get 50% from each parent, but that 50% is not an even mix from each grandparent. Biological full siblings will not have the same mix.

This is a great point and exactly why we tested.  My husband's mom was born in Japan and didn't emigrate to the US until she was in her mid-30s and his dad was from Louisiana.  My heritage is 98%-europea-been-in-the-US-since-the-Mayflower.  We were discussing that because of how DNA is passed that our kids could mathematically range from 0% Japanese to 50%.  We did the test that day after Christmas.  My daughters came back as 20% (pale, pale white skin, blue eyes curly brown hair) and 25% japanese (blond hair green eyes but a Japanese face, she looks just like my MIL except blond with green eyes) and my son came back as 33% (he has brown eyes, brown curly hair and epicanthic folds on his eyes).  Both girls have inherited the Asian flush reaction to alcohol from my husband. My husband came in at 51%.  It was fun to see.

[maize]

Aw, man. I was hopeful that doing the 23andme one would be helpful. Knowing only half of my lineage, it's always been a curiosity of mine what the other half could be.

 

Bummer.

It can be very helpful--through connecting you with relatives who do know their lineage.

 

An example from my family: my grandmother knows very little about her grandfather, who died after being married to her grandmother for only a few months. Family stories said he was from Sweden but no one was sure.

 

My grandma did DNA tests with a couple of companies and it turns out she has a boatload of relatives in a particular region of Sweden.

[maize]

We've had four generations test in my family, so I can compare % inherited from a couple of great-grandmothers for my kids.

 

It ranges from 16 to 9.7, for grandmothers from whom I inherited about 25%. Some of my siblings inherited only about 20% of a grandmother's dna, so if they had children who tested the chances of their kids inheriting a lower percentage from that great grandmother would be higher.

[gardenmom5]

Aw, man.  I was hopeful that doing the 23andme one would be helpful.  Knowing only half of my lineage, it's always been a curiosity of mine what the other half could be.  

 

Bummer.

 

for connecting to relatives - ancestry can be more useful.  though there are 3rd party software you can crunch your 23andme #'s through so they can be uploaded to ancestry.

my daughter is doing that now - her 23andme #'s are crunching through something - I can't remember the name.

I'm still waiting on my results.

 

I haven't read the article yet, but people need to go into this realizing that they don't inherit DNA from every ancestor. You get 50% from each parent, but that 50% is not an even mix from each grandparent. Biological full siblings will not have the same mix.

 

this.  

 

dh's grandfather is armenian.  NO ONE would think that looking at dh.  (red hair, blue eyes, very fair - looks like his paternal side) however, his brother - who sparked many comments from non-family wanting to know who that kid was hanging out with their family. . . he had the black hair, black, eyes, dark olive skin.  and mil's tooth gap.   (his sisters are both a mix of coloring.  one is the *spitting image* of their armenian great-grandmother)

 

dd - red head, very fair, blue eyes  came back at 10% middle eastern/north africa.   with 23andme you can adjust it for reliability level.  if she zooms in for 90% reliability - that 10% comes back undetermined.

[historically accurate]

Mine was weird - we did 3 generations at one time with Ancestry's test. My mother and my daughter both showed up as much more Scandinavian that me, although my paternal grandfather was from Sweden. I show up as very mid-European, which is accurate as there is a strong couple of lines of German on my mom's side, although my mom doesn't show up as very German (and there is little to no German on my dad's side unless they all immigrated to Sweden originally which is a possibility). 

 

I did the 10 day free trial on Ancestry and played around with it a little; it was cool to see how it all comes together. My father's side is British and Scandinavian; my mother's side is British and German. 

 

We did it mainly because my mom was hoping to find her father's side of the family; her father was an only child and died when she was only 9 so they lost touch with that side. We didn't really find anyone other than someone who was like a 5th cousin or so. It did give her a starting point with my rudimentary skills within the 10 day trial though (the majority seem to have moved to the West coast).

Edited February 15, 2018 by beckyjo

[Riverland]

Aw, man.  I was hopeful that doing the 23andme one would be helpful.  Knowing only half of my lineage, it's always been a curiosity of mine what the other half could be.  

 

Bummer.

I have family members who have done 23andme and some who have done Ancestry. In all but one case, the results were very compatible with what we expected. 

 

The one with unexpected results was an in-law of mine who had been adopted. He had assumed what his ancestry was based on his skin tone, but the results pointed elsewhere.

[maize]

Mine was weird - we did 3 generations at one time with Ancestry's test. My mother and my daughter both showed up as much more Scandinavian that me, although my paternal grandfather was from Sweden. I show up as very mid-European, which is accurate as there is a strong couple of lines of German on my mom's side, although my mom doesn't show up as very German (and there is little to no German on my dad's side unless they all immigrated to Sweden originally which is a possibility).

 

I did the 10 day free trial on Ancestry and played around with it a little; it was cool to see how it all comes together. My father's side is British and Scandinavian; my mother's side is British and German.

 

We did it mainly because my mom was hoping to find her father's side of the family; her father was an only child and died when she was only 9 so they lost touch with that side. We didn't really find anyone other than someone who was like a 5th cousin or so. It did give her a starting point with my rudimentary skills within the 10 day trial though (the majority seem to have moved to the West coast).

You can broaden your search by uploading your raw data from ancestry to other services such as GEDMATCH, MyHeritage, and Family Tree DNA.

[La Condessa]

I did the 10 day free trial on Ancestry and played around with it a little; it was cool to see how it all comes together. My father's side is British and Scandinavian; my mother's side is British and German. . . It did give her a starting point with my rudimentary skills within the 10 day trial though (the majority seem to have moved to the West coast).

The LDS church has family history centers all over where you can use Ancestry.com for free. They also have volunteers to help if you want.

[gardenmom5]

I was watching a short on youtube yesterday.   the skeletons which come out of closets... - and how dna is distributed.

the woman did her dna - with (don't remember percentage) of subsaharan african.   upon further digging (including getting her mother's BC) into genealogy - she learned her mother was "passing".  (she had only met an uncle on her mother's side, no one else.  her mother kept them away, and wouldn't talk about them.).  she did confront her mother - who begged her to not tell anyone until after she died.

 

she ended up writing a book on the subject - at the same time a first?first-once-removed? cousin on her mother's side did a documentary on the subject of "passing".  (they connected that way.)

[AimeeM]

I haven't read the article yet, but people need to go into this realizing that they don't inherit DNA from every ancestor. You get 50% from each parent, but that 50% is not an even mix from each grandparent. Biological full siblings will not have the same mix.

My mother was sooooo concerned about the bolded. Apparently me and my middle sister came back with such different results (although it did list her and my father as our parents) that she felt compelled to call me -- multiple times -- and swear she remembered giving birth to me, only half-jokingly. I'm not even exaggerating. 

 

And she was mighty confused and upset that nobody showed up with "Cuban DNA," since my grandfather immigrated here from there. Er..... okay :D 

[GoodGrief]

Well, I mean, unless they're identical twins.

 

That would be the exception :-)

[GoodGrief]

My mother was sooooo concerned about the bolded. Apparently me and my middle sister came back with such different results (although it did list her and my father as our parents) that she felt compelled to call me -- multiple times -- and swear she remembered giving birth to me, only half-jokingly. I'm not even exaggerating. 

 

And she was mighty confused and upset that nobody showed up with "Cuban DNA," since my grandfather immigrated here from there. Er..... okay :D

 

That's kind of sweet, actually. She wanted to reassure you :-)

 

I've done a lot of work on our family tree, so I know what is there and not with a fair amount of certainty. My paternal grandfather, from Liechtenstein, hardly shows up in my DNA.

 

I was listening to a radio show yesterday in which the host thought Elizabeth Warren should silence her detractors in regard to her ancestry by taking a DNA test. The tests really are not understood very well by the public, even on a basic level.

[gardenmom5]

 

 

I was listening to a radio show yesterday in which the host thought Elizabeth Warren should silence her detractors in regard to her ancestry by taking a DNA test. The tests really are not understood very well by the public, even on a basic level.

 

genealogists have done her line - unless someone had an affair,  . . . there is nothing to support her having any indian ancestry.

some cherokees are demanding she apologize..

 

eta: the genealogy likely would also have exposed if someone had "claimed" indian ancestry for advantages in land grants.   something that was a "thing" in parts of the mid west post civil war.

Edited February 15, 2018 by gardenmom5

[maize]

That's kind of sweet, actually. She wanted to reassure you :-)

 

I've done a lot of work on our family tree, so I know what is there and not with a fair amount of certainty. My paternal grandfather, from Liechtenstein, hardly shows up in my DNA.

 

 

Liechtenstein is so small and not isolated I doubt it has a distinctive DNA signature. Edited February 15, 2018 by maize

[SparklyUnicorn]

I think they should have to be VERY upfront about this in their commercials.  It's always so tempting, but I'm too turned off by the price for this sort of entertainment.

 

 

[zimom]

23andme is being used a good bit in the international adoption world where no family history is known.  Several sets of siblings have been identified and other relatives.  For those families, it will continue to be a great resource now and in the future.  

[Acorn]

I know a 40ish year old woman who was adopted from Korea into the US as an infant. Using 23 and me, she found her birth mother, who now lives in the US.

[ThisIsTheDay]

The LDS church has family history centers all over where you can use Ancestry.com for free. They also have volunteers to help if you want.

 

Many libraries also have subscriptions that can be used for free at your library. I was going to mention this about the LDS Family History centers. I went to one just two nights ago to view church records that are not available from home computers but are digitized only for viewing at the FHCs. It has changed a lot since I went 20 years ago and was confronted with microfilm! The Center I went to had about 20 computers with giant screens, two volunteer helpers--and me! It was great, and I also looked at ancestry.com briefly while there.

 

I've done a lot of work on our family tree, so I know what is there and not with a fair amount of certainty. My paternal grandfather, from Liechtenstein, hardly shows up in my DNA.

 

 

 

One of the reasons I've waited doing my DNA is that my countries I'm interested are in Eastern Europe. They don't have the tests available there, so it's unlikely I'd find distant cousins there. Sure, they'd show up maybe in the U.S., but I've traced most of those out.

 

But you may not have that much of your grandfather's DNA, even if you are 25% Lichtensteinian.

[Carrie12345]

I'm still considering doing it, but my (not all that in depth) research has told me my accuracy won't be all that great even just for being female.  It's recommended to have a brother also take the test, but I only have a half-brother on my paternal side and my maternal side is the one I'm more interested in.  Being the oldest of all girls, from the oldest of all girls, from the oldest girl, of the oldest of all girls... I don't have high hopes of getting any solid leads on my great-grandmother's line.

 

Still kind of interested in seeing what pops up.

 

Dh is having second thoughts on doing his. It's been sitting here since Christmas. I've only been able to trace one of his great-grandparents, and the published genealogy book even has doubts about the branch he's supposed to come from.

 

(I am confident that we're both much more New Jersean than we are any non-US heritage, lol.)

[Scarlett]

The genealogy/relative finder aspect is more useful for sure :)

I guess some how they couldn't figure out how to market this part of it tastefully.

 

"I always thought John Smith was my father. When I got my results I was shocked to find it was the mailman instead".

[Katy]

I've had 23andme done for several years, and every few months it seems they refine my ancestry results.

 

Right now I'm about 2% more European than I was a few years ago, 1% less African and went from %1 Middle Eastern to none.  Also the DNA strands that other sites identified as Southeastern Tribes Native American years ago have been slowly changed on 23andme from identified as Indian Subcontinent to specific Asian tribes including NW China to Native American.

 

The point is, while 23andme is interesting and relevant to finding long lost relatives, it only tests a relatively small amount of DNA - so much that a specific heritage can be completely washed out in only 4 generations.  And no one has yet done enough studies to know where all the variants come from.

 

[Bluegoat]

Once I looked into these a bit, I realized they couldn't tell me anything I was especially interested in, for example the mix of my British or French ancestors.  I know I have some Norman English, for example, but that's 1000 years back, and I don't know a lot about the others.  But they won't be able to really tell me anything about that stuff.

 

I do think the commercials I see are very misleading - they have someone who thinks they are Italian finding out that supposedly they are actually mostly German, for example.  

[maize]

I'm still considering doing it, but my (not all that in depth) research has told me my accuracy won't be all that great even just for being female. It's recommended to have a brother also take the test, but I only have a half-brother on my paternal side and my maternal side is the one I'm more interested in. Being the oldest of all girls, from the oldest of all girls, from the oldest girl, of the oldest of all girls... I don't have high hopes of getting any solid leads on my great-grandmother's line.

 

Still kind of interested in seeing what pops up.

 

Dh is having second thoughts on doing his. It's been sitting here since Christmas. I've only been able to trace one of his great-grandparents, and the published genealogy book even has doubts about the branch he's supposed to come from.

 

(I am confident that we're both much more New Jersean than we are any non-US heritage, lol.)

The only thing you get through male line testing that you don't get through female testing is y DNA analysis. Which is only helpful for the direct male line you are testing.

 

IF you have a male line brick wall in your genealogy and IF you know a direct male line relative who is willing to test, Y-DNA testing through Family Tree DNA is the way to go; you'll want to pay for the more in depth tests and that does get pricey.

 

If you're looking to make family connections within three or four generations and find relatives to extend or confirm genealogy lines autosomal testing through any of the major companies is quite inexpensive especially during a sale and is just as useful for women as for men.

 

Ancestry.com has the easiest to use interface.

Edited February 16, 2018 by maize

[TravelingChris]

We decided to do it this year and haven't gotten results yet.  For me, I kind of expect it to be very uninteresting.  Like it may turn out to be 100% Eastern European though I could see some Asian, I guess because of repeated central Asian invasions in the past and I could see other European because my mother's family on both sides was gentry and they tended to marry other gentry, not necessarily from their own country. In fact, if I got little Eastern European, it might explain why I don't look Eastern European. I am not worried about anything-  even if one dd got more Asian than either myself or dh.  After all, she has the rarest blood type AB- which is more common in Asia. And particularly, if they are mostly using Americans to figure out who is Eastern European, it really may not show my heritage correctly.

 

As to the guy whose Aunt is upset that she isn't all Syrian- I am fairly sure that most people in the Mediterranean region have mixed heritage because that area had such a long history of cross-cultural trade and migration.  Just think of the Greek Kingdom of Alexander the Great and then the Roman Empire.  Phoenicians, who I believe came from the area that is now Syria, traveled widely.  That is all in ancient history and there is even more in Middle Ages and more modern history too.