| > and get a precise breakdown of your ethnic background down to the percentage. No, you can't. You can get bullshit geneology which you shouldn't take seriously. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21687013 > But in a public guide, published by Sense About Science, Prof David Balding and Prof Mark Thomas of University College London warn that such histories are either so general as to be "personally meaningless or they are just speculation from thin evidence". > The scientists say that genetic profiles cannot provide accurate information about an individual's ancestry. > They say "the genetic ancestry business uses a phenomenon well-known in other areas such as horoscopes, where general information is interpreted as being more personal than it really is". https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/nov/04/home-dna-kit-f... >Ancestry’s DNA expert Mike Mulligan (93% Irish – everyone’s email at Ancestry gives their ethnicity breakdown) admits that the ethnicity percentage is a “top line” estimate derived from just a very small part of our DNA, a couple of letters long in the 3bn letters that make up our DNA, and that there are a lot of “inferences” made from the data. Precision is still a problem for DNA kits. Mulligan says that the Irish, Scots and Welsh are “almost indistinguishable from a DNA point of view”. Meanwhile, when it comes to western Europe “it is the most traipsed-about part of the planet The amount of DNA that has been blurred together is incredible”. Remarkably, DNA testers can’t really tell the difference between German and French DNA. https://gizmodo.com/how-dna-testing-botched-my-familys-herit... > I suspected the error might lay not in my family narrative, but in the DNA test itself. So I decided to conduct an experiment. I mailed my own spit samples to AncestryDNA, as well as to 23andMe and National Geographic. For each test I got back, the story of my genetic heritage was different—in some cases, wildly so. etc etc. |