DNA testing

[Tinkerbell]

A question for you skeptical folk...what do you think of the DNA tests available that claim to unlock your genetic history? To let you find not only relatives but which part of the world your DNA originated from? I am fascinated and would like to have this done (it is available for 79 euros) but have since read an article that compared it to astrology...Anyone had it done?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science ... gless.html

[chaggle]

No experience of it and little knowledge but it doesn't look too promising.

I'm not terribly interested in such things TBH.

I don't even know (and I'm not interested in) who my biological parents were.

[Matt]

A question for you skeptical folk...what do you think of the DNA tests available that claim to unlock your genetic history? To let you find not only relatives but which part of the world your DNA originated from? I am fascinated and would like to have this done (it is available for 79 euros) but have since read an article that compared it to astrology...Anyone had it done?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science ... gless.html

I've seen a few scientific reviews and it's basically nonsense. The sequencing is real but the interpretation is rather meaningless. Not sure I quite followed the criticisms but if you go back 10 generations, or 300 years then you have over a thousand ancestors each contributing 0.1% to your DNA. So whatever is picked up by these tests will be a rather random sampling of that very complex picture.

So they're just a bit of fun really.

[Tony.Williams]

I remember some years ago there was a TV programme which used genetic analysis to discover people's backgrounds (allegedly). The funniest was a woman who was the founder of some sort of "pure English" organisation who confidently took part, only to discover that she was anything but - IIRC a grandmother had been naughty with a passing Roma man, or something.

[chaggle]

And then there's this...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 34797.html

A self-proclaimed white supremacist underwent a DNA test to 'prove' his genetic heritage, only to be told on live television he was 86 per cent European - and 14 per cent of Sub-Saharan African heritage.

Speaking to the Mail Online, he later described the DNA results as "short-science" used by the programme to "promote multi-culturalism". He said: "I agreed to the test because I assumed it was science.[...] It was a scientifically bankrupt procedure",

[Tony.Williams]

"short-science" - that's a new one to me. Is it the latest anti-science way of denigrating inconvenient scientific results?

[Abdul Alhazred]

Popular in the USA for several years now.

Not sure it promotes multiculturalism.

Here's a thread from another forum that might be of interest.

http://www.skepticalcommunity.com/forum ... 70#p777170

[Tinkerbell]

Maybe I'll save my money...my sister has traced our family back both sides and it's all English peasants going way back. Suppose I was hoping for something else in the mix. Well, we all came out of Africa originally, didn't we? Or has that theory changed now....

[Tony.Williams]

Well, we all came out of Africa originally, didn't we? Or has that theory changed now....

It is broadly still true, but the situation becomes increasingly complicated with the occasional discovery of new hominina (which is apparently what members of homo genus are referred to these days - it's hard to keep up), and the degree of interbreeding between them (there's a little bit of Neanderthal in all of us Europeans - comments superfluous). But as far as I can make out, all of our distant ancestors ultimately came from Africa, albeit at very different times, and the earliest emigrants did some of their own evolving after they'd left.