DNA tests. Recommendations, thoughts, experiences

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gzt

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#2707717 14-May-2021 20:02

Fred99:
duckDecoy: Humankind is fascinatingly closely related, and DNA will tell you little about your culture, history and identity."
Agree for all those genealogy sites, but OTOH mDNA is incredibly interesting for tracing prehistoric human migration patterns (and other things, evolutionary biology etc).

These geneology oriented sites need to find a better way of communicating that. Something along the lines of "These are places and times where we matched some aspects of your DNA"

There was an Ancestry guy in NZ doing promotion a few years ago. He was doing tests and saying things like we detected no DNA from ethnicity-z so there's nothing in your DNA uniquely ethnicity-z therefore you have no DNA inherited from ethnicity-z. A statement on that level is just pseudoscience and factually wrong if you're of ethnicity-z descent.

Anyway I think I'm over that nerd-rage episode now. Apart from that silly episode Ancestry seems like the way to go.

gzt

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#2707718 14-May-2021 20:04

Does Ancestry provide an option to delete your own DNA data from their service or do they kind of keep it forever?

kiwifidget

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#2707720 14-May-2021 20:08

gzt: Does Ancestry provide an option to delete your own DNA data from their service or do they kind of keep it forever?

You can delete, and it's gone forever.

You can even opt out of the matching process and just have the ethnicity stuff.

You set the options when you activate the kit online.

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decibel

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#2708012 15-May-2021 17:25

My neighbour's son did a test - turned out he had a half-brother he didn't know about.

Even his father was unaware but he did remember the one-nighter in the back seat of his car.

Be prepared.

dafman

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#2729809 16-Jun-2021 18:37

Thanks for all your helpful comments. After reading this, I decided to go with Ancestry as it had the most positive comments.

Then I ordered, while distracted, and finished up with My Heritage by mistake. Sent if off today. Still might go and get Ancestry as it looks like it offers a better breakdown of which countries/areas make me up?

kiwifidget

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#2729811 16-Jun-2021 18:43

Ancestry does not necessarily have a better ethnicity breakdown.

The companies have different databases and population reference panels to compare your DNA with.

It could be argued that Ancestry's ethnicity estimate would be "better" as it has a much larger database to sample from.

But it's still just an estimate, and this is very much an emerging technology still in relative infancy.

Take them both, but don't despair at the differences (and they will be different to some extent), but marvel at how it works at all.

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