Ancestry Dna Results

[Prudie]

Have any of you had this done and do you take the results as 100% accurate? I gifted this to my daughter and now we have the results we are both very surprised and concerned if they are wrong. She has a living grandmother (and absolutely no chance that she's not her grandmother if you get my gist) who is out and out Italian American yet my daughter's result had various European genes but zero Italian. Can this be right?

I'm not expecting to get many answers in this category tucked away in History in the back of beyond :-)

[maggiebee]

That's interesting Prudie, thought of buying this for my daughter but ended up getting her something else. No idea how accurate they are.

[anneasquith]

Maybe post in chatterbank, 're Xmas present advice ?

[Prudie]

Really anne? Will that get me answers though - I am asking the question of others about this test specifically not as a suggested present

[tamborine]

adopted girl with our extended family dna requested male family dna. My (childless) nephew sent in his dna & found his dna do not match my brother....ooooerrr ;)

[Buenchico]

The results of such tests probably aren't worth the paper that they're printed on:

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-07-at-home-dna-imperfect-science.html

https://cruwys.blogspot.com/2015/05/comparing-admixture-results-from.html

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/nov/04/home-dna-kit-for-130-is-it-worth-it

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/family-dna-ancestry-tests-review-comparison

[237SJ]

I`ve had it done. My cousin had her's done and she did come up as a first cousin on my matches.

[Prudie]

Well that's a bit sweeping and damning. It can't be all wrong, her results linked her with close family members that we know about that are on their database. She also had high %age of countries that I know I have...

[237SJ]

I read about a test in the US where they tried several different DNA tests on a set of triplets. Ancestry came out as the most accurate. I`ll have a look but I`m in the middle of making a batch of curry at the moment.

[pastafreak]

I'll be watching this thread with interest. I've sent away for a FamilyTree DNA Family Finder test, which I hope to receive soon. When researching tests and their results, I learned that they use different data, and ancestry is often reported as regions rather than specific countries.

[Prudie]

Yes pasta, she got a bit of North Western Europe (separate from counting large amounts of the 4 UK countries) and 2% Spain but with a New York Italian gran we can't understand why there is no Italian.

[Old_Geezer]

Wouldn't trust any commercial concern with my private data to flog to whomever offers them something.

[sunny-dave]

Perhaps someone wanted to keep a secret and made the testers an offer they couldn't refuse ...?

[ also very interested - my sister had hers done (which should be the same for me) and it seemed entirely plausible ]

[pastafreak]

Prudie...is the New York Italian gran full Italian...or Italian American? Were both parents Italian?

[Prudie]

I'm not sure Pasta, I think her father was an Italian immigrant - with a real mafia type surname that featured in the Godather movies! Don't know about the mother side and it could easily be an earlier generation that came over to US.
My daughter's uncle on the US side (son of said gran) came up as a direct match on her results so we are going to ask him what Italian was in his.

[237SJ]

Ancestry bases it's findings from other samples that it has received. When I had the test, the results were collated from 3000 reference samples. The database has recently been updated and my results are now collated from 16,000 reference samples. Hence, the results have changed. What I would like to know is how long ago the DNA is sampled from. I guess that DNA threads die out over time and only those from the last few hundred years show in the test with any significance.

[anneasquith]

Just thought you would get more notice prudie.

[lankeela]

The dog DNA tests are a joke - definitely not worth the paper they are printed on. They can only guess at breeds they have tested before, so for example my rare breed would never show up as being anything like what it is.

[237SJ]

^ Which fits in with what I said. The more people (or dogs in your case) that are tested, the more accurate the results as they are being checked against a larger database.

[malagabob]

Haven’t I seen a disclaimer on this advert. That would say it all.

[jno]

these tests aren't reliable. no. Sometimes they'll be accurate, sometimes not. The more tests the company in question carry out, the more data they'll have to work from, so the more chance they have of getting it right. But I had one done that assured me I had one great-grandparent from Scandinavia and another one from somewhere round Greece. Both are nonsense.

You may find they update their reading in a couple of years as they get more accurate data.