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Dutchess_lll's avatar

Are the Ancestry DNA results accurate?

Asked by Dutchess_lll (8745points) December 7th, 2017
21 responses
“Great Question” (6points)

They had a special on it so I ordered a kit and sent it off. I’m curious for the results.

And tonight, just because I’m weird, I wondered what would happen if I sent Dakota’s saliva in instead of mine! Dakota is my white German shepherd.

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Answers

NomoreY_A's avatar

Lol. If you really sent in dog saliva no telling what they’ll find. Might think you’re some sort of weird ass CIA hybridization experiment gone wrong. Heh…just kidding guys. Hey that Oswald- what a bum, huh?

NomoreY_A's avatar

As far as accuracy I dont know. Been tempted to look into it myself but I allready know pretty much that I am mostly English and Irish.

Dutchess_lll's avatar

Yeah I think I already know what I “am” too. LOL !

gondwanalon's avatar

I don’t trust them.

HomeDNA reported that I’m 2% Asian, 10% South American Indian and 88% European.

Ancestry by DNA reported that I’m 100% European.

I asked both companies for an explainatiomn for the two different reports. HomeDNA said that their methodology is more accurate. Ancestry by DNA did not even reply..

imrainmaker's avatar

Why are they needed anyways.. unless you want to sue someone over property matters..))

imrainmaker's avatar

Don’t they go further than that? I mean British and Germans will be in the same category? No offense meant to anyone to be clear.

Call_Me_Jay's avatar

Why are they needed anyways.

Curiosity. A parlor game. A hobby. It’s not a practical thing.

British and Germans will be in the same category?

No.

I am not taking this as gospel, but my makeup from Ancestry.com says…

Germany includes:
Europe East
Europe West
Europe Jewish

Britain includes:
Scandinavia
Ireland
Great Britain

See picture here

Call_Me_Jay's avatar

Wait, there is no Scandinavian overlap with Britain in the map I linked above. I got the blue portions of the picture mixed up.

Britain is touched by:
Ireland
Great Britain
Europe West

Zaku's avatar

If you send Dakota’s saliva in instead of yours, hopefully they’d notice that there were many more chromosome pairs (39) than in humans (23), and notice that most of the genome sequences are not in their human database. But I don’t know the details of their techniques – they might just detect almost no matches and the ones they did match might seem pretty random without them realizing what you did.

NomoreY_A's avatar

The whole concept sounds like a money making racket.

Tropical_Willie's avatar

If you have the $100 go ahead.
But there is a dog ancestry company that can tell what makes up your dog, mutt or not .

They are close but not rock solid, the samples sent to the major companies that offer the analysis of one person came back with significant differences (it depends on the base samples they compare them to, like some don’t have Asian chromosomes in their database.)

Mariah's avatar

My dad got tested on both Ancestry and 23andme and got similar results from both. All DNA testing has a margin of error, but the fact that his 2 tests matched up speaks to the accuracy imo.

I’ve learned so much about my heritage from doing DNA testing. It’s been a really valuable exercise for me. I’m now in the process of researching my genealogy because we want to figure out just where in the heck all this Ashkenazi Jewish blood that we didn’t know we had came from. It’s led to a new hobby for me.

Rarebear's avatar

I’ve heard of people doing both Ancestry and 23andme and getting wildly different results. I agree that it seems like a money making racket.

filmfann's avatar

Both my sisters, my Aunt and Uncle, my step daughter, my son in law, and I have done it. I am a big supporter.
In regards to your dog, the test will not process. They will not be able to get a result.

linguaphile's avatar

I used 23-and-Me and had fun with the results. About 10 people in my family all used 23-and-Me, and it was fun to look for the commonalities and discrepancies between our reports (i.e. West African shows up on my and my son’s chart, but not my daughter’s).
I chose 23-and-Me because it concerns me that Ancestry.com is owned and operated by the Mormons. While I respect their religion, in general, I don’t agree with their genealogy practices.

Call_Me_Jay's avatar

HomeDNA reported that I’m 2% Asian, 10% South American Indian and 88% European.

Ancestry by DNA reported that I’m 100% European.

88% agreement is rather high. People are confusing “not 100% accurate” with “failure”.

Darth_Algar's avatar

This kind of genetic research can be useful on a broader spectrum of mapping human migration patterns, but it seems rather like a pointless waste of money on an individual level.

@imrainmaker “Why are they needed anyways.. unless you want to sue someone over property matters..))”

These types of genetic lineage tests don’t actually determine things like parentage or family descent.

janbb's avatar

I think they seem like fun but I’ve also wondered about their accuracy.

Dutchess_lll's avatar

I just wonder if some group would have outted them by now, given their popularity.

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Qav's avatar

I did it for myself and my son, not my daughter (because I thought my son’s would cover my daughter). Later, I wished I had sent in my daughter’s as well, but when I later asked, she didn’t want me to. I may ask again soon, using the other company. I did this so long ago that I didn’t know the other company existed (and it may not have yet, for the public).

I wanted to do this for my children because their father died when he was so young. For me, anything I can do, to bring him to them in some way, will be done if at all possible. Besides, we already knew that his ancestry was extremely unlike mine, so it was interesting to compare and bring it all together.

The result was not as accurate as I’d hoped, but if we did it again, I think it would be more accurate now. My great-grandfather (or maybe his father) was African. I already knew that from lite but reliable research, my aunt, and Mother’s reaction when I mentioned it to her, but all that was listed for African was a hardly noticeable. SOME people have just looked at me and known if I was part African, mentioning it to me.

Also, we have Choctaw and Chickasaw blood, and that was not mentioned at all. My uncle was officially accepted into one of their tribes decades ago.

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