Are DNA kits to test ethnicity mostly accurate or a rip off!

[QueenArnica]

So backstory is...

This is long as it contains statistics...

DS (now 13) asked for one of these kits for Christmas a couple of years ago. His results came back as follows:

North and West European 73.5%
Sardinian 13.2%
Irish, Scottish, Welsh 6.4%
Iberian 4.5%
Italian 2.4%

We were pretty impressed as my DH is half Italian, my FIL is from Sardinia.

Now me... all my life people have assumed I’m either Italian, Spanish, Portuguese due to my colouring. My DC have Italian names and again the assumption is because I have Italian roots. My DF has the same colouring as me and never knew who his father was so I always curious as to my background.

So my results came back:

English 70.6%
North and West European 14.2%
Scandinavian 5.8%
Finnish 1.7%
East European 7.7%

So my AIBU is looking at the 2 sets of results is the whole thing a scam as they lack similarity? Also AIBU to be sad that it didn’t come back identifying me as a Spanish Princess?!

Congratulations if you got to the end of this and apologies if it bored you to tears!

@rita start researching your tree! It is a fascinating hobby.
I expect you may find a connection to Italy a few generations back as autosomal dna doesn't stretch to Roman times!

Mine was incredibly accurate - it pinpointed a big chunk of my DNA to the exact part of Ireland my grandma was from, right down to the part of the county she came from!

@BuffaloCauliflower what a way to uncover something so life changing!
With my dad and I the NPE happened around 1915 so no one can really be hurt by it.
I just kept asking my dad why didn't he know XYZ who were his second cousin according to ancestry! Then the list of connections grew and grew... then I looked at the 46% Irish from a particular region in his results and the truth slowly dawned on Me...
and just last month another connection from the same area appeared. It looks like another NPE in the same family has turned up!

@GrimDamnFanjo it’s definitely a lot more common than you’d think, particularly in days gone by. I found out because my Dad’s DNA was already on the site and we matched (come up as 100% my parent or my child!) so I saw who he was straight away. Others just find out their sibling is only a half or something, but mother isn’t forthcoming or has passed and a huge detective hunt ensues. Often when reaching out to people they see they’re related to and try and get help pinpointing their fathers and get very unhappy welcomes. The more people who put their DNA up the more it helps those trying to find out who they are

I'm not sure how much colour tells you. I have a Nigerian grandad and have dark hair and eyes but pale skin, one of my kids has dark hair and eyes like me, the other blonde hair and blue eyes, no-one is going to believe he has any African heritage at all. I suppose might be interesting to see what a kit says but they can keep use and sell your genetic information so I'd rather not.

We were in a queue to meet Alice Roberts (archaeologist trained as a Dr). The people in front were asking her if she would recommend one of those DNA tests, she was an emphatic no, waste of money.

I don’t know why people assume that dark skin/hair automatically =Mediterranean. Dh’s family originated in Norway (only a few generations back) and they are very dark with dark skin, very tall too. It must be noticeable to some people as someone who they didn’t know once asked if my husbands family were from Norway. I thought it was a bit weird that they recognised their ‘look’.

I’ve done it with Ancestry & over the last few years my % has become more & more specific to certain regions.

We found a brand new 1st cousin with it - which was awkward!! But fascinating too

Anyway my point was Op, the Scandinavian could account for a Mediterranean ’look’ too. It’s quite fascinating, I have a similar scenario as my grandfather was adopted so we don’t know his true origin. He didn’t look typically English, I’d love to know.

These schemes basically exist to harvest your DNA.
Yup, I'd be fairly interested to see my results but it's a shady industry.

For anyone who is interested in this sort of thing, this project is American, but fascinating. They're using DNA testing results on sites like Ancestry to identify unidentified bodies (scroll to the bottom for the solved cases) dnadoeproject.org/project/

I think they are well dodgy too. The idea of “English” dna is a dangerous one in an age of nationalist populism.

nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/dna-tests-bad-for-finding-identity-great-for-surveillance.html

Nameofchanges I don't think you understand what these tests are or the implications of the information they yield.

Also, your assertions wrt Americans are pure balloon juice.

As @AvocadosBeforeMortgages mentions, there's a lot of excitement in Unresolved crime circles about how ancestry databases could be used. The information can be very powerful.

A serial killer/rapist in the USA (the Golden State Killer - careful if you look it up, it's a nasty case) was identified using ancestry database information - his DNA was uploaded onto a database and a number of distant relatives identified. Police then worked with a genealogist to construct a family tree and two possible suspects identified. One was eliminated; a swab from the discarded rubbish identified the other as the killer. He was completely unknown to the investigation prior to this.

I suspect that as more and more people add their DNA to these databases we'll see an increase in the number of crimes solved this way.

It's worth remembering that the Golden State Killer was identified via Gedmatch, an open source dna database, and not by any of the businesses like Ancestry etc.
The police force uploaded the killers dna profile and waited until someone who was a close match did too.
There's now a consent form on the site reminding people of the law enforcement aspect.

@burney
There's no such thing as English DNA.
All the autosomal tests do is match you geographically to individuals with similar DNA profiles.
Eg according to Ancestry my Dad and I share a high percentage of DNA with people living in the west of Ireland.
My mum shares some dna with people who are currently living in Scandinavia- that's because in the last couple of hundred years weavers from that part of the world moved to where we live and obviously married locals.
Ancestry and similar autosomal dna testing do not go further back than around 10 generations. They do not give you "ethnic" dna results , just an approximation of how much dna you share with others living in particular geographical areas.

I know, that’s my point. But that’s not what people understand and it’s a short step from there to nationalists of the Viktor Orban type demanding racial purity.

BBC watchdog did a piece on this. The presenter did tests from a few different companies and they came back with different results. So I wouldn't trust them.

Mine matched me to my great granny's sister's descendant who still lives in the same village where my mother grew up and one or two others of that ilk so it clearly does work in the sense of they don't make up the result, they look at your genes. However don't do it if you wouldn't like to find that kind of thing out and I did take a conscious informed decision about it. Also mine came back saying my ancestors were from exactly where I knew they were from so it wasn't as if they just make stuff up and come back with Nigeria and Papua New Guinea when that is not so.

Most people want to know where they are from. it is not some kind of Hitler youth racial purity exercise. In fact for many of us finding something interesting such as a long lost ancestor from Africa would be lovely. Also everyone on the planet if originally from Africa as that is where homo sapiens came from.
I agree with Grim's comment above however but I separately had the female gene test too which was the one from oxford ancestors which looked at DNA from 25,000 corpses too.

For those doing a family tree and going back 10 generations etc it is very interesting and very useful. I have gone back 6 - 8 generations for most ancestors to the 1700s - so far everyone from the UK/Ireland but I live in hope...... I don't feel certainty going back any further so have currently stopped.

The DNA test found a tiny bit from Norway which is consistent with having Orkney ancestors in the 1700s and also all my ancestors in NE England where I am from I think. I watched this programme on youtube last night which is not about ancestry but was really good about the vikings settling in Iceland and then Greenland. They certainly got about.

My son got one for Christmas. We loved getting the results. He was disappointed that there were no exotic results but what it said totally put him where we always knew our roots were. His closest relatives on there were my husbands cousin and a.couple of my mum's cousins. So as far as we are concerned it is accurate.

We found the results were fairly consistent across the different companies we tested with (we = me, my children and both my biological parents

@boylovesmeerkats depends on where you live. If you in London and use the tube you will see non-white parents who are clearly with their child, but their child looks white.

US people get tbe result "British/Irish descent". Which hardly covers it.
You also hear of identical twins with different results.
It's a fun way to spend your money. As is champagne.

My best thing of all is the genetic community bit on ancestry.com, the timelines of where your ancestors likely originated from and how and why they migrated to the regions you’re genetically linked to is fascinating. They’ve recently padded it all out further with ‘discovery groups’ featuring culinary, geographic, cultural, political etc articles - even if all your grandparents and their grandparents and so on are from the same continent there’s still so much to find out. I lap it all up. I had only the vaguest idea of where my ancestors came from originally.