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Biology and Medical
The at-home DNA test craze is putting us all at risk
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[QUOTE="russ_watters, post: 6165610, member: 142"] People do a lot of "basically worthless" things without considering risk much. Moreover, "risk" tends to be a handwavey thing. More on that in next post. My main concern would be the misleading advertising about "accuracy". Oddly, the video you linked didn't really cover well except for a vague mention in the last minute. The primary issue is that "genetic ethnicity" isn't a precise thing, so it should be obvious that it isn't possible to measure it precisely. The methodology uses a sampling of a bunch of people from a certain region and measures the frequency of certain genes. The problem with this is obvious: people move. The populations aren't static. This is most obviously expressed in the fact that "Ethnic American" isn't a thing in these results; we're too diverse and everyone is assumed to have heritage somewhere else. But what; don't people in Europe move? Maybe 1000 years ago, populations were more static, but they were never completely static. I'm part Scottish --- or am I? I have a fairly recent ancestor from the Orkney Islands, on the north end of the island chain. This area was alternately settled and annexed back and forth by Norway and Scotland. So am I Scottish or Norwegian? It's important to note, though, that there are actually two separate purposes for these tests. One is the genetic ethnicity, but the other is for finding close relatives and building your family tree. [edit] And now Facebook thinks I should vacation in Scotland... :rolleyes: [/QUOTE]
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The at-home DNA test craze is putting us all at risk
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