Why DNA ancestry results are bogus

[PA2UK]

Originally Posted by Redraven

I find "Ancestry" somewhat amusing...
They found a young lady who has a "parent/child" relationship with me. Yep, my oldest daughter.
They found another young lady who is probably my "first or second cousin". Nope, my granddaughter (oldest daughter's daughter).
They found a gentleman who they said was second or third cousin. Actually, my Mother's Brother's grandson. I guess my uncle's grandson would be a cousin of some kind.
They also list 50+ "cousins" of some degree who have names I never heard of. I haven't bothered to attempt to contact any of them.
They also say I am 25% Southern Italian. It is possible, I suppose, but I find it difficult to believe.

If you click on the relationship estimate it will list all possible relationships. It’s normal for the relationship category to not always include the relationship you know to be correct, but clicking on the details will list all possibilities, usually including the correct one.

Your uncles grandson would be your 1st cousins once removed - they often fall into the 2nd to 3rd cousin category.

Everyone on your dna match list shares dna with you - the estimated 4th cousins or closer are definitely legitimate relations but you have to do some investigation to figure out what ancestors you share.

The ethnicity report is only an estimate and it’s best not to take it literally.

[historyfan]

Originally Posted by Redraven

I find "Ancestry" somewhat amusing...
They found a young lady who has a "parent/child" relationship with me. Yep, my oldest daughter.
They found another young lady who is probably my "first or second cousin". Nope, my granddaughter (oldest daughter's daughter).
They found a gentleman who they said was second or third cousin. Actually, my Mother's Brother's grandson. I guess my uncle's grandson would be a cousin of some kind.
They also list 50+ "cousins" of some degree who have names I never heard of. I haven't bothered to attempt to contact any of them.
They also say I am 25% Southern Italian. It is possible, I suppose, but I find it difficult to believe.

Use the DNA painter tool to see what the most common relationship others reported that has the same number of centimorgans matching (click on the little i by your match on Ancestry for the number of matching centimorgans)
It has been accurate for me.
https://dnapainter.com/tools/sharedcmv4

[Mr.Retired]

I always thought I was part caveman since the hairs on the back of my neck would always stand up if confronted in a menacing way.
However my results came back devoid of anything Neanderthal or Denisovan in my lineage. ( sarcasm )


My light skin came about as an
answer to maximize Vitamin D synthesis and favoring lactose tolerance for ability
to absorb sugars and vitamins found naturally in milk. So somewhere over 8000 years ago
my ancestors were indistinguishable from who I am today. Go back 400,000 years ago to the pit of bones
and it's anybody's guess of where we came from...............maybe a cookie crumb leftover form an interplanetary family picnic..............nuff said.

[Khendra]

Making a blanket statement that they are "bogus" is no more accurate than saying they're perfect. It's a tool that's gotten more precise over the past decade, but still needs refinement, particularly for the smaller percentage of ancestries.


AncestryDNA and 23andMe match up pretty well with my paper trail, and they've both gotten better at identifying German ancestry (which is what my mother was, primarily). Both sites now properly recognize me as being mostly German and English. However, 23andMe no longer identifies my Norwegian ancestry; it now says my 3% Scandinavian is "Danish." I have a well documented Norwegian ancestor from Hordaland on my mother's side (1870s); 23andMe is able to trace back to Hordaland for my late mother and grandmother, but since that ancestry is now smaller on my end after generational dilution, they are unable to recognize it like they do for my older maternal relatives.


AncestryDNA recognizes my Norwegian (4%) ancestry, and also the small bit of Swedish on my father's side (2%).


I also get 1-2% Eastern Euro on both sites. Percentages around 3 are common for all my mother's relatives. This seems like it should be German.