> Ignorance, False Promises and Pseudoscience: Is This > Profit Promotion of DNA Fiction by Senior Genealogists? > > In 2013, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints suggested "New Technology Makes Family History Easier, Even Fun", noting "An interesting development in family history research is the use of DNA testing to discover one’s ethnicity." > https://www.lds.org/church/news/new-technology-makes-family-history-easier-even-fun?lang=eng Some of the logical flaws I see in this post are: 1) FamilySearch promotes only genealogically-perfect products 2) An article in FamilySearch Wiki is tantamount to support from the LDS Church If FamilySearch promoted only genealogically-perfect products, we would have to take down FamilyTree, Indexing, the IGI, Wiki, etc. There are flaws in all these products. FamilySearch does not sell a DNA kit, but I for one, as an employee (and not speaking for the company), see great value in ethnicity tests attracting newbies to explore their roots and starting them on the path to becoming more serious genealogists. It's a gateway product, like false royal family trees, to entering the genealogy world. >Is this a serious public relations mistake, for an organization, noted for being the source of all truth, to promote hope in fictional data sets? Today, this is now updated in FamilySearch, the genealogy arm of the LDS Church, in subset "Hiring a DNA Testing Company", listed under Hiring a Professional Researcher. https://familysearch.org/wiki/en/Hiring_a_DNA_Testing_Company Myself and Dr. Ugo Perego are some of the principal authors of this Wiki article. You'll note it is a Wiki and if you'd like to make edits to the factual accuracy of the article, you are welcome to do so. If you look closely at the bottom of this page, you'll notice a disclosure: "Neither The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints nor FamilySearch is associated in any way with any DNA studies. As a non-profit organization, FamilySearch cannot recommend a specific DNA-testing company to you." Most professional genealogists in my circles use DNA tests to confirm and find new relatives, rather than for ethnicity purposes. A good article to see this in practice is: *Mills, Elizabeth Shown. "Testing the FAN principle against DNA: Zilphy (Watts) Price Cooksey Cooksey of Georgia and Mississippi," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 102 (2014):129-52, available in full on the author's website: http://www.historicpathways.com/download/ZilphyArticle072915.pdf Best, Nathan P.S. And lastly, my satirical predictions of the future importance of DNA testing to genealogy: https://web.archive.org/web/20140306221040/https://familysearch.org/blog/en/family-history-2050-dnas-impact/

On Monday, May 30, 2016 at 3:14:11 PM UTC-7, nathan...@gmail.com wrote: > > Ignorance, False Promises and Pseudoscience: Is This > > Profit Promotion of DNA Fiction by Senior Genealogists? > > > > In 2013, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints suggested "New Technology Makes Family History Easier, Even Fun", noting "An interesting development in family history research is the use of DNA testing to discover one’s ethnicity." > > https://www.lds.org/church/news/new-technology-makes-family-history-easier-even-fun?lang=eng > > Some of the logical flaws I see in this post are: > 1) FamilySearch promotes only genealogically-perfect products > 2) An article in FamilySearch Wiki is tantamount to support from the LDS Church > > If FamilySearch promoted only genealogically-perfect products, we would have to take down FamilyTree, Indexing, the IGI, Wiki, etc. There are flaws in all these products. FamilySearch does not sell a DNA kit, but I for one, as an employee (and not speaking for the company), see great value in ethnicity tests attracting newbies to explore their roots and starting them on the path to becoming more serious genealogists. It's a gateway product, like false royal family trees, to entering the genealogy world. > > >Is this a serious public relations mistake, for an organization, noted for being the source of all truth, to promote hope in fictional data sets? Today, this is now updated in FamilySearch, the genealogy arm of the LDS Church, in subset "Hiring a DNA Testing Company", listed under Hiring a Professional Researcher. > https://familysearch.org/wiki/en/Hiring_a_DNA_Testing_Company > > Myself and Dr. Ugo Perego are some of the principal authors of this Wiki article. You'll note it is a Wiki and if you'd like to make edits to the factual accuracy of the article, you are welcome to do so. > > If you look closely at the bottom of this page, you'll notice a disclosure: > "Neither The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints nor FamilySearch is associated in any way with any DNA studies. As a non-profit organization, FamilySearch cannot recommend a specific DNA-testing company to you." > > Most professional genealogists in my circles use DNA tests to confirm and find new relatives, rather than for ethnicity purposes. A good article to see this in practice is: > *Mills, Elizabeth Shown. "Testing the FAN principle against DNA: Zilphy (Watts) Price Cooksey Cooksey of Georgia and Mississippi," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 102 (2014):129-52, available in full on the author's website: http://www.historicpathways.com/download/ZilphyArticle072915.pdf > > Best, > > Nathan > > P.S. And lastly, my satirical predictions of the future importance of DNA testing to genealogy: https://web.archive.org/web/20140306221040/https://familysearch.org/blog/en/family-history-2050-dnas-impact/ -------------------------------------------------- REPLY: MILLS suggests Associational Data: "Identity and kinship conclusions should always rest on a wide range of factors. Naming, migration, cultural patterns, and associations are critical to building a case for each person’s identity and placement in a specific family." Therefore, contrary to marketing expectations, over time, increasing DNA sample bases will make more complex, not refine, the ability to genealogically validate each person's identity, as the statistical downward disparity in the volume of all the other unrecorded supporting factors becomes globally minimalized; re: your satirical predictions, or we all become a number like 666; are no longer treated as human. http://www.historicpathways.com/download/ZilphyArticle072915.pdf There appears to be an adjustment in statistical probabilities for DNA based relationships, with any given individual, to any given or proposted pedigree that they might be associated with, depending upon placement from one's direct line or cousin sources, as father, son, brother, uncle, nephew, etc.; this implies that there are no concrete standards that can be established over time to specify real individual identities; thus DNA proof is mecurial, and being of human origins, also subject to unknown moral value systems, which further complicates validating assumptions, subjective by each new living generation. Example: Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings; re: "We describe the conflict between population genetics and individual-based genetics and the pitfalls of over-simplistic genetic interpretations, arguing that although the tests themselves are reliable, the interpretations are unreliable and strongly influenced by cultural and other social forces." CONCLUSION: DNA is worthless as a professional genealogical research tool.

> CONCLUSION: DNA is worthless as a professional genealogical research tool. Ditto to TAF's post. You've completely misinterpreted Mrs. Mills' article. The professional genealogical community I participate in is currently worried that conclusions about genealogical relationships they reached in the twentienth century using historical documents will be overturned by new DNA evidence made available in the twenty-first century. Nathan