Well doubting Thomas ;-) Thanks for the opportunity to answer these questions that you have. You have every right to be skeptical. All I can say is if you do this by yourself all you get is a sting of 12 numbers. If they match someone else it means you are very likely to share a common ancestor. If you do the test with us, we will do our best to explain the result fully on our website in relation to other participants and answer any specific questions you may have (one on one) by email. It is your responsibility to ask questions if you don't understand anything. We cannot guarantee that you will match anyone else, but in time more people should add their results and you may find a match then. For instance someone who's male Pennington line is not direct in terms of paternity will not match any other Pennington. The results will be published on the PRA website and in the PRA magazine Pennington Pedigrees. As to us partially understanding it, well it is new technology, but I happen to be a biological scientist with a knowledge of DNA and we have another Pennington involved who is a microbiologist/geneticist. We have programs that can draw genetic family trees, and I think we are about as well qualified to interpret this study as anyone is. By the way, all participants get everything back from the lab that I get as far as the result is concerned. Please remember that we are volunteers, so we cannot tailor each report specifically to the participant who has time for that? If you read what is on the PRA website especially the DNA proposal it is written in plain English I think. Regards Nick P. Jtp9278@cs.com To: PENNINGTON-L@rootsweb.com 03/13/02 03:44 PM cc: Please respond to Subject: [Pennington-L] Re: PENNINGTON-D Digest V02 #32 PENNINGTON-L In a message dated 3/13/2002 4:01:49 AM Central Standard Time, PENNINGTON-D-request@rootsweb.com writes: > The only person who can break the code is the PRA project > coordinator, and I will regard this information as strictly confidential. > No reference will be made to living individuals when the time comes to > publish all the results in full. We will ------------------------- Which brings up the question, just what is divulged to the participant?Or will the results be published in some phantom jargon, which possibly the writer does not fully understand. Do we get a complete story on it, or just what someone thinks we should have. What I am asking is, will we be given a breakdown of the test, or will it come back, sorry ,you don't fit in anywhere. I am named Thomas, which the "T" in my name represents,and as such I am skeptical of a lot of things. Additionally, in the early days of my gen. research, several people have promised a lot for X amount of money, always up front, and then the information just dwindled down to, sorry, there are just not any information available. And naturally, I don't care to travel those roads again. So, if the information comes back to me, and has some meaning, I will participate.But if it is just going to be published in some high falutin journal, ---forget it. Tom Pennington ==== PENNINGTON Mailing List ==== To search over 5500 archived messages from this list see http://searches.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/listsearch.pl Threaded archives can now be found at http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index/pennington