John, J.S. Plant wrote: >I agree that your comments were originally in a more general >genealogical context and that confusions can arise unless the >differences between the objectives of different projects are pointed >out. > Well, mine and those I was responding to. >In the >longer term this is also helpful in tying down the MRCA of the family >as a whole. > Let's hope the next time we hear from you you'll be able to tell us his name, DOB, etc. I'd be interested to know what you find out about him. >I note that you are not alone in not getting a warm >fuzzy feeling from hearing about the DNA techniques but > John, again, what I said was I don't get a warm fuzzy feeling reading about all the DNA errors made by these labs. In the last instance alone, 1,300 criminal cases have to be reviewed for possible retrial or dismissal--according to the article. In light of this, and other similar stories we've been reading about over the past few years, your group was smart to double-check their results. >...as time >passes and the benefits and shortcomings become more widely known, I >guess that tiny little outbreaks of warmth and fuzz might gradually >begin to appear. > Perhaps instead, when more discoveries have been made that allows us to trace, say... the remaining 99.99% of our family trees, we'll have something to really get excited about. But as your group is a one-name study, these shortcomings really shouldn't hurt your efforts to find name relatedness. Jim