Another person falls for DNA test snake oil
CVK
(Thanks to Anna for this!) New York Times columnist Brent Staples writes on okay editorial about race not being “as black and white as we think.” Where I had to start stifling my giggles though, is when he revealed that he too has fallen for those DNA tests that promise to reveal the full spectrum of your racial heritage:
I’ve known all this for a long time, and was not surprised by the results of a genetic screening performed by DNAPrint Genomics, a company that traces ancestral origins to far-flung parts of the globe. A little more than half of my genetic material came from sub-Saharan Africa - common for people who regard themselves as black - with slightly more than a quarter from Europe.
The result that knocked me off my chair showed that one-fifth of my ancestry is Asian. Poring over the charts and statistics, I said out loud, “This has got to be a mistake.”
As we discussed on episode 3 of Addicted to Race, most of these DNA tests are extremely unreliable because they only reveal a tiny sliver of your ancestry. The Y-chromosome test, for example, only traces your patrilineal line (your father’s father’s father and so on). On the opposite end of the spectrum, the mitochondrial-DNA test only looks at your mother’s female ancestry. What this means is that you’re only getting information on about 1 in every 1,000 of your ancestors. So it’s by no means a comprehensive picture at all.
Danni wrote:
THANK YOU FOR COMMENTING ON THIS!
I was having a long conversation with a friend about this just a few days ago.
his confusion about asian-ness? It’s native american. They passed over on the berring (sp?) straight.
research is important. So it knowing what you’re saying.
Though, the overall idea of the article is admirable; though cliche.
Posted 02 Nov 2005 at 12:56 am ¶
NuSapiens wrote:
Virtually no scientific or medical test is 100% accurate. What tests like these can deliver - right now - is ballpark figures. Confusing East Asian with Native American really isn’t so odd - since people commonly make the same mistake with their eyeballs. (This is speaking about real Native Americans, not 1/16th bloods or Hollywood “Indians” played by Italians)
And the test written about in the New York Times does not consider uniparental nonrecombining loci - it takes a sample of autosomal markers. With some luck, these are basically representative - when the mix is recent, that is more likely than not.
Posted 02 Nov 2005 at 8:54 am ¶
Chief Reebok Chan wrote:
Uh, is this moron claiming that Native Americans are not Asian? That’s HIS idiotic mistake, not the DNA tests, then. We all know through archaeology (and now genetic testing) that most Native Americans today came from Asia through repeated migration waves by boat and the Ice Age land bridge ~12,000 years ago. The very “first” ones probably being Austronesians, perhaps from Taiwan, ~50,000 years ago.
I know it’s the mainstream press, but can a NYT columnist really be THAT stupid?
Posted 15 Nov 2005 at 9:27 am ¶