Talk:Genealogical DNA test

Accuracy?
The editor of the Lost Cousins newsletter had this to say in June 2016:

"Don't expect meaningful DNA results

"Someone asked me recently which of the DNA testing companies will provide the most meaningful autosomal results. The simple answer is - none of them! In isolation DNA results mean very little - they're just a jumble of letters - but they acquire meaning when they are compared with results from other people.

"Of course, most DNA testing companies will claim to tell you something about your ethnicity - but as I pointed out recently, Ancestry reckon my brother's ancestry is 20% Irish, which is virtually impossible, given how far I've traced back without finding any Irish ancestors in our tree.

"I've uploaded my brother's results to FamilyTreeDNA - they reckon he's 40% Scandinavian, 40% British Isles (including Ireland) and 20% Southern Europe; but they tell me that I'm 59% Western & Central Europe, and 41% Scandinavia. We have the same parents, so how can our ancestry be so different - of course, the answer is that it can't!

"The truth is, DNA tests are pretty poor at telling us about our origins hundreds or thousands of years ago. One of the reasons for this is the simple fact that we haven't inherited any DNA at all from most of our ancestors!"