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Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2007-03 > 1173828363


From: "Jim Pearsall" <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] OmniPop caution received from FamilyTreeDNA
Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2007 18:26:03 -0500
In-Reply-To: <45F72C39.7020603@comcast.net>


>----Original Message Follows----
>From: Bonnie Schrack <>
>
>I'm so glad that FTDNA has very wisely taken this position. I have been
>saying ever since Omnipop became available that people should not take
>it so seriously, and I have seen a number of people insist on believing
>results that I frankly found way off base. From what I have seen, it has
>had the effect of misleading people, since it has a very inadequate
>database, as Bennett points out; the sample sizes are all different and
>this skews the results, as Thomas explained to me; and people by pure
>chance, drift, and convergence very often have matches with populations
>across the globe with whom their families have never had any connection.
>It is a flawed method, and I would be glad if people would not keep
>putting their trust in it, as they have.
>
>From what I saw at the Am. Soc. of Human Genetics meeting last fall,
>there is a lot of research going on regarding autosomal markers for
>ancestry testing, and considerable progress is being made, but the more
>successful, advanced new tests are not being made available to the
>consumer, and it will probably be some time until someone manages to put
>this research into an applied, commercial setting. In the meantime, we
>can test our autosomal markers and compare them to various databases,
>but I don't believe Omnipop is the way to go, and I'm very glad to hear
>that Bennett agrees.
>
>Bonnie


I agree with Bonnie's assessment and the conclusion FTDNA has made.

I'll use myself as an example.

I have very divergent paternal/maternal lines; paternal heritage is
British/Norman/Scandinavian (Y-DNA), and maternal heritage is Thai (mtDNA).

Just for kicks, I entered my autosomal (CODIS) results into OmniPop to see
what happens... guessing that it'll be a bit confused and maybe guess I am
"Uzbek" or "Kazakh." <grin> (midway between Northwest Europe and Southeast
Asia)

OmniPop came up with Hispanic - Mexican!

Of course I shared this good news with my hispanic friends, but in reality,
I have no ancestral connection with Mexico.

As Bonnie so rightly indicated, using OmniPop for clues to your ancestry may
lead people way off base. I would recommend sticking to Y-DNA and mtDNA
testing for genealogical purposes. Autosomal analysis will need to progress
significantly to be used for anything but identification of individuals.


Jim


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