Cherry picking origins?

[sugarfizzle]

Shortly after reading the article and leaving my comment, this story was my top Google news story.

I know Big Brother Google keeps a close eye on what we all do, but to add this story to my 'news' within half an hour or so is a bit ridiculous.

Regards Margaret

[Erato]

"Evidence suggests that many who do a dna test do so to find out their ethnicity"

Keep in mind that a LOT of Americans have ancestors whose surnames were changed [often radically so] when they immigrated to North America so their descendants really have little idea of what their original names were and where they came from.

I don't have much to cherry pick from - I have only two known direct line ancestors who were not from the British Isles - one German ggg-grandmother and one Huguenot 7x g-grandfather.  I cherish them for the tiny element of diversity they add to my tree.

[IJDisney]

The sociologist who led the study was “...surprised to find that, for most people, they didn’t adopt the ancestries suggested by the test,”. Surely, as a sociologist she should already know that ethnic identity is not just a matter of biological descent, but also about culture, heritage and group/self-identity?

But later on in the article she says that those people in the study who did adopt their DNA-test ethnicity were "upending the tradition of racial categories based solely on appearance or knowledge of descent." and that “If that becomes commonplace, that’s a real concern.”

Surely she is presenting contradictory expectations? Those who changed their identity were doing so precisely due to their new knowledge of 'descent'.

But she's also confused over 'racial' being the same as 'ethnicity', and 'ethnicity' being the same as 'ancestry'. The closing comment that  “It really emphasises to me that race is much more complex than just information that’s encoded within your genes,” makes me doubt that she's actually had any training in some of the basic tenets of social studies or biology. The study only confirms what has been known for decades.

This is a load of hype riding on the popularity of DNA-ethnicity testing and generating a piece of non-news, at the same time as promoting the underlying assumption that DNA ethnicity tests are scientific. I wonder who funded the research?

[sugarfizzle]

I don't have much to cherry pick from - I have only two known direct line ancestors who were not from the British Isles - one German ggg-grandmother and one Huguenot 7x g-grandfather.  I cherish them for the tiny element of diversity they add to my tree.

If your DNA implied that you had NO German or Huguenot ancestry, or that you DID have a fair percentage of Irish ancestry as well as a small percentage of German ancestry, then you might choose which to accept. I.e. you might completely reject the first one, and if given the second one, you might completely ignore the Irish part.

Or you might say to yourself, as I would, it's a load of bunkum anyway. 

Either way, if you were one of the interviewees for the research, your views as to your ancestry and ethnicity would probably remain the same, and you might be accused of cherry picking.

So you, and all the rest of us, have plenty to cherry pick from.

Regards Margaret

[IJDisney]

My ancestory (from paper-trail research and DNA matches with cousins) shows that my 64 separate lines of descent back to c.1750 were all from Britain, yet I got 1% British ancestry on my ethnicity results.

So if I still choose to identify as British, would the research label me as 'cherry-picking'? Or does it just suggest that I have a better knowledge about what ethnicity tests actually mean? (i.e. they compare you with a small sample of living populations, without any guarantee that those samples are themselves fully representative of the 'ethnic'groups they have been selected to represent).

[sugarfizzle]

My ancestory (from paper-trail research and DNA matches with cousins) shows that my 64 separate lines of descent back to c.1750 were all from Britain, yet I got 1% British ancestry on my ethnicity results.

So if I still choose to identify as British, would the research label me as 'cherry-picking'? Or does it just suggest that I have a better knowledge about the reliability of these ethnicity tests?

Similar here, though not quite as extreme as your results. I haven't identified all 4G grandparents like you have, but my research has picked up one southern Irish 4G grandfather, everyone else from South/South East England. Results - 12% Irish/Scottish/Welsh, 33% Great British, 48% West European, the rest a mixture of  various different ethnicities, including 3% Iberian Peninsula.

Must go looking for Spanish/Portuguese ancestors, perhaps from one of the illegitimacies!

Regards Margaret

[adenshillito]

I have found in my experience of emailing people on Ancestry, FT-DNA and MyHeritage that for a great many the novelty or chic of what 'flavour' they are in terms of ethnicity is the major motive for dna testing. A think that is reflected in the current vogue for dna testing and the methods of advertising employed by many of the major test providers. A lot of people want the ethnicity results and then never look at that account again. I expect many people do the testing for serious genealogical reasons, but just from my own experience the majority attraction is the appeal of 'being exotic' in some regard, seems very much to be expected in the way that popular trends in science and technology have worked in the past, its affordable, its novel, and the benefits of so many people testing to those engaged in serious study is investment in the services that provide testing or research service and an increased volume of comparative data.

[DavidG02]

It doesnt help when the most popular Genealogy TV program still leads with ' I always wondered where my musical talent came from'' or engineering or dance or etc etc

[pharmaT]

From comments re DNA tests on other sites such as FB people do seem to cherry pick.  I have seen people complain that x ethnicity didn't show and also complaining that y ethnicity did show up.  Not only complaining but getting very irate.