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A comment on DNA Testing Botched My Family's Heritage.

Re:DNA Testing Botched My Family's Heritage by mcguire on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @12:42PM (#16160125)
"23andMe’s ancestry results were the most confounding of all. It found that I was only 3 percent Scandanavian, a number that, based on my recent family history, I know is flatly wrong. It also found I was only 5.5 percent Middle Eastern and a whopping 62.6 percent Northwestern European."

I get how their statistical models come up with those numbers, but I have a very hard time understanding how any reasonable person would put this much stock in the interpretation. "3% Scandinavian?" "Flatly wrong?" Where does the author think Scandinavia is, if not north-western Europe? Does the author think the borders of "Scandinavia" were closed in 1000CE, with no interaction with the rest of Europe?

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Re:DNA Testing Botched My Family's Heritage by Myrmornis on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @12:56PM (#16160266)
> Where does the author think Scandinavia is, if not north-western Europe?

Um, north-eastern Europe perhaps?

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Re:DNA Testing Botched My Family's Heritage by unclenoriega on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @01:46PM (#16160874)
If you look at the image in the article, 23andMe includes Scandinavia in northwestern Europe.
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Re:DNA Testing Botched My Family's Heritage by Myrmornis on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @04:22PM (#16162748)
A surprising categorization by 23andMe certainly, but not one which detracts from my post: very few people would place Scandinavia in north-western Europe since that category implies that north-eastern Europe is an option.
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Re:DNA Testing Botched My Family's Heritage by klmr on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @06:08PM (#16163713)
> very few people would place Scandinavia in north-western Europe

Not really. I don’t presume to claim to know what “most” people think, but placing Scandinavia in north-western Europe is hardly eccentric [1, 2]. Furthermore, its history, politics and certainly its genetics are fairly intertwined with north-western Europe so it’s a sensible categorisation.

[1]: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/Scandinavia [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwestern_Europe

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Re:DNA Testing Botched My Family's Heritage by Myrmornis on Wednesday January 17, 2018 @09:14PM (#16174081)
I see, I wasn't aware that it is normal. Agree about history, politics and human genetics (not Finland though!). I was thinking more about geography and non-human biogeography, which support north-eastern.
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