In this specific case, they do test for the ApoE gene which can you a 20x higher chance of getting Alzheimer's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apolipoprotein_E#Alzheimer's_d...

20x more is not a sure thing, but for a disease like Alzheimer's that is already pretty common (e.g. we're not talking about risk increasing from 0.01% to 0.2%) it's more meaningful than just for entertainment purposes.

I agree with your wife that for most people their 23andme results will be nothing more than entertainment, but there are a handful of truly meaningful things it can find.

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?

My comment was substantive. Saying that "X person who is Z has Y opinion" without giving any reasons - stats, sources, etc - why they have that opinion is what is unsubstantive.

My friend, who is a dietician, thinks that chocolate is healthy.

Great, but why does anyone care what my friend thinks? The word "dietician" doesn't make their opinion any more valid because there's zero additional data in that sentence to back up the opinion. So it's a useless opinion presented as-is in a comment with no justification.

So could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments on hacker news?

But then maybe she's onto something.

Some Genetic Tests Apparently Can’t Tell If You’re Dog Or Human https://futurism.com/home-genetics-test-dog-human

How DNA Testing Botched My Family's Heritage, and Probably Yours, Too https://gizmodo.com/how-dna-testing-botched-my-familys-herit...

I Took 9 Different Commercial DNA Tests and Got 6 Different Results https://www.livescience.com/63997-dna-ancestry-test-results-...

How Accurate Are Online DNA Tests? (Betteridge's Law of Headlines might still somewhat play into this one.) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-accurate-are-...

Consumer DNA Tests Are Wrong 40 Percent of the Time https://www.geek.com/science/study-consumer-dna-tests-are-wr...

Consumer Affairs' 23 and me rating (1.5/5 stars) https://www.consumeraffairs.com/health/23andme.html

The words "Fly By Night" definitely come to mind.

Combine that with ongoing privacy murkiness, and 23andme is basically the medical version of Facebook. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/16/5-biggest-risks-of-sharing-d...

> Some Genetic Tests Apparently Can’t Tell If You’re Dog Or Human

We do share a lot of genetic code, so checking for a specific aminoacid sequence could very unsurpisingly detect it in both

People have tried spoofing with dogs, but dogs aren't even that close genetically compared to other animals. Makes one wonder if they'd be able to detect a chimpanzee.

https://www.thedodo.com/animals-you-had-no-idea-were-so-clos...

The real test should be sending in your own genes twice. They might not detect exactly the same because of minor mutagenic differentiation that has taken place (or because you're a chimera!), but they should easily place you into the same family tree as yourself.