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Identical Twins Test 5 DNA Ancestry Kits, Get Different Results On Each (www.cbc.ca)

Posted by BeauHD on from the junk-science dept.

Freshly Exhumed writes: Uh-oh, something is not right with the results of most popular DNA ancestry kits, as a pair of identical twins have found. Charlsie Agro and her twin sister, Carly, bought home kits from AncestryDNA, MyHeritage, 23andMe, FamilyTreeDNA and Living DNA, and mailed samples of their DNA to each company for analysis. Despite having virtually identical DNA, the twins did not receive matching results from any of the companies. "The fact that they present different results for you and your sister, I find very mystifying," said Dr. Mark Gerstein, a computational biologist at Yale University. Gerstein's team analyzed the results, and he asserts that any results the Agro twins received from the same DNA testing company should have been identical. The raw data collected from both sisters' DNA is nearly exactly the same. "It's shockingly similar," he said.

5 of 258 comments (clear)

  1. makes sense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    Last year it came out that these services were basically making up results to make white people think they have african or asian heritage in an effort to cure them of racism.
    The only way you can do that is if the results are randomly fabricated.

  2. Why bother with twins? by onkelonkel · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What is the point of the identical twins (other than adding click-bait value)? Why not submit two samples from the same person under different names?

    --
    None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
  3. Maybe the real goal is spying by jbn-o · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Spying is big business. For example, spying is Google's main theme for which services to keep and which to do away with. Perhaps spying is driving these ancestry services as well. We already know these ancestry services share client data with police (1, 2, 3). Perhaps this data sharing is listed in the terms of service, but either way the sharing helps authorities augment their database and helps them perform more surveillance on ordinary citizens (most citizens don't commit crimes and therefore should not face such treatment; I'm not convinced those who commit crimes deserve this treatment but the vast majority of the public absolutely don't).

    --
    Digital Citizen
  4. It avoids violating their terms of service by Solandri · · Score: 5, Insightful
    e.g. Here's the relevant part of 23andMe's terms of service (emphasis added)

    Furthermore you agree not to use the Services to: (1) [...]; (2) impersonate any person or entity, including, but not limited to, anyone affiliated with 23andMe, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with a person or entity;

    I suspect if a reporter did submit samples under different names, a court would side with the press against their terms of service. Eventually.

    But by using identical twins, you sidesteps the possibility of wasting time, effort, and money because your report has been tied up by a gag order while a court mulls over what to do.

  5. Re:But Are They Real Twins? by kinko · · Score: 5, Insightful

    99.8% between humans and chimpanzees refers to the entire genome (~3 billion base pairs).

    23 And Me and related companies only look at about 3 million positions - the positions that are often different between different human populations/races (these are known as Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms).