Is 23andme accurate on the ethnicity part?

ancestryDNA tests are sold to entertain you, they tell you nothing about your ancestry and proved as if you took 6 tests you would get back 6 different results, our ancestors do not change but results always do ... research your ancestry and the only way to do that is start from yourself and work back one generation at a time from real records http://familytimeline.webs.com/recordsinyourownhome.htm

In the overall ancestral testing they use Autosomal DNA along with the X. Y & Mitochondrial that have been used in genealogy for years are considered more accurate but the only thing a male gets each from only one person in each generation he goes back. A female normally only gets Mitochondrial from only one person in each generation she goes back.

Autosomal is more complicated. You got it 50-50 from both parents but not necessarily 25% from each of your 4 grandparents. The reason why when parents pass on the Autosomal they received from their parents to their children it goes through a process of meiosis where it is randomly jumbled and recombined. So while you got 50% from your mother's side and 50% from your father's, there usually will be a bias in what you inherited from grandmother and grandfather on both sides of the family. In other words you could have inherited anywhere from 0 to 50% from any one grandparent. The gap usually isn't that big but can be. How you inherited any bias will not be how your siblings inherited it unless you have an identical twin.

Because of the bias if you and a full sibling were tested by the same company at the same time, the results will probably vary. Also it is reported if you go to more than one company to have this type of testing the results will not be the same. The reason why the only thing they can do is match you with population samples in their database. So if one company does not have or is deficient in certain population groups another has and vice versa, the results naturally will not be exact.

The X can be different for males. You got X from your mother but she got X from her father and her mother. Whose X did you get, your maternal grandmother's or your maternal grandfather's? It can differ among brothers who share the same mother.

Okay, which is the best company to use? The one that has the population samples that best match your ancestry and there is no way we or even you can know which one that is.

The 3 most recommended are FamilyTreeDNA, 23andMe and Ancestry.Com. National Geographic is also recommended but we have had a poster here say that FamilyTreeDNA does the testing for National Geographic.

Now, the real value of any type of DNA testing is if you are into traditional genealogy research and if the company you choose has cousins of yours going back several generations in their database and they are allowed to notify you of those cousins and you make contact with them and they are also into traditional genealogy research, you can collaborate information with them. They might have discovered ancestors you haven't and you might have discovered ancestors they haven't.

yes. the accuracy rating for 23andme is 8/10, while other companies have below 5/10 ratings

Their "Ancestry Composition"
As far as most white people, Western Europeans, go, 23andme is probably the most accurate of all the companies right now because they have the largest database Western Europeans, with several thousand samples in the database. They are also pretty good at Northeast Asians. But for everyone else like Eastern Europeans, Africans,Middle Easterns, Southeast Asians, Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, 23andme is no better than the other companies. They're unspecific.


I do like that unlike the other companies they have three ways of looking at the ethnicity: a "speculative" which is the default one, a "standard" and a "conservative." The only other company that does this is Tribecode.

23andme is also the only company that if you have at least one of your biological parents also tested you can phase your Ancestry Composition with theirs and it will be slightly more accurate.

The thing that's really holding us back is the fact that it has been years now with no reference population samples added at any of the companies.
But if you're a Western European, then you'll get the most out of 23andme than other backgrounds will.

Hi

Is 23andme Accurate

Yes