Judy G. Russell, the Legal Genealogist, is out with a fantastic new post on AncestryDNA's new ethnicity estimate percentages.
As she wryly notes in the opening, she is delighted to find out that they have discovered that Germans exist.
We've wrote about this before, as have others. The major testing sites -- some of which are run by people who seem hostile to Germans (America's biggest ethnic group) -- have written Germans off the map. 23andme is particularly bad at identifying German DNA. They disclose it too, but they bury it in the fine print.
We have been repeatedly depressed by newbies, who know from good paper records that they are a quarter German (or Swiss, or French, or Austrian) say, "duh, gee, duh, this unscientific website tells me I am really 21.2% English wow gee duh am I adopted?" NO! The science isn't there yet. As Judy Russell says, "it's not quite soup."
And it STILL isn't quite soup. This post focuses on Germans, but the major testing services have an equal problem with Italians, another major American ethnic group. Poor Italians who get tested often end up with anything but Italian. (Spare me your pseudoscience on how Italy has been invaded. EVERY country has been invaded.) Italy is a long country with many peaks and valleys, and for much of its history was an exporter of population to surrounding areas. The testing sites need more samples to identify all the different permutations of Italians.
Bottom line, as we've said before, and as every credible scientist says - DO NOT TRUST the ethnicity estimates of the testing services.
