Month: March 2019

[WARNING: I discuss or imply violent acts by ancestors in this post, read at your own risk].

We’ve all heard it. Some of us have even made it. A joke or implication about an affair or dalliance that conceived a child, often referring to the milkman or a neighbor. It’s usually directed to the biological mother, always ignoring or downplaying any act by the biological father, and is always consensual. The audience (whether in a Facebook forum or at a talk/seminar/webinar), seemingly always primed for the joke, laughs and the speaker moves on.

It’s time for this joke or implication, whether blatant or implied, to die the ignoble death it deserves.

An Admission 

A few years ago during a lecture, I make a flippant remark about a misattributed parentage conception. It may have been as simple as raising my eyebrows at a key moment, or even a simple pause that implied meaning, I don’t remember. After the talk, an audience member came up and called me out for being flippant about misattributed parentage conceptions. And the audience member was right, I had been flippant. I was wrong. ... Click to read more!

In this blog post we will briefly review an extreme Grandparent/Grandchild relationship, where a grandchild appears to share just 9% of her DNA with a paternal grandmother rather than the expected 25%. All information is anonymized.

I’m a little afraid to post this article about an extreme outlier scenario. There is a danger that it could support misinterpretation rather than foster critical thinking. If you have a possible outlier scenario, be sure to try to disprove that it is an outlier situation, rather than simply proceeding as if is an outlier. Avoid confirmation bias!

This is the third post on my blog specifically examining outliers in confirmed relationships:

1. Analyzing a Lack of Sharing in 2C1R Relationship
2. Examining Outliers in Shared cM Amounts

Is it an Outlier? The Extreme Danger of Confirmation Bias

This was discussed in a previous article about outliers, but it bears repeating. ... Click to read more!

The annual RootsTech convention at Salt Lake City in February has become a showcase for new tests and tools offered by the DNA testing companies. The biggest winner of all, of course, is the consumer!

Both AncestryDNA and MyHeritage announced major new developments at this year’s RootsTech. For example, AncestryDNA announced “MyTreeTags,” “New & Improved DNA Matches,” and “ThruLines,” three different tools currently in beta. The first two require an opt-in, while everyone is currently eligible for ThruLines. Meanwhile, MyHeritage announced “Theory of Family Relativity” and “AutoCluster,” both of which are currently available to members of their DNA database.

There is a LOT to digest with these tools, including knowing how to use them and understanding their limitations. To help you understand what the tools are and how to use them, I’ve created two new YouTube videos: ... Click to read more!