Boy, this is getting old. There's a fresh batch of articles circulating in the U.K. claiming that genetic genealogy tests are a rip-off. Here's just one:
£200-a-time ancestral DNA test kits are a rip off, say experts
What's especially disappointing is that this one is driven by an article that apparently appeared in Ancestors, a popular British genealogy magazine. The person who took the testing is mentioned as a deputy editor, so given that genetic genealogy has been around since 2000, you would think that she would be fairly savvy about the topic. But sadly, she's not. In fact, based on the information included in the online newspaper articles, she's impressively clueless. It sounds, for instance, as if she tried to compare her mtDNA results with autosomal ones. Here's a comment I posted on one of the newspaper sites to try to explain why this makes no sense:
Based on the information provided in this article, it sounds as if Ms. Law is comparing apples and oranges. For instance, it sounds as if she's comparing the results of an mtDNA test (her direct maternal line) to an autosomal test (which would include contributions from ancestors from all branches of her family tree). In the case of the third test, there isn't enough information here to be sure which one she took. This is roughly equivalent to getting measured by several companies and being surprised that the height and weight results weren't identical. I hope I have misunderstood because I would assume that a magazine called "Ancestors" would have troubled to master the basics of genetic genealogy (which has been around since 2000) before publishing an article on it.
In my opinion, we either sadly have an editor from a genealogy magazine failing to do even the most basic of research before publishing an article or we have a magazine just trying to attract attention. Unfortunately, it's succeeded in gaining attention for badly distorted information. What really blows my mind is the fact that it's a genealogy publication that's done this. Why would they, of all people, try to scare folks off with misinformation?
At any rate, I apologize if I sound beyond frustrated with this, but it's because I'm been here so many times before. Check out this posting of mine from last October that referenced an earlier posting of mine from June of 2006 that referenced something I wrote in early 2004. If folks are going to continue to attack genetic genealogy, they should at least try to be accurate and/or original!