Wednesday, October 26, 2016

No AncestryDNA Chromosome Browser Will Be in Our Future

Well I have some new infor on AncestryDNA to share.

From a post by Robert Clark on the ISOGG FB Page

"A little news for AncestryDNA customers: At the American Society of Human Genetics conference, I spoke with Cathy Ball, Chief Scientific Officer for Ancestry. Among other things, I asked her about the lack of a chromosomal browser for AncestryDNA. She explained to me at length that Ancestry has many improvements in the works, but a chromosomal browser is not one of them. She said there are 2 main reasons for this:

1) Privacy issues - sharing potential DNA loci with relatives would grant knowing disease-associated loci to relatives to whom you are sharing your DNA information, and
2) "bad science" - people often misuse their shared loci information and infer that shared population-wide loci gives proof for closer relations than are true.

Please don't shoot the messenger, as I am relaying what she told me. So, back to GEDmatch for me."

I guess that AncestryDNA still thinks we are still the dumbest people on the planet. But below is a  new twist to their public story why they will NOT offer a chromosome browser to their customer who have tested with them. Shame on you Ancestry. my genealogy/genetic students aren't dumbasses and they deserve better. What is even more scary is her comment that they have more improvements in the works. Wonder when I will be teaching my next genetic genealogy class. Within a short period after I am done, we will see those "improvements" mentioned by Cathy Ball. Maybe some of those improvements including getting rid of false positives on your test when you have had both your parents test, the now they are here now they are gone NADs, disappearing leaf matches that reappear a couple of weeks later and a better matching system for determining MRCA tree matches.

I agree Robert back to GEDMatch so I can look for CB info for my Ancestry matches.