13 March 2019

Videos on New DNA Tools

On Tuesday Blaine Bettinger posted two YouTube videos explaining the DNA tools released by Ancestry and MyHeritage at RootsTech. As I write this 13 hours after they were posted the AncestryDNA one has 1.7K views, the MyHeritage video over 500 views.
In both he starts with a warning "These tools are not the END of your work, they are the
BEGINNING." They generate a hypothesis, not a conclusion.
Both videos are clear and straightforward. Recommended. Do take your time as there's a lot of material. The beauty of videos is that you can pause the playback to try a tool before moving on to the next topic. Take advantage.





Blaine concludes each of these videos, before a very brief promo for his DNA Central membership site, with "There is NO single tool or piece of evidence that provides you with a conclusion."

There's a good chance these automated methods will find connections you didn't even though you previously had access to both the DNA and documentary evidence. There's also likely a greater chance you'll find connections suggested that don't stand up to scrutiny. However, it's early days. As matching techniques become refined and more documentary evidence is incorporated into the algorithms the balance will shift.

Just as the computer can more often than not beat the human at chess and Go that day can be anticipated for genealogy.


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