Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by mrpg on Friday August 18 2017, @12:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the color-me...-anything dept.

Over at StatNews is a story on a recent trend where low cost commercial DNA testing is resulting in a number of White Nationalists taking genetic tests, and sometimes they don't like the results that come back.

The article looks at research on how they respond to the sometimes unexpected results:

[...] In a new study, sociologists Aaron Panofsky and Joan Donovan examined years' worth of posts on Stormfront to see how members dealt with the news.

[...] About a third of the people posting their results were pleased with what they found. "Pretty damn pure blood," said a user with the username Sloth. But the majority didn't find themselves in that situation. Instead, the community often helped them reject the test, or argue with its results.

Some rejected the tests entirely, saying that an individual's knowledge about his or her own genealogy is better than whatever a genetic test can reveal. [...] Others, he said, responded to unwanted genetic results by saying that those kinds of tests don't matter if you are truly committed to being a white nationalist. Yet others tried to discredit the genetic tests as a Jewish conspiracy "that is trying to confuse true white Americans about their ancestry," Panofsky said.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Friday August 18 2017, @01:45PM (13 children)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 18 2017, @01:45PM (#555874)

    People have a complex web of ancestry given enough of generations.

    That was something very carefully not discussed in the normie news but directly on topic I have read some interesting comments along the lines of its sort of a big machine learning project, and intermarriage was not invented by hollywood in the 1960s.

    So horrifically brutalizing the science of genetics for simplicity, due to intermarriage lets say your code is 3897910563. And the sequence 791 is associated with BOTH race A and race B in location Q due to intermarriage 3000 years ago. Theres a chicken and egg puzzle WRT where sequence 791 originally came from. All they can say today is stuff like 40% of people calling themselves race A have 791 and 37% of people calling themselves race B have sequence 791.

    More concretely I've read claims from people that do the DNA test that anyone with eastern euro ancestry gets a small percentage of Jewish ancestry for this effect. What is the racial source of sequence 791? Who knows.

    Eventually I'll probably get around to doing this, but genealogy is a low priority hobby and I've been blowing money on US Army veteran research for my ancestors in the (first, so far) civil war and (first, so far) revolutionary war. Also I already know I have ancestors in Scotland, Ireland, Germany, via immigration info and even ship passenger lists, so DNA isn't really useful in my case. If like, someone was an orphan and had no idea where to even start, or there is no ability to research at all, well, at least you know you're kinda sorta from somewhere. Eventually all genealogy research hits a dead end and DNA is for people who have roughly nothing, so anything being better than nothing...

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +3  
       Interesting=3, Total=3
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 18 2017, @02:45PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 18 2017, @02:45PM (#555898)

    > normie news

    What the actual fuck.

    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday August 18 2017, @04:02PM (2 children)

      by kaszz (4211) on Friday August 18 2017, @04:02PM (#555945) Journal

      The actual fuck is that normie news is usually devoid of important facts and sometimes with distorted facts.

      • (Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Friday August 18 2017, @07:20PM

        by Osamabobama (5842) on Friday August 18 2017, @07:20PM (#556042)

        Symptoms include sound bites, teaser headlines, and certainty of results. Probably also local tie-ins and anecdotes...

        --
        Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
      • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 18 2017, @08:24PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 18 2017, @08:24PM (#556088)

        Abby, Abby someone?

        Abbynormal! Abnormal news! Brietbarf brain-damaged news! Not fake at all "catapulting the propaganda" abbynormal news! Got to wonder about whites who are "abnormal" and take pride in that. Maybe they can start a "Special White Olympics"? I noticed that they already have a short white bus for David Duke to ride in!

  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday August 18 2017, @04:07PM (1 child)

    by kaszz (4211) on Friday August 18 2017, @04:07PM (#555947) Journal

    A sequence can occur through genetic mishaps, be it inflammation, entropy, wrong pH etc. Another entry point are virus, bacteria or fungi etc. These can then be mixed with other sequences.

    • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday August 18 2017, @05:30PM

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 18 2017, @05:30PM (#555989) Journal

      Not sure about your point, but that's definitely true. Somehow pea plants ended up with hemoglobin in their root nodules. A bacterial infection mediated by viral transmission from some mammal is about the only plausible mechanism.

      --
      Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Arik on Friday August 18 2017, @04:17PM (6 children)

    by Arik (4543) on Friday August 18 2017, @04:17PM (#555950) Journal
    "So horrifically brutalizing the science of genetics for simplicity, due to intermarriage lets say your code is 3897910563. And the sequence 791 is associated with BOTH race A and race B in location Q due to intermarriage 3000 years ago."

    Leaving aside the poor choice of words (they're populations not 'races' ffs) this is accurate. It's also incomplete. Intermarriage is one way this can happen but it's certainly not the only one, especially if we're talking (as it seems clear you were) about tests that read a lot of genes instead of focusing specifically on the ones that are not affected by selection. It might be that your population A and B don't have any common ancestors more recent than ~200k years ago, far less related than any two randomly selected groups should be, and it might be that they haven't lived anywhere near each other in historical times. Yet a half dozen unrelated ancestral sequences, from 792-798, could mutate to 791 in a single step, and this mutation was beneficial in either setting, so that's what they'll both show today.

    And there are known examples of this having happened. This is why, for instance, the sickle cell gene is spread so widely. And this is a useful example also because it's the subject of a common myth among racists - that sickle cell is only found among those with African ancestry, and thus is an example of a real racial difference, showing that the underlying concept of race is not a mirage, but is based on science.

    Except it's not only found among those with African ancestry. It evolved independently from common base genes in several different spots far far away from each other, both inside and outside of Africa. Places, of course, where people cannot avoid contact with mosquitos - several places in Africa but others far removed. It's likely in the US to be associate with specifically west African ancestry - but that's because we have a lot of people of (specifically west) African ancestry, not because it's the only place that gene can possibly come from.

    The genes involved with lactase persistence are a very similar case. That trait has clearly evolved independently in several different populations from a common base, it has an obvious practical benefit that causes it to spread like wildfire among herdsmen, it should never be used as an indicator of deep ancestry. Yet I see it used that way all the time.

    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
    • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday August 18 2017, @05:35PM (1 child)

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 18 2017, @05:35PM (#555991) Journal

      But if I understand correctly the separate evolution of lactase persistence in some of the populations used a different mechanism than in other populations. I forget whether there were two or three different mechanisms, but they weren't all the same mutation, they just had the same effect. And I wouldn't be surprised if the same were true for the evolution of sickle cell.

      --
      Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Arik on Friday August 18 2017, @09:03PM

        by Arik (4543) on Friday August 18 2017, @09:03PM (#556115) Journal
        "But if I understand correctly the separate evolution of lactase persistence in some of the populations used a different mechanism than in other populations."

        That is correct, and why the 'but?' That is completely consistent with what I said and in fact serves itself as proof of its correctness! The fact that it's not always done in exactly the same way shows clearly that it has multiple origins and therefore has to be disqualified as an indicator of deep ancestry. (And even if it did have a single origin, the fact that it's so clearly susceptible to selection would do the same thing - so this is doubly disqualified.)
        --
        If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Saturday August 19 2017, @01:44PM (3 children)

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 19 2017, @01:44PM (#556348)

      Yet I see it used that way all the time.

      I think a lot of the trouble is the same english language words are used for CSI matching which is close enough to 100% accurate, and for hand wavy "your genes vs the average gene over there" which has the simplistic explanation of "you're from over there" but the accuracy is far less than 100% and the exceptions are vast and interesting.

      People have a lot of trouble understanding how the same science and technology and english language words can be near 100% accurate when they say some rando blood sample came from, for example, me, yet be not much better than a wild guess when someone says that blood sample came from Australia (which I'm not from, but I'm told there's enough ethnic Scots in Aus that if I were tested I'd get X% Aus ancestry as a result, despite having genealogical proof nobody in my direct ancestry went to Aus although some cousins certainly did... Essentially I have enough cousins in Aus that my genetic results are close to theirs so a test would give a small percentage chance I'm from Aus, although I actually provably have zero Aus direct ancestors, or flipping the argument, Aus people being related to me means we're related by cousinhood not ancestry but people have a lot of trouble wrapping their heads around that distinction)

      • (Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday August 19 2017, @04:55PM (2 children)

        by Arik (4543) on Saturday August 19 2017, @04:55PM (#556400) Journal
        "I think a lot of the trouble is the same english language words are used for CSI matching which is close enough to 100% accurate, and for hand wavy "your genes vs the average gene over there" which has the simplistic explanation of "you're from over there" but the accuracy is far less than 100% and the exceptions are vast and interesting."

        Yes, I think you're right, people have a hard time understanding that and I can see how it could be confusing. But the difference is in what you're matching against. When you're matching two blood samples, one from the crime scene and one from the suspect, those can be reliably tested against each other, and the results are pretty meaningful. But when you're trying to match a sample, not with another sample, but with geography, the geography cannot be coaxed into providing a blood sample. You're missing the other side of the test.

        So what they do is to catalogue a bunch of samples from different areas and map them. (Insert "how to lie with maps" here.) Then they're matching your sample against this statistical database. The validity of the test depends completely on the validity of that database and the accuracy of the assumptions behind it.

        --
        If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
        • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday August 21 2017, @02:07PM (1 child)

          by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 21 2017, @02:07PM (#557027)

          I thought about it a bit more and the problem boils down to nobody cares about cousins (well, mostly) and everyone cares about ancestors but population DNA testing can't tell the difference. So DNA testing shows I have a lot of cousins in Scotland, Germany, and areas where Scots and Germans have immigrated like Argentina and Australia. However I've done the genealogical research to prove I only have direct ancestors in Germany and Scotland. So merely having cousins in Australia and Argentina does NOT prove I have ancestors there. This is where a lot of confusion is created. I am provably genetically related to Australians and Argentinians, but they're not my individual ancestors.

          • (Score: 2) by Arik on Monday August 21 2017, @11:37PM

            by Arik (4543) on Monday August 21 2017, @11:37PM (#557282) Journal
            Cousins is one part of it.

            It's far from all though.

            When they're looking at genes that are subject to selection, those genes tend to match roughly with climate zones. So this can create apparent 'cousins' that actually don't share any recent ancestors with you, simply because the ancestors of both lived for a long period in a similar climate and some of the same genes were selected for heavily.

            Also humankind had a relatively recent population bottleneck. This means we are ALL inbred cousins, in a sense, world wide, if you just go back far enough. This only intensifies the effect of selection, because all human populations start from a very very similar genetic base, as a result of the population bottleneck. You start with a similar genetic base in two places, you subject both populations to similar stimuli (environment) and you may reasonably expect some similar outcomes.

            They prove nothing at all ancestry.
            --
            If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?