<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" http-equiv=Content-Type> <META name=GENERATOR content="MSHTML 8.00.6001.18828"> <STYLE></STYLE> </HEAD> <BODY bgColor=#ffffff> <DIV><FONT size=2 face="Courier New">just going offline, but interesting point.  You're right, if you got dead-ended on the search, that would be one thing to consider, if all else was accounted for.  Could be a few surprises waiting!  </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=2 face="Courier New"></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT size=2 face="Courier New">I'm just guessing that's how it would be, don't know enough about the actual DNA testing side of things.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=2 face="Courier New"></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT size=2 face="Courier New">Larry</FONT></DIV> <BLOCKQUOTE style="BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV> <DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial; BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A title=raybeere@yahoo.com href="mailto:raybeere@yahoo.com">Ray Beere Johnson II</A> </DIV> <DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=laboswell@rogers.com href="mailto:laboswell@rogers.com">LBoswell</A> ; <A title=apgpubliclist@apgen.org href="mailto:apgpubliclist@apgen.org">APG Posting</A> </DIV> <DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Thursday, October 29, 2009 9:14 PM</DIV> <DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: [APG Public List] [APG Members] Exciting New Dimension for DNAResearch</DIV> <DIV><BR></DIV>--- On Thu, 10/29/09, LBoswell <<A href="mailto:laboswell@rogers.com">laboswell@rogers.com</A>> wrote:<BR><BR>> That's a much sounder approach. The ancestral research would have to be <BR>> verified (in this case done) anyway, but with this approach nothing is <BR>> taken for granted.<BR><BR>     Actually, there is still one thing that _is_ taken for granted, and could cause a lot of confusion. Prior to the development of DNA tests, all a genealogist could possibly go on was the written record. If, say, great-grandma had a fling with the hired man, no one would know. Even if you checked the records, you couldn't possibly know this.<BR>     When you have your DNA tested, if you find a match, but the information you have does _not_ match, you'd then have to figure out just where the problem is. Is the match a statistical anomaly (no, I don't know enough about DNA and statistics to guess how likely this is - and, given the relative infancy of this approach, I doubt anyone else does, yet, either), or do the records contain inaccurate information, whether due to infidelity, unrecorded adoption (which _did_ occur in the past), or some other deliberate falsehood - or even inadvertent error? (Yes, I'm sure that last possibility is very slight, but in a case where only a single record identifies an ancestor, or a slender chain of reasoning that depends on a single identifying tidbit, it can't be ruled out entirely.)<BR>     It seems to me the only thing that might clear up this type of problem is more information about the accuracy - and the exact potential significance - of this matching algorithm. Without those facts, how is the individual who discovers a match the records fail to bear out to have any idea how to proceed? (_With_ those facts, presumably, there would be _some_ avenues: say you find a match with another person but your records indicate no common ancestor, each person might seek other matches and compare _those_ records to determine whose records are wrong, then that person could use that information to estimate - or perhaps even discover - just when and how the disparity occurred.)<BR>                           Ray Beere Johnson II<BR><BR><BR></BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>