"paternal relationship confirmed"... with two people?

+11 votes
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Despite DNA Project members' best efforts, I'm still pretty clueless about DNA. But I thought I understood that for a distant connection to be confirmed by DNA, triangulation (with three people, not two) was required. And I thought that was for Y-DNA. So how is paternity confirmed by DNA through two people possible for a female ancestor?

Posted on Bridget's profile (born c1688):

  • Paternal relationship is confirmed by an AncestryDNA test match between David Roberds and dormills1 his eighth cousin. Their most-recent common ancestors are their 7th-great grandparents, Philip Noland and Bridget Carroll. Predicted relationship from AncestryDNA: 5th-8th Cousins, based on sharing 11 cM across 1 segments.

Neither "dormills1" nor David Roberds shows up in the DNA section of the profile.

I intend to move the information that was added about this from the top of the profile to Research Notes, but not sure what to say about. Help?

WikiTree profile: Bridget Noland
in Genealogy Help by Liz Shifflett G2G6 Pilot (640k points)
Liz, the person who posted that information did not follow the DNA confirmation instructions. You're correct that for that far back he would have needed to use triangulation, and Darlene is correct, that you can't use Ancestry test matches for triangulation. There's one other problem with that DNA confirmation statement: Bridget, the person whose relationship to her parents is supposedly confirmed by the matching tests, is one of the Most Recent Common Ancestors (MRCAs) of the two test takers. When you have an actual DNA confirmation, you can generally confirm BACK TO the MRCAs, but you can never use a DNA match to confirm the relationship of one of the MRCAs to his/her own parents. I would recommend removing the statement completely.
Triangulate= two matches and yourself.

1st to 3rd cousin only 1

1 Answer

+21 votes
 
Best answer

Hi Liz, triangulation most commonly is used in reference to autosomal DNA.  Triangulation is the process of comparing a DNA segment common to three or more people to verify that all share DNA along the same or an overlapping segment of a particular chromosome with all the others.  When the segment is of a significant size (usually defined as 7 to 10 centiMorgans or cM), this shared DNA indicates that all may have inherited that DNA segment from a shared common ancestor. A triangulated group consists of those test-takers who all match each other. Because we have one copy of each chromosome from our mother and one from our father, two triangulated groups can exist for each segment of each chromosome. One of those groups should share our maternal ancestry; the other should share our paternal ancestry.

Accurate triangulation requires multiple test-takers who all have deep and accurate family trees.  Two (or more) of the test-takers in the triangulated group need a solid paper trail to a common ancestral couple.  Without the paper trail, you can't be (somewhat) certain that the shared segment isn't through a different ancestral couple.

Wikitree only goes back (with DNA information on profiles) to 6th great-grandparents.

People can't use ancestryDNA to confirm relationships back this far, as ancestryDNA doesn't allow you to see shared segments.  As such, any triangulation will have to be done on people that are all on a testing site other than (or in addition to) ancestry, such as Gedmatch, FTDNA, 23andMe, or MyHeritage.

by Darlene Athey-Hill G2G6 Pilot (547k points)
selected by Edison Williams

As far as what you should say about the comment posted on the profile, you should remove the part about the paternal relationship being confirmed.  You could say that the two people are both on ancestryDNA and share an 11cM segment.  You could then get in touch with the person that placed the note there and point them to this post as well as this page.

Thank you Darlene, for clarifying. I find the first statement on [[Leftwich-3|Augustine  Leftwich Sr. (abt.1712-bef.1795)]] to be inappropriate. For several reasons: one is the kits used are all of a closely related family that are comparing to a third Ancestry test. Second reason is the ancestor the Third Ancestry test lists is not a documented child of Leftwich-3, and carries no paper trail. I'll try to contact the person who posted and encourage him to check this page.
Ref: "Hi Liz, triangulation most commonly is used in reference to autosomal DNA."

Y-111 DNA Triangulation: Three questions please:

Question 1: Do you agree that Y-111 DNA Triangulation can be used on Wikitree to confirm paternity in this situation?

There are three 3rd cousins with a solid paper trail.

The three 3rd cousins have each taken the Y-111 DNA test on Family Tree DNA.

Family Tree DNA shows the three 3rd cousins to be a Y-111 DNA match with genetic distances of (0-zero) and 1.

The three 3rd cousins share an overlapping 25.xxx cM segment on chromosome 8.

IMPORTANT: One of the three 3rd cousins has a PRIVATE profile, not  a PUBLIC profile on Wikitree.

The Y-111 DNA Triangulation is computed per the Confirmation Citation Maker:

Triangulation

https://apps.wikitree.com/apps/clarke11007/DNAconf.php

Note: The Confirmation Citation Marker tool, Triangulation, prints a single, neat, tidy, succinct paragraph for the Triangulation confirmation statement.

The Confirmation Citation Marker tool prints the Confirmation citation statements to be pasted into each of the associated profiles.

Question 2. General Question: Can the Confirmation citation statements generated by the Confirmation Citation Maker be used on the associated Wikitree profiles, VERBATIM, as instructed by the Confirmation Citation Maker tool?

Question 3. General Question: Or do the associated profile ID numbers and the associated Y-111 DNA Kit Numbers need to be disguised in the paternity Confirmation citation statements on the associated Wikitree profiles?

Thank you.

Hi Richard, Thank you for wanting to learn about DNA confirmation! It may help you to read the DNA Confirmation Help page that was linked from the app. It states the following:
Source Requirements:
(On WikiTree) WikiTree IDs of you and your match. You can include names as well, but do not use your match's name if their profile does not have a public family tree.

(Not on WikiTree) Your WikiTree ID and the initials (or another anonymous identifier) for your match. You can include your full name but do not publicly reveal the identity of your match.

As well as the help on our Privacy Policy:

(Information on Living Family Members): You must not share any information about DNA tests for other living people.

(my emphasis, not the Help pages)

I hope this helps!! 

Ref: "Hi Liz, triangulation most commonly is used in reference to autosomal DNA."

My Question 1 Restated:

Y-111 DNA Triangulation:

Question 1: Do you agree that Y-111 DNA Triangulation can be used on Wikitree to confirm paternity in this situation below?

There are three 3rd cousins on Wikitree.

The three 3rd cousins have PUBLIC profiles.

The three 3rd cousins with a solid paper trail.

The three 3rd cousins have each taken the Y-111 DNA test on Family Tree DNA.

Family Tree DNA shows the three 3rd cousins to be a Y-111 DNA match with genetic distances of (0-zero) and 1.

The three 3rd cousins share an overlapping 25.xxx cM segment on chromosome 8.

The Y-111 DNA Triangulation is computed per the Confirmation Citation Maker:
Triangulation
https://apps.wikitree.com/apps/clarke11007/DNAconf.php

Note: The Confirmation Citation Marker tool, Triangulation, prints a single, neat, tidy, succinct paragraph for the Triangulation confirmation statement.

Again: Question 1: Do you agree that Y-111 DNA Triangulation can be used on Wikitree to confirm paternity in this situation above?

Thank you.

Hi there Richard!  Glad you're using the DNA Confirmation app and that it is helpful.  As the app creator, thought I'd just clarify a few points - just so we're all on the same page.

(1) Yes - you can use the DNA confirmation app to verify a Y-DNA Match.  It only requires 2 males with Y DNA matches with a genetic distance of 0 (or 1) with a solid paper trail - but having 3 who all share is great - further evidence.

(2) You CAN use the citations that are generated by the app in your profile as DNA source citations, but there is a proviso about privacy.  If a person mentioned in the DNA citation is alive and is not a WikiTree member, then their name should be anonymized.  This also applies if a person IS a WikiTree member but has a private profile.  

That "swap out" is not something the DNA confirmation app can do automatically - it relies on you entering it or editing the citation before you paste it in the profile.

Your message here makes me think that I should make that  message more obvious in the app.

(3) People's names should be anonymized if they are living non-WikiTree members, or have private WikiTree profiles.  However, the GEDmatch or FTDNA kit numbers (depending on the type of test) can be used - and in fact - those should always be given so that other relatives can verify the connection or make new connections with you.

I hope that helps clarify.

 - Greg

Richard, Triangulation on WikiTree is used with autosomal DNA when the matching test takers are more distantly related than third cousin. Instead of using the "Triangulation" portion of the DNA Confirmation Citation Maker app, I recommend that you use the "Simple DNA match" portion of the tool because your matches are third cousins. As Mindy explained, you also need to take into account privacy requirements on WikiTree. For examples you can refer to the "Source citation examples" section of the DNA confirmation instructions: Help:DNA Confirmation (wikitree.com) See also the section of those instructions that refers to "Source requirements if your match is not on WikiTree."

Richard, I can't speak to WikiTree's policies and guidelines regarding setting and documenting the "Confirmed with DNA" status, so I probably shouldn't be saying anything at all. But that's seldom been known to stop me...

The term "triangulation" was first used in conjunction with genetic genealogy in 2001 when it was was borrowed from the land-surveying practice of vectoring precise locations. It was and is clearly applicable for use with the non-recombinant Y chromosome, albeit the analysis standards have changed and become a bit more rigorous with the advent of the Big Y full-sequencing test and our improved understanding that lower level STR panels, like 37 markers, are entry-level and difficult to use with accuracy closer than several (or more) generations past.

So, in my opinion as a DNA dweeb but not as representing WikiTree, 111 Y-STR triangulation should certainly be usable.

Somewhat unfortunately, it was a decade after the yDNA triangulation concept came to be that it was adopted--conceptually almost unchanged--for use with low-resolution autosomal SNP testing. To this day, we still have no scientific, peer-reviewed research that indicates one way or the other that our popular concept of autosomal triangulation is a valid methodology among distant cousins when using autosomal DNA. That said, I personally believe it should be valid for closer relationships, and your ~25cM shared segment among three 3rd cousins would, for me, add evidentiary strength to the Y-STR triangulation. Though that would be in addition to the basic "Confirmed with DNA" citation statement or included in a more extensive discussion of DNA evidence in the body of one or more profiles.

WikiTree must--understandably--walk a very fine and tenuous line in these matters between simplicity and accuracy. Often, those objectives will be mutually exclusive. My personal opinion, and worth every cent you've paid for it, is that the "Confirmed with DNA" citation statement is a convenience for the purpose, but as it stands can almost never meet the evaluation and documentation requirements of the genealogical proof standard. Genetics, in all but instances of the closest family members, is too complex.

And, also unfortunately, privacy requirements to which WikiTree must adhere mean that we cannot construct, in the majority of instances, an evidentiary citation that is meaningful anyway. The "specific location of each piece of data" is often inaccessible by others, and the evidence analysis requirement "to record details that affect the the use or evaluation of those data" often isn't possible because, by definition, we usually have DNA testing information only on living or recently deceased individuals.

I may have misread what Mindy posted, but one of the exceptions there, I believe, are the public, group DNA projects at Family Tree DNA. If a project member has agreed, through FTDNA, to allow his Y-STR and haplogroup information to be displayed publicly, it's done so in an entirely anonymized fashion. The kit test number shown in those results can't be located in any other way or associated with a living individual, whether by name or initials or by any other means. Even if I am shown a match in my personal FTDNA dashboard, I can't see that person's kit number unless he discloses it to me directly. Only the project administrator, who has signed an NDA with FTDNA, can associate a kit number with the individual who manages the kit. And we absolutely will never reveal what kit numbers are associated with which individuals.

The FTDNA kit numbers are of use only if the test-taker has joined a group project; has granted permission for his test results to be posted anonymously; and if the project itself posts those tables of results. For yDNA citations involving tests taken at FTDNA and appearing in public FTDNA projects, I would always use the kit numbers.

Note: The Wikitree instructions are inadequate and do not address the above situation.

Are you third cousins or closer?

If your DNA test match is a third cousin or a second cousin twice removed [1] or closer, continue.

→ If your match IS BEYOND a third cousin (such as a third cousin once removed, a fourth cousin, etc.) see Help:Triangulation.

NOTE THE INADEQUACY: The instructions do not say that triangulation can be used for three 3rd cousins. 

IMPORTANT: The instructions say triangulation is used for matches BEYOND third cousins.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:DNA_Confirmation

Help:Y-Chromosome DNA Confirmation.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:DNA_Confirmation#Are_you_using_autosomal_DNA.3F

These instructions are for two DNA test matches, not three DNA test matches. Thus, the Y-Chromosome DNA Confirmation guidance on Wikitree does not mention Y-DNA triangulation for three test matches.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Y-Chromosome_DNA_Confirmation

Respectfully, Richard J
Hi there Richard,

You do not need to use Triangulation if you have two people who are third cousins to each other (pure third cousins that is, not half-third cousins or third cousins once removed etc...).  For two people who are 3rd cousins - a simple DNA confirmation is all that is necessary, assuming it fits all the criteria.

The fact that you have THREE 3rd cousins that all match on the same chromosome is golden - then you KNOW your DNA path is solid, but, you don't need to use Triangulation in the source citation when you're that close.

Hope that helps

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