RLP 128: DNA Standards

Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 128: DNA Standards. Welcome to Research Like a Pro a Genealogy Podcast about taking your research to the next level, hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited genealogy professional. Diana and Nicole are the mother-daughter team at FamilyLocket.com and the creators of the Amazon bestselling book, The Research Like a Pro a Genealogists Guide. I’m Nicole co-host of the podcast join Diana and me as we discuss how to stay organized, make progress in our research and solve difficult cases. Let’s go, Hi everyone.

Nicole (44s):
And welcome to the show. I’m Nicole Dyer co-host of the podcast, and I’m here with my mother at credited genealogists, Diana Elder. Hello, how are you?

Diana (55s):
I am doing really well. Thank you.

Nicole (58s):
How’s your week been? What have you been doing?

Diana (1m 0s):
I finished out my mentoring at the ProGen study group, and that was bittersweet because I’ve enjoyed working with these people for the last 14 months. We met every single month for an hour and discuss their assignment and the discussion questions from professional genealogy. So, you know, it’s always kind of sad. You build those relationships and it’s sad to see them go. But then on the other hand, I’m excited to move on and do something different with those hours that are now freed up. But one of the really great things that came from being a mentor for ProGen was that I got to read and study the entire second edition of Professional Genealogy. And for any of our listeners who don’t know what that is, it’s a great book.

Diana (1m 42s):
It’s really heavy and it’s really big. And it’s edited by Elizabeth Shown Mills. And each of the chapters is written by a professional genealogists. And so there’s chapters on a really broad range of things, everything from the business of professional genealogy, like writing contracts and setting fees, working with clients to the other end of the spectrum of writing reports and actually doing the client work. So it was really a great experience to read through that second edition. I had done the first edition when I did my own ProGen as a student. So it was fun to go through it again as a mentor.

Diana (2m 24s):
Yeah.

Nicole (2m 24s):
I’m enjoying ProGen too. We only have a few months left this month is the assignment on the resume and it’s optional, which is kind of nice because it’s December, but I think I’m going to work on my development activities, which is part of the portfolio and then just not share it with my group for feedback.

Diana (2m 42s):
Oh, that’s a good idea. Still do the assignment, but have it be double duty,

Nicole (2m 46s):
I guess I might just submit a resume, you know, that I’ve made in the past for a review, but I can’t submit anything for review that I’m going to submit for my portfolio. So we’ll just work on that for myself.

Diana (2m 59s):
Right. Good idea. So what have you been working on besides that?

Nicole (3m 5s):
Well, I’ve been doing the client report and finishing that up. And as I was preparing to send it to him, I reviewed our contract and realized that I had put in the contract that I would give him the document images. And I hadn’t really discussed with him how he wanted them. And so, as I was writing the report in my mind, I thought, oh, I’ll just put the links because I know he has access to Ancestry and FamilySearch. So I put the links in the footnotes thinking he would just get them that way. But then when I talked to him, he actually said that he did want to have the digital files in a folder. So I had to go back and prepare those using Canva. I added the citation and then downloaded all the images and shared that with him.

Nicole (3m 46s):
I kind of thought, you know, would it be nice to do this as I was going along? And I know I’ve done that in the past, but this time I was just thinking I would give them the links. I remember when we did the contract, it was kind of a busy time and I had just emailed it to him and he signed it and sent it back and we hadn’t really discussed it. So I think it’s just really important when we’re making those contracts to discuss exactly what the deliverables are going to be and what they want, because not everybody wants the same things and wants it in the same way. And some people might just prefer the documents attached at the end of the report. And other people might want them shared in a folder, but either way they have to have the citations attached in order to meet standards.

Nicole (4m 26s):
So it does take some work, providing just a link would be the easiest way to do that because the link is right in the citation and then they can see the image, but if they actually want to have the document images and have to attach the citation to them.

Diana (4m 41s):
Yeah. I think it’s really a good thing to talk about. I always talk to my clients on the phone for an initial consultation and right then that’s such a good time to say, okay, so what do you want at the end of this? What is your purpose for this project? And this report, because a lot of my clients want to post it on Ancestry or FamilySearch to show the proof, or they want to share it with family members. And it’s really important to understand what the client wants and to know what they’re going to do with it. So you can figure out how to do those documents. Just the lesson learned, right?

Nicole (5m 12s):
Yes. Every time I do a new client report and project, I learned so much not just about the actual time and place of the research and the methodology, but the ins and outs of keeping the research log and taking care of the documents and putting together the report and efficiency and how much time it takes to do everything. And it usually takes more time than I planned. So that’s always tricky as well. But I think that communication with the client upfront about what they want is so important. Also, if it includes DNA evidence like this, one does talking with them about what they want to do with the report and letting them know it’s not ethical to share a report that includes living DNA matches and it, unless you’ve gotten their permission and kind of figuring out if they want to share it on FamilySearch and Ancestry, then we’re going to need to provide them with a privatized report that they can share.

Diana (6m 7s):
Right. And this is something that’s new that we haven’t had to think about in the past, because we were just working with documents that people who were deceased and now with adding DNA to the client work, it is definitely a little bit of a different thing to think about because not every client wants a proof argument that sometimes they just want to share the client report. So in that case, we’d also have to privatize. And again, we can talk to our clients at the beginning. And a lot of times I like to talk to them halfway through the project and let them know how things are going and clarify again, what are we looking at here? And that can be really helpful too, to get their opinion at that point.

Nicole (6m 46s):
That’s a really good point because when you make the contract at the beginning, both you and the client don’t really know what the report will contain. So it’s good to talk about it halfway through. I always email the client and keep them updated on what’s happening and what I’m doing so that they know that I’m still working on it. And that would be a great time to ask them, okay, I’m reading the report now, what again do you want to do with this? And it’s showing this hypothesized father and some DNA matches that lead to it. It’s not proven yet. So you probably won’t want to share it yet. When I did talk to the client about that, he said, I don’t think we’re ready to change FamilySearch or update the family trees yet. So we didn’t need to worry about that in this phase, but in the next phase, it’s a conversation we’re going to want to definitely decide on because if he wants to have a proof argument to share at the end of it, I’ll have to think of the report in a different way, or the report could include the proof argument.

Nicole (7m 42s):
It’ll just take extra time. And so it’s just all conversations that need to be had with the client right now that

Diana (7m 47s):
Client communication is super important.

Nicole (7m 50s):
Well, that’s what I’ve been working on. And now I will tell you the announcements for the day, like last week, we are still announcing our study groups for 2021 to find out about those early bird sales and just have a reminder, make sure you join our study group email list. And if you are interested in becoming a mentor for our study groups, go to our mentor page on our website, which we’ll link to in the show notes, basically, it just tells you about becoming a mentor. And it has an application where you can submit some of your work and your resume. And we’re just hoping to find some mentors who have done the Research Like a Pro steps before you can lead a small group of other study group members and discussing their projects each week.

Nicole (8m 33s):
Also, if you would like to have access to our weekly newsletter, you can join that at our website, FamilyLocket.com/newsletter, and our newsletter sometimes we’ll have sales or coupons that you can use to purchase things on our website. So just make sure you’re a part of that newsletter so you can get that every Monday. And we are working on our Research Like a Pro with DNA online course, which is the same material covered in the DNA study group, but it is independent study. You can work on the assignments at your own pace, and we’ll still give you feedback on your final report and help you along the way with office hours. So be looking for that to come out in January of 2021 next year.

Diana (9m 12s):
We’ve had so many people this year want to get more access to our program of Research Like a Pro with DNA. So while we’re going to have it available for everyone who really wanted to take the study group, but didn’t have the time or needed to just do it on their own, so. Yes. Well, what are we talking about today?

Nicole (9m 31s):
Today we’re talking about the DNA Standards that are in the second edition of Genealogy Standards.

Diana (9m 38s):
Great. Let’s talk a little bit about where standards came from. The development of Genealogy Standards began in 1990 when BCG trustees began discussing these standards that concluded in the publication called the BCG Genealogical Standards Manual. And that was published in 2000. And then in 2014, the BCG or Board for Certification of Genealogists, for their 50th anniversary, they published another edition of those standards and they called it Genealogy Standards. This was just a great little book. It’s not very long.

Diana (10m 19s):
And it’s packed full of really good information about as a genealogist, making sure that you’re doing it correctly and ethically with DNA coming into play. And this whole field of genetic genealogy just booming after 2014, BCG went to work on putting some standards for DNA evidence into the book. And so the brand new edition 2019 is the second edition of Genealogy Standards. And it now has new standards all about using DNA evidence as we are working to use DNA and our genealogy, it’s really beneficial to learn about these standards and make sure that as we work for clients for our own family history, that we are using DNA appropriately in our genealogy and

Nicole (11m 10s):
over the last several podcast episodes, we’ve been going over different things relating to the standards, you know, privacy and DNA report writing and sharing our reports online and writing a DNA proof argument, which when we do that, everything in our proof argument should meet the DNA Standards and all of the standards. So I thought it would be a good idea now to just have a discussion about the DNA Standards and how we see them applying in our work for research reports, research in general and proof arguments. This new edition of Genealogy Standards includes several new standards that regard the use of DNA evidence.

Nicole (11m 52s):
So these were all added in 2019, like Diana said. So if you look at articles in the National Genealogical Society Quarterly that were published prior to 2019, you can recognize that the authors did not have that set of DNA Standards to use. So if you look at Jill Morelli’s article that came out in December of 2018, this was the first article that utilized the new DNA Standards, which weren’t even published at that time. But Jill had access to Karen Stanbary who is reviewing and writing the standards at the time. And so Jill said that she had the guidance of Karen as she was putting together her article.

Nicole (12m 34s):
And so if you want to read that it’s “DNA Helps Identify Molly Frisch/Lancour Morelli’s Father”. Can you imagine how hard it would be to try to write a proof argument, including DNA evidence, without any specific standards about how to use them? It was good that those were published finally, and now they can really guide us as we are writing our own proof arguments and putting together our research reports and using DNA and our research. There’s a lot of ways that we might want to try to add DNA evidence that maybe wouldn’t be accurate if we’re not considering all the different standards. And so while the genealogy field, that’s still learning about using DNA, these standards were created to really guide us. So I’m really grateful that we have them.

Diana (13m 17s):
I am too. And I was just thinking about the whole concept of standards. And at ICAPGEN, we don’t say the word standards, but we have rubrics to judge our work against, you know, and returning in our, our generation project or practicing for the, for our final project. And I remember when I was working on my project, that I went through every single one of those rubrics, which are basically standards. And I also study Genealogy Standards, the book, but when I looked at those rubrics, it was really a good way to measure how I was doing. When you have something in front of you that tells you what you should be doing, it really helps. And that’s exactly what These DNA standards do.

Diana (13m 57s):
They tell you what you should be considering, what you should be doing. Then you can measure your own work against it and see if you are doing it right. We all want to do our genealogy right and we all want to use DNA correctly in our genealogy. And it is challenging. So having these written down very specific is a huge boon for us as researchers.

Nicole (14m 22s):
So true. I love comparing my work to the BCG rubrics too, as I’m preparing my portfolio, to just see how I would grade myself. And I’ve heard other people say that they actually took the rubrics and copied and pasted them directly into the document where they were writing their case study or their reports. So they were always in front of them to really remember what am I supposed to be doing, because I think we just get into our habit of the way we do. And then at the end, we’re like, okay, let’s see how this measures up. And they’re like, oh, I should have done this differently. Whereas if you just have it always in front of you, then you’re always thinking of the right way to do it.

Nicole (15m 3s):
Absolutely. So we should just sleep with our standards manual under our pillow, right.

Diana (15m 7s):
And hope that we can absorb it that way if only if only,

Nicole (15m 13s):
But it is something that we can keep next to us and really study. And I’ve found that sharing about it, teaching about it, writing about it on the blog has also helped me really internalize it as well. We can’t read the standards to you over the podcast because it’s copyrighted material, but we suggest that everyone purchased the standards manual, the second edition, and study it and make sure that you understand it. One of the certified genealogists that I read about, she said that she recorded herself, reading the Genealogy Standards, and then she listened to them that way she could really internalize them as she was doing her portfolio. So I’ve been doing that as well because I love listening to audio books.

Nicole (15m 56s):
So that’s one way you can really get it in your mind.

Diana (15m 59s):
That’s awesome. Some of us learn better by listening. And I think I might be one of those people because I love podcasts and audio books and all of that. So that’s such a fun idea to record yourself reading the standards.

Nicole (16m 12s):
Well, let’s talk about the DNA Standards a bit. And like I said, we’re not going to read them to you, but we’ll just kind of discuss them and some of the implications. Well, first of all, the DNA Standards book is divided into chapters and sections and things. The first chapter is the Genealogical Proof Standard. Then the second chapter is Standards for Documenting and then chapter three is Standards for Researching. So within chapter three, the last section is using DNA Evidence. So that’s the section that we kind of wanted to talk about because within that section standards, 51 through 57 concerned DNA specifically, and there are some other standards that relate to DNA and its use. And the other sections about proving each parent child link and descendency diagram that are so frequently used in DNA research and also about research planning and planning to include genetic sources when they can be applicable.

Nicole (17m 6s):
And that kind of thing. But we’re just going to talk today about 51 through 57. So standard 51 is about planning DNA tests. And it’s really about when we are doing our research planning and considering a genealogical objective or research problem, thinking about which types of DNA tests could be useful. And then also considering which company to use, which tools might be helpful, and then thinking about which testers to use. And this is a very important part of using DNA because it’s really important that we understand the best places to get our DNA and the best testers to use.

Nicole (17m 46s):
So when you’re doing a client project, including DNA, what do you do Diana, to plan?

Diana (17m 53s):
Well, I send out to the client a form where they can list all the testers that they already have, because often a client has been working on this for themselves and they have reached out to maybe some cousins or brothers and sisters or a parent, and have different people already as a tester. And so I have them fill out that form and show where all of their test results are on which companies. And then I take a look at that and I talk to them about that at the beginning. And sometimes they will look at, and I’ll say, you know, Y-DNA would be really helpful for this case, or do you have an elderly cousin that could be a generation closer? So I kind of work with them at the beginning to see what kind of DNA they already have and then suggest to them that they get some additional testing done before we even start the project.

Diana (18m 45s):
Because sometimes I can tell they’re not going to have enough to do very much with. And then other times they’ve got a lot to work with that we can get started. And then after we’ve worked through the first 10 or 20 hours on the project, in the future research, I will often put, consider having a descendant of this line test to compare DNA results with, because we’ve discovered, you know, a possible common ancestor and we want to see if any of their descendants match up even more closely with the subject. So I really look at the planning DNA tests at the beginning of a client project, and then think about it all the way through and then put that as a future research item as well.

Nicole (19m 27s):
Yes, absolutely. I think that’s really important to recognize that we can add that in as we go, I had one client who said he doesn’t know anybody else who’s tested. And so he tested himself. And then when I analyzed his close matches, we’ve found an uncle and a first cousin once removed when generation closer. So then in the future research, we could add, ask these people to share their results so that we can use them as well in our analysis,

Diana (19m 55s):
Right. Often the first phase of a research project with DNA for a client, you don’t have time to analyze everything out there. You’ve got to be pretty judicial on what you’re using. And so the future research becomes so important.

Nicole (20m 12s):
Yes. So when we are planning different tests and testers and tools and things, there’s so much to consider, so make sure you study standard 51 to see what it says about choosing independent minds and people who descend from different common ancestors and all the different things. The standard 52 is kind of the long, big standard that tells about the different considerations for analyzing the test results. So make sure you study that one, it talks a lot about different factors that can affect determining a genetic relationship. Like the possibility that of DNA match could share more than one common ancestor. So we can’t necessarily say, oh, we found a common ancestor with this person and this is where the DNA came from.

Nicole (20m 56s):
We have to consider maybe there’s another common ancestor, especially when it’s further back. One strategy that is often talked about to help with that is pedigree evaluation. And that really helps you see if the pedigrees of the tester and the DNA match are complete to the generation of that common ancestor. And maybe even one or two generations beyond, especially if it’s a small DNA match, you know, sharing just less than 30 centimorgans where that could be a very old segment. And it’s been passed down from a more distant ancestor. So you just never know, we’ve got to check that and check to see if both the tester and the DNA match have a full pedigree so that you can really compare and look for more than one common ancestor.

Diana (21m 40s):
I think that is something that we too often don’t consider, but anytime you are studying a group of people that lived in the same area, you have to consider that there could be more than one common ancestor. And the more you work with your DNA, the more you will run into that scenario. So it’s just like when I was evaluating the three lines for my project, for the DNA study group, I was doing the through lines for my Cynthia Dillard and I discovered that almost all of the matches to this Hopson Milner, which I proved incorrect were for different ancestors. They were connected, but they were not for through Cynthia’s line. And it was really eyeopening to me that, yeah, there was a DNA connection, but not that specific ones.

Diana (22m 24s):
So we have a lot of ancestors on our charts and we have to consider.

Nicole (22m 28s):
Yeah. And that really highlights one of the problems with through lines, although it’s a helpful tool, but if one person adds an erroneous ancestor to their tree, like this Hopson Milner as the father of Cynthia Dillard, then all of a sudden through lines is picking up and looking at all these people who have that man in their tree and saying, well, you have 10 DNA matches. You have that man in your tree. It must be because you’re related through Cynthia Dillard being his daughter. And then it puts it in a through line for you. But when you actually evaluate how those people match you, it’s so crazy to see you that although those people all are descendants of Hopson Milner, it doesn’t mean you are too, because they actually match you on different lines and have different common ancestors with them.

Diana (23m 9s):
Yeah, it is so interesting. Well, I like on the standard 52 about analyzing DNA test results, that it talks about your documentary research as well, because that is the other half of it that we do really good work with analyzing the DNA, but we also have to be really thorough in our research and the documents. That’s how we connect everything up. And I liked that they address that because too often we want to just use DNA and we don’t want to do as much work in the documentary research portion of it as we need. We always have to remember a reasonably exhaustive research goes right along with this.

Nicole (23m 47s):
Yes, that’s so true. You know, if the DNA match has an erroneous documentary research in their family tree, then even though we might think we found the common ancestor, it could be wrong because of their research. So that’s just a factor we have to consider. And there are eight different factors here. So those were just two of them, but some of the other ones are about analyzing the segments and mutations and markers and genetic groups and triangulation. So making sure you studied standard 52 to really understand all of those different factors that go into it. All right, let’s go to standard 53. This one is called extent of DNA Evidence.

Nicole (24m 29s):
And this standard just encourages us to use enough testers and matches. We’ll be able to rule out other hypotheses. So in order to meet the GPS, the Genealogical Proof Standard, we have to make sure we’ve ruled out other conflicting hypothesis. So in order to get this sufficient number of testers in matches, sometimes we do need to do some targeted testing, maybe in the first phase of a research project for ourselves or for our client. We will find a couple of matches that point to a conclusion, and then to further meet the standards, we can then find more testers and more matches that really help us flesh out the hypothesis and test the hypothesis and see if it still holds up when we look at more people.

Diana (25m 15s):
This was so important when I did my Rachel Cox as the daughter of Benjamin Cox project, because I had found this one match and she was coming through the line of one of his hypothesized sons, and I’m coming through one of his hypothesized daughters and we shared DNA, but it wasn’t a huge amount. It was something like 15 centimorgans. And I was so excited. But then I think in the study group, I showed it to Robin or to you, you guys said, oh, you really need a lot more evidence than that. So I reached out to some of my second cousins through the same line and ask them to share their DNA with me. And one was a generation closer. And then I found another cousin who was from a different child and he shared DNA with me and he was also generation closer.

Diana (26m 2s):
And, oh, my word that strengthened my arguments so much because those two individuals who are closer, their DNA matches were much higher. They were like in the thirties and the forties, and then showing that we all match these different descendants of Benjamin Cox through his proven children. It was so great to chart that all out. I did a McGuire type chart and it was so much better, you know, here I had this one match and I proved it, but strengthened that with so much more DNA Evidence from the other people, what’s really a good example to me about what we should be doing with DNA.

Nicole (26m 43s):
Absolutely. Question for you on that, were the people that you had shared your matches with you also related through your line?

Diana (26m 50s):
Yeah. I had two that were not, and two that were.

Nicole (26m 52s):
So that’s nice when you have independent lines, I think that’s really important.

Diana (26m 56s):
Yes.

Nicole (26m 56s):
To have some descendants through a different sibling or whatever.

Diana (27m 0s):
Yeah. So those were my testers or who had shared their results. But then among the five of us who were descendants of Benjamin Cox, we showed matches with every single one of his, I don’t even know how many children, several children, maybe eight or nine children. So that was really great to see all the matching between all of his different descendants.

Nicole (27m 24s):
Good job. I love that project. I’m excited for you to finish up your proof argument and post it on FamilySearch or get it published.

Diana (27m 34s):
Yeah, I think that’ll be my goal for next year to get that finished up, the research that’s all done, I just needed to get it in a format that brings it all together. You know, the three different reports and put it together in a proof argument.

Nicole (27m 47s):
Yay. Let’s go to standard 54. This one is called sufficient verifiable data. And this one is about when you publish an article with DNA evidence, or you have a proof argument, you are supposed to include enough detail and identifying information about your sources and your DNA test takers and matches so that others can verify the conclusions. Now, this is a very challenging standard to meet because it requires that we get permission from people and that we ask them to transfer to a place like a public database like GEDMatch or some, you know, some outside person can go and verify the data.

Nicole (28m 28s):
So this is kind of a daunting one, but there are some different ways I’ve seen that people can meet this standard. There’s creative ways to do it. One of them is to just include a screenshot of a DNA match between two people on Ancestry or some other non-public database. And so if you don’t have your matches transferred to GEDMatch for comparison, then you can share a screenshot of the match between them. And that’s a lot easier to get permission from somebody to share that then to ask them to transfer to GEDMatch, In my opinion. You don’t have to have all of your test takers transfer to GEDMatch. I think if you have some that’s good.

Nicole (29m 8s):
It doesn’t say all of your test takers have to transfer. It says sufficient verifiable data. And so in LaBrenda Garrett Nelson’s article in the NGSQ recently it’s called Parents for Isaac Garrett. And that came out in 2020, this year. But she just says that some of the people transferred to GEDMatch and others did not. But she says that the editors of the NGSQ reviewed the results and verified them in the FamilyTree DNA database. So since that’s not a public database and not everyone can go verify it, she put that note there, just so you know, the editors have checked it and validated it.

Diana (29m 48s):
So if we’re doing a proof argument that we post only on FamilySearch or on Ancestry, we don’t really have the benefit of having editors and being able to say that. So that makes it a little trickier, doesn’t it?

Nicole (30m 1s):
It does. What would you do instead? Well,

Diana (30m 3s):
Well, I think that some of that comes with maybe your credibility as a researcher. If you’ve gone to the trouble to do a really good proof argument and detail out the relationships and centimorgans, how likely is it that you’re making data up? I don’t know. That’s, that’s my opinion on that. Generally we would be ethical about that. Maybe we can have a small group of people edited or look at it and then they could sign their name to it. I mean, that’s a possibility too.

Nicole (30m 35s):
Yeah, that’s a good idea. I think just going back to the screenshots, I think the screenshots are a pretty good way. If you don’t have editors to show people, look, this is really as how much they share here’s the screenshot and the person of course has given their permission first.

Diana (30m 50s):
Yeah. Screenshots are really good,

Nicole (30m 51s):
But if you don’t have the permission, you can’t share the screenshot. So it really goes back to doing the legwork of going and asking the matches. Can I have your permission to share the screenshot of your match in my report? Yeah. And sometimes people will transfer to GEDMatch. So I think it’s good to try and ask them, especially I found when I share my preliminary report with them and show them what I’m doing. I found that a lot of people are willing to transfer. I actually had one of the DNA matches who had been on GEDmatch, but then had removed her kit from GEDmatch when all the law enforcement questions were going down. And then when I shared my proof argument draft with her and asked her to transfer it to GEDmatch, she said, oh, I took it off, but I think I’ll put it back on so that I can be part of your paper.

Nicole (31m 35s):
And I was really thankful. So sometimes they’re willing to do that.

Diana (31m 39s):
And I think that’s a great idea to share with them what you’re doing and share the report so they can see. And I love that she wanted to be part of it. That’s awesome.

Nicole (31m 49s):
Yeah. All right. Let’s go to standard 55 integrating DNA and Documentary Evidence. So this is about using both DNA evidence and traditional evidence. And we know that we need to do this. This is just such an important part of our genetic genealogy, because if somebody has a tree with the wrong ancestor in it, and we use that to come to a conclusion about our genetic relationship, then we’re wrong, right? So we need to integrate the findings and, you know, source citations for documentary, part of the research that determines that genetic relationship. And then considering the limits of the evidence that we have. And when we teach our DNA study group, we have everybody write out the limitations of DNA and talk about if they have enough DNA Evidence to really answer a specific objective or not before they even go down the path of trying to research that objective, because it’s too many generations removed and you only have autosomal test results.

Nicole (32m 47s):
That’s probably going to be a big limitation. And then also looking at any conflicts that come between the DNA evidence and the documentary evidence.

Diana (32m 58s):
Yeah. I think it’s really important that as we are writing up our research, that you go back and forth, you don’t just do all the DNA and then do all the documentary work. The DNA will point to some new places to do documentary work. And then the documentary work will point to some new places to look at the DNA. And it really is weaving back and forth between the two and you do have to learn to integrate it. And it makes it more complicated. Now, a lot of our students struggled with writing their final report because they were not comfortable in integrating the DNA and the documentary evidence. And it just comes with practice. After you’ve done a few of these types of reports, it gets easier and easier, and you learn how to do that, but you have to just get started and try doing it upfront.

Diana (33m 44s):
You know, you’re not going to learn unless you get started trying it and realizing that you’ve got to do that interweaving. And I love writing the limitations of the DNA. That is so helpful in a client project, or a project of your own, because it points up those things like I was talking about previously in that Benjamin Cox project that, oh, this was the limitation that I only had one person I’m comparing DNA with. You know, that’s kind of like a huge problem there. And when you’re writing those down, it can help you to see some avenues for additional evidence you need to bring in. It’s really good to put this kind of information into writing. So we think about it and we’re aware of it.

Nicole (34m 26s):
Yeah. Standard 56 is our next standard. And this one is called Conclusions about Genetic Relationships. This one is pretty basic. It’s just saying that if you are going to say that our relationship between the person and their ancestor is a bloodline or genetic relationship, then you have to include genetic evidence for that. I think sometimes in the past, we, as genealogists assumed that, you know, these lines that we were tracing with just documentary evidence, we assume that they were bloodlines and that they were always genetic relationships. But when DNA evidence came and we started using that, when we started finding these mis-attributed parentage events where maybe somebody was raised by somebody who wasn’t their father or mother.

Nicole (35m 14s):
And so that’s something now that is a standard where we need to be careful. If we declare that a relationship is genetic, we have to use genetic evidence. And then if we aren’t using DNA evidence, for example, and we’re coming to a conclusion with documentary evidence, maybe a person is wanting to use that for a lineage society, or anytime we should always tell them that the DNA, if examined, could overturn our conclusions, that, you know, if we’re just making a conclusion based on documentary evidence and not including genetic evidence, then looking at DNA might overturn that. But I think that’s so important. And I had a client one time, we had done some research without DNA evidence. And then the next phase we added the DNA evidence.

Nicole (35m 55s):
And it did overturn previous conclusions because somebody who was raised by a father who wasn’t his biological father,

Diana (36m 4s):
And that happens more often than we would like to think. So I like that standard that when we are working just in the documents that we could add, that caveat, that DNA testing could overturn what the records tell us, because the records tell us only what people are willing to admit, right? So not every birth certificate records accurately birth parents. Really interesting things to consider. Again, it’s nice to have the standards to make us think about that scenario and how we should deal with that.

Nicole (36m 39s):
All right. We’re onto our last standard number 57, Respect for Privacy Rights. And in the last several podcast episodes, we’ve been kind of talking about this a lot. So the standard is a good one to really become familiar with, and to decide how you’re going to meet the standard when you’re doing client research and asking other people to take a DNA test, getting your informed consent form ready and all those things, because we need to make sure that we’re telling people how much information we will share when we get their permission to share, and what we’re going to share, how it will be shared, give them options for different things that could be shared. Like, do you want your full name to be shared? Do you want initials?

Nicole (37m 19s):
Do you want us to use a pseudonym and give them options and have them agree? There’s a lot of options when we are publishing documents that include living DNA test taker.

Diana (37m 32s):
Absolutely. And again, it’s just being aware of the situation. And we talked a little bit at the beginning about asking our client what they want to do with the report or the proof argument that we create for them. And if it’s going to be published, then we need to provide a report or proof argument that protects the privacy of the testers, or get the permission. Because once we send off that report, it leaves our hands. And we want to make sure that we’re respecting the privacy of anybody that we’ve used in reports.

Nicole (38m 2s):
Yes. And so we’ve already talked about this quite a bit and you can go read my blog post, How to Prepare DNA Research Reports for Sharing, because I have a lot of discussion in there about publication versus private sharing and permission. And I have some examples of forms that different people have used to get consent from their test takers and their matches. So go look at those and I’ll put a link in the show notes. So that was all of the DNA Standards in second edition of Genealogy Standards. Make sure you get that manual to have under your pillow at all times. And that’s what Karen Stanbary used to tell us in our SLIG class of how DNA Standards and research.

Nicole (38m 44s):
So I just laugh when I think of that, because she’s such a proponent of the standards and she’s just done a wonderful job sharing how to integrate the standards into our own work and teaching about them. So I’m thankful for that and really excited to continue going forward and keeping my work up to the standards.

Diana (39m 2s):
Right? And I think it’s important for all of us as genealogists to try to meet standards in our work. We want to create a body of work. That’s going to last and not have it be overturned. We want to do work that can be handed down through our descendants and it’s accurate.

Nicole (39m 19s):
Yep. All right, everyone, we’ll talk to you next week. Have a great week.

Diana (39m 24s):
Bye bye everybody.

Nicole (39m 27s):
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