General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Here's the deal with Elizabeth Warren's Native American heritage [View all]spooky3
(34,427 posts)Detailed info on reliability, if you ask them.
What youre talking about is the degree of precision or accuracy. Obviously it is scientifically easier to determine genetic relationships with a higher degree of accuracy between a parent and a child (vs an unrelated person) than between persons potentially separated by multiple generations.
My point is that the situations are analogous, not identical, in that it is stupid for strangers to speculate about matters when there are physical data that more directly show evidence of relationships.
If I were in her position, I would want to take advantage of the science, though I wouldnt necessarily make this public. (In fact Ive done this; my family also told of one NA ancestor, and my DNA results were consistent with that. It was more interesting to get that info than to wonder if the stories were true.)
Particularly if Sen. Warren has more than one NA ancestor as it sounds may be the case from the family lore, she will likely find that the DNA results will show some percentage range of NA ancestry.