Skip to content

Comment on 23andMe finds Parkinsons only 24% heritableparent

Comments

You shouldn't rely on the results, certainly, but I don't think they should be taken with a grain of salt. I would suggest the problem with most people (and I'm not claiming to know your background) is that they aren't familiar with the statistics used in reporting the risks. For 23andMe, these are basically just relative risk and absolute risk. But when you look at relative risk (I'm five times as likely to develop Type 1 diabetes), it's much more upsetting than the absolute risk (my risk is 5% over my lifetime instead of the usual 1%). I do think they try and mitigate it with their population pictures (100 figures and X many are colored in to show your likelihood) but I think that at the heart of it their user base (and the population at large) just doesn't really understand statistics well.

AboutSource Built by g1lg1l

Hackerly is an independent reader for Hacker News, built on the public HN API. Not affiliated with Y Combinator.