One of the questions we are asked most on the channel is about CRI Genetics? And whether we
recommend that company. Well, after a couple years of answering this briefly in messages, I'm now
going to make a video about CRI Genetics. Howdy, welcome to Family History Fanatics, where we love
helping you climb your family tree and have fun along the way. If you're new to genetic genealogy,
then chances are you have questions. Well, check out the link in our description below
to the five most common questions we are asked about DNA. So, there are five things I want you
to consider about CRI Genetics before you go out and purchase their product. Now the first
one is that they offer what they call a dual Ancestry report. And what they mean by this
is that they provide a ethnicity estimate of what your recent ancestors were probably
from. And they provide a deep Ancestry estimate as well. So, basically, two Ancestry reports
from their one product. What are they really talking about when they're talking about this?
Well, the ethnicity estimate, the recent Ancestry report, is what an autosomal
DNA test is going to tell you. And it's similar to what you're going to get from
Ancestry, MyHeritage, Living DNA, 23andMe, and Family Tree DNA. Where they identify
different regions of the world that your ancestors were probably from in the last few hundred years.
And that is by looking at your autosomal DNA, in other words, chromosomes 1 through 22.
Now their deep Ancestry, on the other hand, is a report based on your haplogroups- your yDNA
and your mitochondrial DNA. Now only men have y DNA. So, only men will get both
the yDNA and the mitochondrial DNA reports. Women will just get the mitochondrial DNA.
Now the problem I have with this is that these two things are showing really two different
things entirely. So, for instance, the recent Ancestry report, by looking at your autosomal DNA,
it's actually looking at all of your family tree in the last three or four hundred years
and making an estimate of where those people were from. However, the deep Ancestry report with the
haplogroups is not looking at everybody. It is looking at two lines- your paternal line
and your maternal line. Now the deep Ancestry report, the haplogroup report, you know,
can go back tens of thousands of years. In some cases, well, tens of thousands of years ago,
you had millions of ancestors. But this haplogroup report is not looking at all those millions of
ancestors. It's only looking at two of them- a mother or a mother and a father. That's it. So,
a tiny, tiny fraction of it. And so, this deep Ancestry report really does not tell you
about your Ancestry. It tells you about the Ancestry of two lines of all the millions of lines
that you have back that far. Now that's not to say that the haplogroup report the deep Ancestry
is not useful. From a scientific standpoint, it's incredibly useful in helping to track migrations
of humans across history. What it is not useful for is really an individual and telling you about
yourself. And so, yes, it's a dual Ancestry report, but really the only useful thing
is the ethnicity estimate. And you can watch other videos of ours where I talked about those
ethnicity estimates as well. Now from what I saw on their website= again, I have not tested with
CRI Genetics. So, I'm really just going off of the data that I've gleaned off of the internet.
But from what I saw, their ethnicity estimates are not any better than anybody else's. And that's
just because those ethnicity estimates are based on reference populations. Now I would actually
assume that theirs is probably not as good as 23andMe or Ancestry. Simply because 23andMe and
Ancestry already have databases more than 10 million. And so, they already have thousands
of more people that they can include in their reference population. And it's really the size of
the reference population that's going to determine the accuracy of those ethnicity estimates. So,
I wouldn't guess that CRI Genetics ethnicity estimates are any better than anyone else's.
Number two, they do provide some help and trait reports on their website. They listed about a half
a dozen different health and trait reports that they provide. And what it is is it's looking at
different research and identifying SNPs that are indicative of that trait or that health condition
and providing this information for you. This is extremely similar to
what 23andMe does and what they've been doing for more than a decade.
And again, based on what they're showing in their sample reports on their website, I think they're
actually providing less information than what you would be getting from 23andMe. Additionally,
there is a website called Promethease. It's actually owned by MyHeritage now. But for
a nominal fee, you can upload your raw DNA results from any of the companies and get an
extensive report of health and traits. And I'm talking hundreds if not thousands of different
individual reports on all these different conditions. So, the fact that CRI Genetics
provides a half a dozen or so different health and trait reports is not something
that is really unique. It is something that 23andMe has been doing for more than 10 years.
It's something that my Family Tree DNA actually has a partnership with I believe Vitagene that
they provide some health and trait reports with. I think Ancestry and MyHeritage are both getting it.
And then there's third-party websites where you can get that same information. Before we continue,
if you would like to help support our channel, there are many ways you can do that. You can
find those in the description below. Whether it is looking for the free guides, our show notes,
becoming an FHF extra member. The most important thing you can do is to like this video and share
it with your friends. We can continue to grow because of viewers like you. Number three,
there is no DNA match. There's no shared match list. There's no
identifying other people that share some DNA with you. And this is really the major crux of
genetic genealogy. You have to know that there's other people that share DNA with you and then
identify how you are related. Which may help in your genealogy research. Well, with CRI Genetics,
there is no match list. So, there is no way to incorporate this into genetic genealogy.
So, from a genealogy standpoint, that's really why we haven't looked at CRI Genetics in any
kind of detail before is because they don't offer this key tool for genetic genealogy. Number four,
their pricing is right in line with everyone else. Their base price for their ancestry kit is $99.
The base price for the ancestry plus health kit is $199.
And what you probably can get these on sale for, you know 79, or maybe even 49 if there's a
super sale, but the pricing is really the same as everyone else. Now from what I've told you about
no matching. About the minimal health of the reports, you can see that they're offering
less than what some of the other companies are offering but for the same price. And that's
really another reason why I haven't recommended it. And why I haven't gotten the test myself.
If all I wanted was the ethnicity results. Then there are cheaper options that I can
also get other things with it just in case. Now, if CRI Genetics was offering a $29
test just for the ethnicity results, well, then yeah, I might spend that $29 and be able to
compare, you know, across six different platforms what the ethnicity results were. But right now,
there's really no reason to do that. Number five, the fifth thing that I want you to consider is
they don't allow download of raw data. Now I'm recording this in 2020, the end of 2020. So,
depending on when you're watching this, that may have changed. But as of right now,
there is no way that you can download your raw DNA file from CRI Genetics. What this means is
that you can't upload it then to a third party like GEDmatch or Borland genetics or DNA Gedcom.
You also can't upload it to MyHeritage or Family Tree DNA in order to use their tools as well. So,
there's very limited functionality in CRI Genetics. You can't back up that data
by downloading it. So, if CRI Genetics goes out of business, then your data is lost completely.
You can't use that for some other service that you may want to use it for. And so, it by not having
that download, I think that you're really limited in what it is that you can do with this website.
So, those are my five things that I want you to consider. And I think you can tell based off
of the tone of this videos I don't recommend CRI Genetics to anybody. But let me be clear,
it's not because I think that they are a shady company or that they're doing something unethical.
It's simply because, from a genealogy standpoint, they don't offer any product that can be used for
genetic genealogy. Now, if that changes in the future,
then my opinion of them will probably change as well. But as of right now, I'm not going to
recommend CRI Genetics for any kind of genealogy research. Now, if you would like to learn
about what I think the best genetic genealogy company is, then check out this video up above.
Or, if you want to learn about something else, then you can check out this video down below.
I'm losing my voice.