Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Surprise DNA Results Are Turning Customer-Service Reps into Therapists

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 53 posts

Re: Surprise DNA Results Are Turning Customer-Service Reps into Therapists

#41

Post by jules »

jzylstra wrote: post #37
jules wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's analyse that. Suppose the frequency of the blue eye gene and the brown eye gene are the same in the general population, and suppose the prior probability of cheating is 10%. Then we can simulate this: from random import random, randint p_blue = 0.5 p_cheat = 0.1 def randbool(p): return random() We get 4619 times cheated and 14226 times faithful. The probability of cheating went up substantially relative to the…

Eye color is non-mendelian.

If you know a more accurate model you can change the four functions at the top.

Re: Surprise DNA Results Are Turning Customer-Service Reps into Therapists

#42

Post by MRD85 »

scythe wrote: post #15
mjfl wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read somewhere that paternal uncertainty is the leading cause of male violence in every culture in the world, from aboriginal Australia to New York. You wonder, if evolution (cultural or biological) has not allowed any variance in this trait - it must be necessary for reproduction. It would mean that men who don't get angry at the prospect of raising another man's children, inescapably raise another man's children.

http://www.martindaly.ca/uploads/2/3/7/0/23707972/cinderella... >The most thorough analyses are from Canada, where data in a national archive of all homicides known to police indicate that children under 5 years of age were beaten to death by their putative genetic fathers at a rate of 2.6 deaths per million child-years at risk (residing with their fathers), while the corresponding rate for stepfathers was over 120 t…

I wouldn't attribute this entirely to "my kid vs not my kid". I live in a western country and it's typically lower socio-economic groups that split and recouple with really young kids (i.e If you split these statistics through 10th percentile socioeconomic groups I'm sure it wouldn't be as significant as 120 times. This paper is 10 years old and references Sweden as having less than a 10x increase.

Re: Surprise DNA Results Are Turning Customer-Service Reps into Therapists

#43

Post by pl1234 »

tvjoyfbhde wrote: post #39
c3534l wrote: post #18

I don't know if this is apocryphal or not, but I'd always heard the same thing happened in the 50s when blood typing became widely available. So I don't think anyone in that industry should be exactly surprised at this particular result.

When a sick child needs a transplant, the parents are the first to be checked for compatibility. Sometimes the results are impossible. The policy in such cases simply to inform the putative father that he's not a match and leave it at that.

what a disgusting policy

Re: Surprise DNA Results Are Turning Customer-Service Reps into Therapists

#44

Post by alecco »

technofiend wrote: post #7

If ask Reddit is anything to go by this is slowly becoming normal. You have to wonder if 20-30 years from now mores will have shifted to reflect the reality that there are often familial buried secrets of every kind out there. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/search?q=Dna&restrict_sr=...

In France and Germany they banned paternity tests https://www.irishtimes.com/news/french-men-s-insecurity-over...

Re: Surprise DNA Results Are Turning Customer-Service Reps into Therapists

#45

Post by danieltillett »

iguy wrote: post #27
danieltillett wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The non-paternatity rate is very class dependant. In the upper-middle the rate is quite low, but in the underclasses it can get up to around 20%.

No way, 1-2% is more like the range. For the western world, for serious studies e.g. tracking surnames vs Y chromosomes. Most much higher figures come from counting only disputed cases, which are obviously going to be skewed. Edit, some links: Surname "Sykes": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1288207/ Bone marrow: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22688803

Most people are not members of the underclass. Anyway you can't really use historical data like this to estimate the non-paternity rate today.

Re: Surprise DNA Results Are Turning Customer-Service Reps into Therapists

#46

Post by Semaphor »

alecco wrote: post #44
technofiend wrote: post #7

If ask Reddit is anything to go by this is slowly becoming normal. You have to wonder if 20-30 years from now mores will have shifted to reflect the reality that there are often familial buried secrets of every kind out there. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/search?q=Dna&restrict_sr=...

In France and Germany they banned paternity tests https://www.irishtimes.com/news/french-men-s-insecurity-over...

> On May 15th, the German Bundesrat adopted a similar measure.

Not sure what this is talking about, but DNA Paternity tests are most certainly legal in Germany there is even a right to have one done: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__1598a.html

edit: So I checked, what happened is that Germany banned genetic tests where there is no consent from the party a sample was taken from. In the case of a paternity test where the father, mother or child is unwilling, a court can instead force the test as knowing paternity has been decided to be a constitutional right.

Re: Surprise DNA Results Are Turning Customer-Service Reps into Therapists

#47

Post by toyg »

anigbrowl wrote: post #35

I really wish this article provided some insight on how much these people are being paid. 95% of the job may be lightweight customer service but providing emotional labor ot people in distress if quite demanding on the provider, regardless of how much training they're given.

It’s a puff piece for dna-testing companies, designed to put doubts in your mind so you’ll go and get tested. Nobody really cares about the workers.

Re: Surprise DNA Results Are Turning Customer-Service Reps into Therapists

#48

Post by iguy »

danieltillett wrote: post #45
iguy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No way, 1-2% is more like the range. For the western world, for serious studies e.g. tracking surnames vs Y chromosomes. Most much higher figures come from counting only disputed cases, which are obviously going to be skewed. Edit, some links: Surname "Sykes": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1288207/ Bone marrow: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22688803

Most people are not members of the underclass. Anyway you can't really use historical data like this to estimate the non-paternity rate today.

Indeed the Sykes data is long-term history, and I think of a middle-class sample. But it does teach us that received wisdom was badly wrong there, which should make us less confident of the same wisdom elsewhere.

The bone marrow study was 2012, and no class has a monopoly on Leukemia. I would not be surprised if there were a class gradient, but an average of under 2% doesn't leave room for a very big underclass to be scoring 20% or 30%.

These are England and Germany, things could be different elsewhere, I don't know whether there is good data.

Re: Surprise DNA Results Are Turning Customer-Service Reps into Therapists

#49

Post by iguy »

scythe wrote: post #15
mjfl wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read somewhere that paternal uncertainty is the leading cause of male violence in every culture in the world, from aboriginal Australia to New York. You wonder, if evolution (cultural or biological) has not allowed any variance in this trait - it must be necessary for reproduction. It would mean that men who don't get angry at the prospect of raising another man's children, inescapably raise another man's children.

http://www.martindaly.ca/uploads/2/3/7/0/23707972/cinderella... >The most thorough analyses are from Canada, where data in a national archive of all homicides known to police indicate that children under 5 years of age were beaten to death by their putative genetic fathers at a rate of 2.6 deaths per million child-years at risk (residing with their fathers), while the corresponding rate for stepfathers was over 120 t…

> 2.6 deaths per million child-years at risk

Thinking aloud: that's about 1/7 of Canada's murder rate, and if I guess that under-5 children are 7% of population, such things would make up 1% of all murders, which does not sound crazy to me.

If step-dads are 100x more dangerous, and 10% of kids have one (just a guess) then step-kid murders would be 10% of all murders. That sounds high but perhaps not crazy? 321.6 / million is about 20x the whole country's murder rate.

Re: Surprise DNA Results Are Turning Customer-Service Reps into Therapists

#50

Post by solidsnack9000 »

Semaphor wrote: post #46
alecco wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In France and Germany they banned paternity tests https://www.irishtimes.com/news/french-men-s-insecurity-over...

> On May 15th, the German Bundesrat adopted a similar measure. Not sure what this is talking about, but DNA Paternity tests are most certainly legal in Germany there is even a right to have one done: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__1598a.html edit: So I checked, what happened is that Germany banned genetic tests where there is no consent from the party a sample was taken from. In the case of a paternity test…

Auf Antrag eines Klärungsberechtigten hat das Familiengericht eine nicht erteilte Einwilligung zu ersetzen und die Duldung einer Probeentnahme anzuordnen.

Upon a right-of-clarification request, the family court may substitute for consent not given and order submission to a test sample.

Post reply on HN