DNA ownership
Something to plan for So the question came up more than once yesterday when The Legal Genealogist and the Chicago Genealogical Society together explored the uses of DNA in genealogical research at the Arlington Heights Memorial Library: Who owns your DNA sample when...DNA ethics: speak up!
DNA and ethical standards In December 2013, co-editors Thomas W. Jones and Melinde Lutz Byrne of the National Genealogical Society Quarterly lamented in an editorial that: When genealogists began to apply DNA test results to family history, they had the opportunity...Courtesy, ethics and law
Credit where credit is due Randy Seaver, author of the Genea-Musings blog, is one of the most prolific genealogy writers around, with a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly output that far exceeds anything The Legal Genealogist could ever envision. His “Saturday Night...Just say no
Say, would you mind…? You see it all the time, out here on the internet. It seems perfectly innocent. It’s just a request for help, and helping is something we do here in the genealogical community. It goes like this: I don’t subscribe to...Something to talk about
Thank you… and join me! The Legal Genealogist has said it before: if you ever ever get a chance to be a speaker for the Ocean County, New Jersey, Genealogical Society, say yes. I don’t care when it is, what the topic is, or what else you have to put off....Games grandparents play
One not for the record books There are lots of games grandparents play with their grandchildren. The card game Uno. The board game Monopoly. The word game Bananagrams. But there’s one game grandparents shouldn’t play with their grandchildren. It’s...Getting permission
Quoting the living Anyone who’s been doing genealogy for any length of time has been there. You’re nearing a point where you’re ready to write up what you’ve found, and, all of a sudden, it dawns on you. Some of the people you want very much to...A QuickLesson for us all
Avoiding plagiarism The dictionary definition of the word plagiarize is “to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own; use (another’s production) without crediting the source.”1 And it’s a huge problem in academia, as can easily...The ethics of DNA testing
Requiring consent Reader Mark D. Lyon is concerned about what’s been called “DNA stalking” — a going-to-extremes version of getting a DNA sample for genetic genealogy. He’d come across an article in the New York Times from 2007 that discussed...Subscribe by Email
