An announcement resulting from a meeting of the Board for Certification of Genealogists at the NGS Conference in Grand Rapids on May 2, 2018.
Via a Facebook post, BCG announced the following on May 23, 2018:
At the annual meeting at NGS … “the trustees debated a proposal to update genealogy standards to incorporate standards related to genetic genealogy. As a result of this discussion BCG intends to move forward with the integration of genetic genealogy into Genealogy Standards. The board directed that the committee’s proposal be published for public comment. The proposed standards can be viewed at https://bcgcertification.org/DNA/Proposed_Standards.pdf. The public comment period ends on 23 July 2018. Fill out the survey at this link (https://goo.gl/forms/57ahXLqkAYOBWDop2) by 23 July 2018. Due to the expected volume of comments, we will not be able to acknowledge or respond to individual comments.”
This is welcomed news! The implementation of Genealogy Standards helped all of us serious about accurate reporting of family history and/or pedigrees isolate the work of a true professional from those only interested in filling out the blank spaces of their trees online. Separating the “grain from the chaff” will get progressively harder as DNA testing promotes additional clues to our heritage if they are not supported by standards that can and should be relied upon and replicated. Its will be all too easy to received test results and only read into them what we want to see. As with all advances in any industry we are desperately in need of a clear, concise set of standards that can be applied and utilized in research reporting of our families.