Using overall allele-sharing to detect the presence of large-scale data errors and parameter misspecification in sib-pair linkage studies

Data errors and marker allele frequency misspecification can lead to incorrect inference in linkage analysis. Here we demonstrate the effect of each on an allele-sharing statistic in a sample of sib pairs. In the context of relationship testing, we propose a new test that compares the sample genome-wide sib-pair allele sharing to its expectation and show that this test can detect the presence of large-scale data and model errors.