Religions > Atheism > Inventor of DNA fingerprint testing warns flaw could lead to miscarriages of justice
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Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"maff" |
| Date: |
09 Sep 2004 03:17:18 PM |
| Object: |
Inventor of DNA fingerprint testing warns flaw could lead to miscarriages of justice |
Inventor of DNA fingerprint testing warns flaw could lead to
miscarriages of justice
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/story.jsp?story=559682
By Jason Bennetto, Crime Correspondent
09 September 2004
The scientist who invented DNA fingerprinting two decades ago warned
yesterday that the huge expansion of the national database - which now
contains details of 2.5 million criminals - could contain mistakes and
lead to miscarriages of justice.
Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys said forensic specialists might not be
using a sufficiently accurate DNA match when comparing suspects with
forensic material retrieved from a crime scene. Only 10 different DNA
markers were used on the database to distinguish between individuals,
he said.
Alec Jeffreys
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DNA test OR testing OR evidence OR sample OR samples OR examination
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| User: "Mark Stahl" |
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| Title: Re: Inventor of DNA fingerprint testing warns flaw could lead to miscarriages of justice |
09 Sep 2004 04:01:00 PM |
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"maff" <maff91@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:18510aff.0409091217.56fa8fa5@posting.google.com...
Inventor of DNA fingerprint testing warns flaw could lead to
miscarriages of justice
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/story.jsp?story=559682
By Jason Bennetto, Crime Correspondent
09 September 2004
The scientist who invented DNA fingerprinting two decades ago warned
yesterday that the huge expansion of the national database - which now
contains details of 2.5 million criminals - could contain mistakes and
lead to miscarriages of justice.
Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys said forensic specialists might not be
using a sufficiently accurate DNA match when comparing suspects with
forensic material retrieved from a crime scene. Only 10 different DNA
markers were used on the database to distinguish between individuals,
he said.
this headline is a bit misleading. there's no flaw in DNA fingerprinting per
se; it's just that certain databases may not use enough markers to
distinguish individuals with a certainty he's comfortable with. For example,
a 10-element match gives something like a 1-in-400 chance of a spurious
match. simply using more markers would relieve this flaw, which of course
could be done once a field was narrowed, so to speak.
the other thing he complains about might be more worrisome-- the fact that
DNA evidence, once collected, tends not to be destroyed even if the suspect
is exonerated.
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| User: "paul nutteing" |
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| Title: Re: Inventor of DNA fingerprint testing warns flaw could lead to miscarriages of justice |
10 Sep 2004 12:29:08 PM |
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"Mark Stahl" <stahl@nospam.aecom.yu.edu> wrote in message news:<c-ydnfau8JwwWd3cRVn-jg@giganews.com>...
"maff" <maff91@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:18510aff.0409091217.56fa8fa5@posting.google.com...
this headline is a bit misleading. there's no flaw in DNA fingerprinting per
se; it's just that certain databases may not use enough markers to
distinguish individuals with a certainty he's comfortable with. For example,
a 10-element match gives something like a 1-in-400 chance of a spurious
match. simply using more markers would relieve this flaw, which of course
could be done once a field was narrowed, so to speak.
the other thing he complains about might be more worrisome-- the fact that
DNA evidence, once collected, tends not to be destroyed even if the suspect
is exonerated.
There is blind faith in a very
flakey technology, 8 per cent of 10 loci DNA profiles
are incorrect , Source: International Journal of Legal
Medicine (2004 ) 118: p83-89. That is crime-scene
or arrestee profiles. You have become part
of the conspiracy of disinformation.
Increasing from 10 to 15 loci does not change this
inherent inaccuracy.
For 2.5 million between 2 and 140 scaled from the 4 million
simulation results of between 5 and 360 detailed below.
I would hazard a guess that no more than 100 million DNA
profiles have been determined in the whole world with incompatible
systems. It is Alice in Wonderland territory referring to
billions or trillions of profiles. I know this fromn doing just low
million simulations . Because of a square law there are extremely
serious problems with multiple matches for populations in
the hundreds of millions to billions
Throughout the 1990s they were spouting, even in court ,
false match probability of 1 in 37 million for 6 loci profiles.
That was until admission of a crime-scene profile
matching 2 separate unrelated arrestee profiles in the (UK) NDNAD
(R v. Watters appeal) and case of Raymond Easton
forced a halt to that dangerous nonsense.
The real 6 loci false match data for a population of
4 million is between 94,000 and 380,000 matches.
Remember the courts were quite happy to convict in those
circumstances because the forensic statisticians had lied to them
So they upped it to 10 loci which certainly improves things
but not the multi-billion figures now spouted.
Again for a 4 million population the false match figure
is between 5 and 360 pairs. 5 is unrealistically low (
parthonogenic - no coancestry ) and 360 too high as all
having similar ancestry as myself - ( one parent and his
parents from one English county and mother and her parents
from another English county ).
The custodians of the NDNAD will not release the actual number
of false matches in the NDNAD - for obvious ( to me ) reasons.
They plead the ridiculous situation of people using aliases and
multiple criminal records. Easily excluded in the first analysis
because you can safely exclude anyone with rare alleles from
the false match situation, and cross check with other biometric data.
Because the technology is so flakey is in necessary to
consider 19 out of 20 matches as a match not a mis-match.
This is argued permissable because a mutation on any locus/
allele is possible (0.01 to 0.3 percent chance on any of the 20
loci/alleles)
As long as further exploration to confirm this
conjectured mutation - but do they ?
19 out of 20 if identifying a decomposed body, profile already
known, or someone already named as a suspect in an enquiry but not
where the suspect has been implicated from a DNA
database trawl.
By 19 out of 20 I mean any 9 pairs matching and one allele match
between the remaining
pairs.
For the completely artificial situation for totally random
profiles ( no co-ancestry at all ) then for any 19 in 20 then about
120 matches in 4 million or 1 in 33,000.
For the opposite situation and excessive co-ancestry then
28,000 free 19 from 20 matches or 1 in 140
of a 4 million population.
Until real-life data becomes available for co-ancestry
( parents & grandparents from same or different country,
from same or different county etc )
tabulated against allele frequency minima then these are the
outer bounds as it stands.
They only arrest
the first person who happens to match in a DNA database,
they don't wait for ten years, say, for a third match
to come along.
Relevant simulations and results are on dnas5.htm
and dnas6.htm on URL below. I would like to be
able to point to academics or forensic scientists
who have done such simulations but I seem to be the
only one to determine false-match likelihoods from
real-world allele frequencies. Afterall it does
not require any fancy high-power computer
The USA with 13 loci CODIS profiles cannot be smug as one
of there loci/alleles is TPOX (8) which 79 percent of people
have one or more. Also increase the number of loci
and you increase the chance of an error in any one
locus/allele so throwing out the whole profile,
falsely implicating or falsely eliminating.
What they aren't telling you about DNA profiles
and what Special Branch don't want you to know.
http://www.nutteing2.freeservers.com/dnapr.htm
or nutteingd in a search engine
Valid email (remove 4 of the 5 dots)
Ignore any other apparent em address used to post this message -
it is defunct due to spam.
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