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New DNA Test to Solve More Cases
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Oct 04, 2006 07:07 PM
from the you-can't-get-away-with-anything-anymore dept.
from the you-can't-get-away-with-anything-anymore dept.
Krishna Dagli writes From the BBC,"Tens of thousands of unsolved crimes could be cracked with a new forensic technique, it has been claimed.The Forensic Science Service (FSS) is piloting a computer-based analysis system which can interpret previously unintelligible DNA samples.It claims the technique is a world first which will boost its crime detection rates by more than 15%.The method is being tested by the West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, Northumbria and Humberside police forces."
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More Importantly... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:More Importantly... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:More Importantly... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Step 1: Remove non-violent drug offenders from prison
Step 2: Insert the above into rehabilitation programs
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit
I imagine Step 3 involves Gov't funds bei
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I am still not sure whether it is based upon sheer pattern matching (the UK has largest DNA database in the world) or if it is some
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Here in the UK where the research is being pioneered (but I persume it is the same for everywhere,) a large part of the reason for this is that so many DNA sources are contaminated
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Two major problems (Score:3, Insightful)
Two problems: 1)The system/process will be made mostly available to "solving" crimes, not freeing criminals; it's bad prioritization politically, existi
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Absolutely right! DNA tests are 100% accurate and foolproof [chron.com]. The prosecutors say so themselves [truthinjustice.org]. In fac
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It works the opposite way: when you claim there's a false positive, you'll get even less people to believe you, since now "we're 15% more accurate!".
It's ju
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Imagine how many people of that star sign would be killing people if the horoscope was right.
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Yup, arresting all those people in advance would be such a win for crime discoverability and prevention.
West Yorkshire crimes solved! (Score:4, Funny)
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Suspect Database (Score:2)
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The government needs to take a few steps back in privacy and I think
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The original tests looked for a certain number of snippets of DNA that were considered "genes". Fewer than a dozen at first, but towards the end of this test's usage, they were up to about 16. Wi
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You mean... (Score:2)
This sounds like Intel's marketing department.
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The DNA can be a match and still not come from the suspect. All DNA is based on statistics.
Marker A is in 0.25% of the population, Marker B is in 0.01%, C is in 0.3% and D is in 0.01
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What happened to facing your accuser? (Score:1, Interesting)
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if a case hinged on this one solitary piece of evidence, it would need to be thoroughly manually reverified to make sure it wa
Unsolved, how about wrongly convicted! (Score:1)
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Actually, I am in favour of the death penalty, however, only under a strict set of circumstances:
1. The subject is found guilty b
For you non-wetware workers (Score:5, Informative)
The "new" stuff here is that they have come up with software which will allow the system to extract 2 sets of "seial numbers" from one reaction. Like having 2 fingerprints on top of one another and seperating them to determine the swirls. They also are claiming a more sensitive technique which will allow for smaller or partially degraded samples to be tested, but this is probably just tweaking the experimental protocol.
This is no new test, just tweaks and algorithms.
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Unfortunalty we are are all related to some degree and oh yes thats very important. It turns out that a set of good markers for Europe is not a good set for Aficans for example. Different ethinic groups have
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Do the math right (Score:1)
As has already been commented, it's not necessarilly valid to simply multiply out the individual probabilities as if all the elements were truly independent, since they may not be, and 15^13 is a very big number and an exceedingly bold claim to make. FTFA
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Upping the what now? (Score:3, Interesting)
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What happens at 100% crime detection rate! (Score:1)
And when it reaches 100% nobody is safe.
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It actually doesn't work out that way, but I can imagine a movie coming out shortly with that as the main storyline, you
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I thought only we Southerners said that? And trust me, you have never heard "Damn Yankess" until you've heard it from someone from Mississippi.
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