New DNA Test to Solve More Cases

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."

More Importantly...

...it will hopefully free lots of people who have been falsely accused of crimes they didn't commit.

Re:More Importantly...

well, except for the dead ones.

Re:More Importantly...

That seems unlikely to happen; it seems to be more about reading "previously unintelligible DNA samples" then mending false positives. Not to mention that going into the 'solved cases' pile seems less high on their priority's then the 'cold cases' pile (Then again with prison overcrowding as it is, it could get higher on their list...)

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(Then again with prison overcrowding as it is, it could get higher on their list...)

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 don't know about speed, but what it does allow is a mixed DNA sample can now be broken apart into each person who left it.

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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"From what I understand, DNA testing labs are already at/near max capacity."
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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As for this new DNA test, unless it is faster, cheaper and/or more likely to stand up in court, I don't see it as making a huge difference. Well okay, even if it isn't faster, more reliable, more convincing, or helps to relive DNA labs of the large amount

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Yes, but how fast can this techinique be applied? Don't crime labs/law enforcement officials already have far too many cases to devote their time to?

Two major problems

...it will hopefully free lots of people who have been falsely accused of crimes they didn't commit.

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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DNA match evidence is widely perceived as completely reliable by juries, public, judges, etc...and a less-reliable matching will erode that confidence.

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 will hopefully free lots of people who have been falsely accused of crimes they didn't commit.

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 if police could arrest you if your horoscope was certain you'll kill someone today"

Imagine how many people of that star sign would be killing people if the horoscope was right.

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Imagine how many people of that star sign would be killing people if the horoscope was right.

Yup, arresting all those people in advance would be such a win for crime discoverability and prevention.

West Yorkshire crimes solved!

West Yorkshire. A large number of crimes have recently been solved in this slumbering community. Using a new forensic technique, crime investigators were able to implicate most of the current police force in what was previously reported to be "unsolved" or "mysterious" crimes. 'As our DNA evidence clearly shows, the whole police department was involved in the crimes and their cover up. The crimes were then classified as "unsolved" to cover up their tracks. We have never seen such a wide spread of corruption.' Unidentified sources claimed that the are similar investigation of the police force in 3 other communities.

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Yes the very same 'slumbering' community that the Yorkshire Ripper resided in.

Suspect Database

But if your suspect hasnt been taken into custody as of yet? Why not just 'swab' the entire world population.

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It isn't too far from the truth/future I'm sure. There will eventually be laws passed that will allow a huge database of DNA matched to records of people that both have and have not committed a crime, especially in the US if/when we're under Republican ru

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What do you have to hide, citizen? Either you're with us, or you're with the terrists. Comply. Share and Enjoy.

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Haha, obviously you're joking but the truth is I have plenty of things that I want to "hide" or atleast keep from the prying eyes of the government (nothing a DNA test would bring up).

The government needs to take a few steps back in privacy and I think

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Here's the secret about DNA tests: They don't identify you.

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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Yeah, so the future's trials don't look too different from today's but DNA is definitely more convincing to most people whether it really is reliable or not.

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But if your suspect hasnt been taken into custody as of yet? Why not just 'swab' the entire world population. The UK has the world's largest citizen DNA database. Just about any encounter you have with the UK police, irrespective of your age and state of

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The DNA matching isn't a 100% match. For example, most DNA matching techniques are highly accurate... say they're accurate to 1 in 250 million. Still, if you run a sample only by the USA database... on average, you'd have a wrong match every single search.

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That's very nearly what is happening in the UK. Basically anyone who has any dealings with the police has a DNA sample taken, even if they are never charged with anything. And there are plans to fingerprint the entire population.

You mean...

You mean the DNA tests for the past few decades havent been 100% ?!?

This sounds like Intel's marketing department.

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Its not saying the old DNA test are inaccurate. This technique just allows them to use DNA that previously they could not test, such as a DNA sample that multiple people had handled.

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You mean the DNA tests for the past few decades havent been 100% ?!?

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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DNA testing (in its ideal form) definitely works, as Ironsides describes, but the logistics of it are a bit difficult sometimes. I would not base a case solely upon it, especially if the opposition were to hire a lawyer to perform a Chewbacca defense with

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Actually, the identical twins problem has occured before. Fortunately, the other twin has had an airtight alibi for where they were at the time of a crime. Sometimes they other twin happens to be in jail, sometimes out of state, but so far the case of wh

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No, it means that more samples are not rendered useless. Sounds like good science.

What happened to facing your accuser?

How do you face your accuser when it is a piece of software?

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thats like saying "how do you face your accuser when it is a magnifying glass?" the computer is a tool being operated by detectives, it accuses no one of anything.

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I think magnifying glasses are more varifiable than software. I can grind my own lens but I can't write a program that verifies another piece of software is correct, perhaps you can?

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writing a program to verify to correctness of another program wouldnt solve anything. it jut introduces an infinite regression.

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!

The ghosts of the many executed prisoners who are soon-to-be-exonerated applaud......sort of.

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Aye, as we do not in Canada...however, no doubt that there are a lot of American's that are looking forward to this technology.

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

DNA fingerprinting basically measures the number of repeat units at ~13 different locations in the genome. As you have 2 copies of your chromosomes you esentially get a unique 26 digit code. Looking at just one of the repeat locations, let's say the normal range is 8 to 12 repeats, so you can be an 8,8 8,9 8,10, 8,11 8,12 9,9 9,10, 9,11 9,12 10,10 10,11 10,12 11,11 11,12 or 12,12 (so there are 15 possibilities seen in the population, with generally similar frequencies for each). The chance of matching your sample with any randomly selected unknown will be 1 in 15, but if we go up to 13 different markers we have (1/15)^13 which gives a chance of any 2 UNRELATED individuals matching being about 1 in a quadrillion (more people than have ever lived, and likely ever will live). This means a match is a definite match, this doesn't mean evidence wasn't planted or some such conspiracy crap, but a match is a match, no chance of a collision like with 2 people having O- blood.

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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I'm affaid you are more or less completly wrong.

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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I'm sorry, did you teach this to 4th year genetics students this semester? No? Well, I did teach this for a couple lectures this year, and while I have simplified the process to make it understandable to non-biologists I will assure you I am pretty right

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No, but i did teach at a workshop on Population genetics. Also i have worked with a group with the courts on the real probablities. Not the made up probablities, but probablities based on real data. Its not straight forward and its far from cut and dry. We

Do the math right

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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2 of the sets are on one chromosome, the other 11 are each on different chromosomes, so they assort independently.

Upping the what now?

The /crime detection/ rate is up by 15%? Just great. How many headless corpses and savage beatings were we not noticing before this? Are they finally going to start ticketing that bastard who parks in the middle of four spaces in my complex or something?

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Suppose there are 10 headless corpses each week, and the police can't explain 5 of them. That's a rate of 50%. All they need to do is to issue tickets to 3 bastards who park in the wrong place, and now they've solved 8 crimes out of 13, so the rate is over

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Even if the police "can't explain" a particular headless corpse, they still presumably know a crime was committed! Better/faster DNA analysis does *not* improve *detection* of crimes at all, even if it aids *solution* of crimes.

What happens at 100% crime detection rate!

the technique is a world first which will boost its crime detection rates by more than 15%

And when it reaches 100% nobody is safe.

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Be careful who you kiss then... A good loving french kiss, and you're suddenly not the suspects' girlfriend, but the suspect himself!

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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Now, any Brits here want to say the obligatory "Damn Yanks?"

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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Now, any Brits here want to say the obligatory "Damn Yanks?"

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.

Here in the UK we call all Americans "Yanks", no

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Damn Yanks!