First the myth of fingerprints

Aug 22, 2005 10:35

Just when I thought I couldn't lose much more faith in the justice system, the Washington Post published an article about the mistakes and outright falsifications made by DNA labs ( Read more... )

news, justice, politics

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paul_wolfe August 22 2005, 10:09:28 UTC
Of course, you might want to elaborate on the "fingerprint myth," as many people do not understand that fingerprint identification is as much art as science. That is, most "fingerprints" found at crime scenes are partial, and so they look not for a continuous match on the fingerprint (impossible in most cases), but for matches on various "points." Depending on the number of matching points, and the preciseness of the matches, a lot is left to interpretation.

That is in part what this lab did regarding DNA. Like all DNA labs, they sample various DNA markers, and in this case they ignored markers that were inconsistent with the result they wanted, among other problems. Of course, some labs have completely falsified the entire analysis.

Many people laughed at the L.A. jury pool when Johnnie Cochran said "no downtown jury is gonna care about no DNA," but
not only can DNA evidence be planted, now we know the results can be skewed or outright faked. Eek!

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neva_ivan August 23 2005, 05:14:48 UTC
Yes, I should explain, but it's a whole different post. Besides which, I doubt anyone is reading this.

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amaliadubois August 22 2005, 12:39:05 UTC
last night i watched a show about 'chimeras'. it was called I Am My Own Twin. this is when 2 embryos fuse together into one person very early in the womb. a little later and the person(s) would be siamese twins. later even and there would be twins. it is rare (or so docs and scientists think). if one embryo was destined to be a boy and one a girl, then the person is usually a hermaphrodite. when the same sex merges, sometimes the telling is in different skin pigmentation on the body. but this individual has 2 sets of DNA ( ... )

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neva_ivan August 23 2005, 05:15:26 UTC
Very interesting. That has to be kind of rare though (I hope), but I'm concerned that in some cases the labs just make stuff up.

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yeah amaliadubois August 23 2005, 06:19:01 UTC
tis scary indeed. nothings really infallible...
even without the DNA issue, i would never want to be a juror. you don't know about these things. i just hope that a lab that makes stuff up - is as rare as a chimera.

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