State Supreme Court Approves of Variable-Prior-Odds Presentation of the Bayesian Probability of Paternity

In 2002, the Supreme Court of Kentucky wrote a disappointing opinion on the admissibility of the "probability of paternity" in a c...

False Justice and Prosecutors' Fallacies

False Justice , by Jim and Nancy Petro, is an engaging, first-person tale of a former Ohio Attorney General's involvement in correcting ...

“Statistical Lawyer’s Tricks” with DNA Mixtures in the Trial of Tommy Whack

Maryland seems to produce more than its share of significant judicial opinions on DNA evidence. Perhaps this is partly the result of having ...

Massachusetts Supreme Court Demands a Witness from the Same DNA Laboratory -- But Not Because of the Confrontation Clause

The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution specifies that "in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right … to be confron...

Hair Evidence in the “Clearly Not Exonerated” Exoneration of Mark Reid

On November 3, the fictional forensic scientist in the world’s most watched television drama was aghast that she had once performed microsco...

SWGDAM Guidelines on "Probabilistic Genotyping Systems" (Part 2)

What makes a "Probabilistic Genotyping System" probabilistic? That a computer program delivers a probability related to a DNA prof...

SWGDAM Guidelines on "Probabilistic Genotyping Systems" (Part 1)

In June, the Scientific Working Group on DNA Analysis Methods (SWGDAM), approved new “Guidelines for the Validation of Probabilistic Genotyp...

DNA Evidence Causes Wrongful Convictions 15% of the Time!?

Today's Forensic Magazine reports that Recent estimates indicate that as many as 15 of every 100 incarcerated offenders where DNA was ...

Frontline's Expose of DNA Testing: Yes and No

The content of a recent Frontline story on “ The Surprisingly Imperfect Science of DNA Testing: How a Proven Tool May Be Anything But ” will...

48 Hours for DNA

Today's New York Times reports that DNA matching that of two escaped killers was found in a cabin in the remote resort of Mountain View...

Spitting in Syracuse: Another Disgusting DNA Case

Police have linked restaurant and grocery store employees to expectoration in food or drink. The latest case is described in Syracuse.com, ...

A Probability for Dog DNA

A pet peeve of many statisticians is the transposition fallacy—misconstruing the probability of the data given the hypothesis as the probabi...

Another Disgusting DNA Case: Please Flush!

A quick update to the disgusting DNA report of last March ( The Whooper Stopper ). Following up on a report from KOAT-TV in Albuquerque, th...

Contamination or Sasquatch in Forensic Laboratories -- Which Is it?

DNA Diagnostics, Inc. , is “a laboratory that provides multi-species testing including human as well as animal DNA testing for individuals, ...