Speaker 1: Get in with technology with tech stuff from stuff Peter
Speaker 1: are welcome to tech Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland and joining
Speaker 1: me in the studio today is the illustrious and Mr
Speaker 1: Ben Bowland of stuff they don't want you to know
Speaker 1: and car stuff, among other things. Welcome back to the show. Ben, Hey, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: thank you for having me. Oh man, illustrious? Is it
Speaker 1: the pain meds from my recent doctor visit? Or am
Speaker 1: I'm moving up in the world. It's literally that you're illustrated. Actually,
Speaker 1: there's true. Ben has had people mark all over him
Speaker 1: and crayon today. I'm not gonna ask why I don't
Speaker 1: get into personal lives in the show. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's a big deal. Whenever I could be on
Speaker 1: the show and I wanted to do something special, my
Speaker 1: suits at the cleaners got a bunch of Sharpie's and
Speaker 1: ask people to go nuts. Yeah, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: body paint, but really they'll super like on the cheap
Speaker 1: because we just can't. We don't have that in our budget, honestly,
Speaker 1: right note, but hope springs eternal. What's weird about having
Speaker 1: um all these all these colors and markers all over me?
Speaker 1: Is that anything I touched literally is leaving a trace? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that kind of you know, we were going to
Speaker 1: have a really in depth conversation on how catalytic converters work,
Speaker 1: but once I noticed you doing that, I thought, why
Speaker 1: don't we talk about DNA forensics, like the traces people
Speaker 1: leave behind. So, uh, that's why I decided to switch
Speaker 1: in the last minute. I hope you can roll with it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, and just in in you know, Ben
Speaker 1: and I have talked a little bit about our our
Speaker 1: mutual interest in the true crime uh discipline, the whole
Speaker 1: the whole true crime like field, and it turns out
Speaker 1: we're not the only ones in the office. There are
Speaker 1: certain people in the office who have a really deep
Speaker 1: interest in this sort of stuff, and so we thought,
Speaker 1: you know, would be kind of fun to explore the
Speaker 1: concept in different shows. So if you listen to all
Speaker 1: of How Stuff Work shows, you may have noticed things
Speaker 1: popping up here and there that's not entirely by accident.
Speaker 1: So uh really was one of those things where as
Speaker 1: we all started talking, we're like, hey, you know, I
Speaker 1: would like to do something in that and we can
Speaker 1: kind of It's almost like an easter egg for those
Speaker 1: of you who subscribe to lots of different shows, and
Speaker 1: you should let us know if you thought it was
Speaker 1: really cool. So from the technology standpoint, we thought DNA
Speaker 1: forensics would be really really interesting to cover and to
Speaker 1: talk about how it actually works. Uh, what are the processes,
Speaker 1: what are some of the challenges, What are some of
Speaker 1: the things that people are doing with DNA forensics now
Speaker 1: that might end up helping, uh, like investigations in the future.
Speaker 1: Where could it actually end up giving us a false positive,
Speaker 1: because there there is the possibility of that as well.
Speaker 1: But to start it all off, we really kind of
Speaker 1: have to lay the groundwork. Yeah, I was gonna I
Speaker 1: was just gonna ask you. I hate to be the
Speaker 1: bad kid in class right now, but what's what's DNA?
Speaker 1: D oxy ribonucleic acid, man, Yeah, that's what is so obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, anyone who's had science class, like a biology
Speaker 1: class anything recently, you know all about DNA. But you know,
Speaker 1: we gotta build from the ground up. So DNA is
Speaker 1: a molecule that carries the genetic instructions that govern the development, function,
Speaker 1: and reproduction of organisms. DNA is found in all of
Speaker 1: your cells. Essentially an entire blueprint of what makes you
Speaker 1: you is in every single one of your cells in
Speaker 1: the form of d N a uh, and the molecule
Speaker 1: is in that double helix form. So that says, if
Speaker 1: you were to make a ladder and then twisted into
Speaker 1: a twisty shape, that's the DNA double helix. The rungs
Speaker 1: in that letter are made up of pairs of what
Speaker 1: we call nucleotides. Alright, So each rung on the ladder
Speaker 1: is two different nucleotides that that bond together. Uh. There's
Speaker 1: adenine and thymine. Those always pair up together. So those
Speaker 1: are your two base pairs of nucleotides that will always join.
Speaker 1: And then there's guanine and cytosine and those always join.
Speaker 1: And it's the sequence of these pairs that end up
Speaker 1: determining what makes you you, right, yeah, yeah, so it
Speaker 1: could be. And these pairs can affect multiple the order
Speaker 1: of these pairs can affect multiple characteristics. Sure, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: And also what's really interesting to me is that point
Speaker 1: nine of all the DNA that is in you is
Speaker 1: shared with every other human Like we we have ninety
Speaker 1: nine percent of our DNA is in common, which means
Speaker 1: the stuff that makes you who you are as indifferent
Speaker 1: from every other person, makes up just point one percent
Speaker 1: of your DNA. But that's all it takes, is that
Speaker 1: point one percent. That's about three million base pairs that
Speaker 1: are unique to you unless you have an identical sibling.
Speaker 1: Ah ah the old Now this goes into um, this
Speaker 1: verges into some good detective fiction. Now, yes, that old trope,
Speaker 1: the evil twin, Yeah, exactly, it wasn't me. It was
Speaker 1: my evil twin or or evil triplet or evil quadruplet
Speaker 1: really which we did an ill fated brain stuff but
Speaker 1: it was, oh my gosh, we did. We did. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If you if you watch brain Stuff, the video series,
Speaker 1: and you look up how twins work, Ben and I
Speaker 1: did a funny At the time, I thought. I still
Speaker 1: thought there were parts of it that were funny. Honestly, Ben,
Speaker 1: I still fully enjoy it, but my sense of humor
Speaker 1: is very corny. So but if you want to see,
Speaker 1: if you want to see me and Ben dressing up
Speaker 1: in two different types of outfits, like we're the good
Speaker 1: Ben and Jonathan and then there's the evil Ben and
Speaker 1: Jonathan and we each have an eye patch. Jonathan and
Speaker 1: I were talking and it was it was strange because
Speaker 1: when we were talking about doing this episode, we said, wow,
Speaker 1: how could we represent evil twins like I I patches?
Speaker 1: Clearly because you know, the goatee is not gonna work
Speaker 1: for right because and like neither of us were going
Speaker 1: to end up shaving just so that I can be
Speaker 1: the good twin. But both of us are the kind
Speaker 1: of person who would have an I patch. And actually
Speaker 1: I ended up taking a quick walk to a nearby
Speaker 1: toy store to pick some up. Um. So, at any rate,
Speaker 1: if you do have an identical sibling, your identical sibling
Speaker 1: shares your DNA. There they are identical, like the DNA.
Speaker 1: If you were to compare the two and look at
Speaker 1: those base pairs, they're going to be the same all
Speaker 1: the way down, right. So that's one of the that's
Speaker 1: one of the exceptions, really the exception. So our DNA
Speaker 1: can be found in twenty three pairs of chromosomes. That's
Speaker 1: what humans have. Not all animals have that many, so
Speaker 1: have fewer and etcetera, etcetera. So chromosomes are ribbons of
Speaker 1: protein essentially have a strand of DNA that are wrapped
Speaker 1: up in that and within each pair, one chromosome comes
Speaker 1: from your mother. One chromosome comes from your father, and
Speaker 1: that's what uh you know, those are the ingredients that
Speaker 1: come together to create the unique individual that is you
Speaker 1: and or your identical siblings. Uh So, if we took
Speaker 1: look at each person's DNA and pay attention to the
Speaker 1: order of those base pairs, we get something like a
Speaker 1: DNA fingerprint. It is unique to that person. But we
Speaker 1: can't just look at one section. We have to look
Speaker 1: at several different sections also known as loci in the
Speaker 1: in the parlance of forensics to get a robust fingerprint profile. So,
Speaker 1: just as we would look at a fingerprint and look
Speaker 1: for points of comparison to from from a from a
Speaker 1: fingerprint that we've gathered from a suspect, let's say, and
Speaker 1: a fingerprint that was left at the scene of a crime,
Speaker 1: you would have to look at several different points to
Speaker 1: make sure that all those points correspond to one another
Speaker 1: to say that there's a match. Same thing with DNA
Speaker 1: DNA forensics, you would look at several different locations along
Speaker 1: a strand of DNA and see if the same sequence
Speaker 1: of nucleotides were appearing on both sets, because that would
Speaker 1: tell you what are the statistical probabilities of the person
Speaker 1: that you suspect and the the evidence that was left
Speaker 1: behind are one and the same, right, Okay, So each
Speaker 1: time there's a new location, the more loci there are,
Speaker 1: the more certitude you have that you've got your catch. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you were to say, look at just one location,
Speaker 1: then that would mean you would have a very you know,
Speaker 1: there's actually quite a good chance, depending upon the sequence,
Speaker 1: that coincidence could could completely explain away any any uh
Speaker 1: duplication there. Right, So it could just be coincidence. It
Speaker 1: could be that this person just coincidentally has that same sequence.
Speaker 1: As you add more loci, that becomes less and less likely.
Speaker 1: Uh FBI. The FBI has thirteen that they suggest the
Speaker 1: thirteen specific loca that's their standard, and that that results
Speaker 1: in about a one in a billion chance that if
Speaker 1: you were to take all thirteen loca and compare the
Speaker 1: two strength you know, the stuff that was left at
Speaker 1: the evidence and the suspect or whatever is in the database.
Speaker 1: If you were to compare the two and they were
Speaker 1: to come up equal at all thirteen, it's a one
Speaker 1: in a billion chance that somebody else besides the person
Speaker 1: you're looking at, possesses that. So seven of the six
Speaker 1: other people in the world. Yeah, it's like flash forward
Speaker 1: to that day in court where someone's doing that horrible
Speaker 1: reference joke and going, so you're saying that there's a chance. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and honestly, people who are analyzing the stuff, they
Speaker 1: speak in statistical probabilities, because you cannot say for certain
Speaker 1: that this person left behind that DNA. You can say, like,
Speaker 1: what is the statistical probability that they did, And then
Speaker 1: you look at other elements of the case, right, like saying,
Speaker 1: all right, can we put the person in that area,
Speaker 1: because let's say that it's in a small town. Well,
Speaker 1: if it's a one in a billion chance and you
Speaker 1: know that the suspect was in that small town, that's
Speaker 1: pretty darn compelling. Yeah, because why are the chances that
Speaker 1: the other one of the other six people in the
Speaker 1: entire world was also in that small town? Not good?
Speaker 1: So where do we get the DNA evidence from? Well,
Speaker 1: stuff that people leave behind, Uh, pretty much anything that
Speaker 1: has cells like living tissue that was left behind our
Speaker 1: living or stuff where living cells could have been in
Speaker 1: before being deposited at the crime scene. So stuff like
Speaker 1: blood or saliva or semen or skin cells, mucus, earwax, sweat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all of that, All of that can leave behind cells
Speaker 1: that we can pull DNA from that. What about hair,
Speaker 1: hair not so much, not not not for traditional DNA
Speaker 1: hair follicles, Yes, but hair it self is dead. Those
Speaker 1: are dead cells. So you can do some some DNA analysis,
Speaker 1: but not the standard kind that most people use in DNA.
Speaker 1: For instance, Uh, fingernails, same thing, but fingernails often come
Speaker 1: with other tissue attached to it, and that's where you
Speaker 1: find the DNA. So if we want to look at
Speaker 1: the history of people actually saying, hey, why don't we
Speaker 1: use this this DNA stuff to try and help with investigations,
Speaker 1: you've got to look back to the nineteen eighties when
Speaker 1: a brit named Alec Jeffries, who now you may refer
Speaker 1: to as Professor Sir Alec John Jeffreys f R s okay, good,
Speaker 1: Professor Sir Alec John Jeffries, FRSH that would be his
Speaker 1: full title. Now, he hit upon the idea of using
Speaker 1: DNA as a means of genetic fingerprinting, and he realized
Speaker 1: that the unique sequences of DNA could serve as a
Speaker 1: means to link an individual to a scene where DNA
Speaker 1: samples were found, and his process was first applied in
Speaker 1: the court system in nineteen eight five. In that case,
Speaker 1: it was an It was an immigration case. It wasn't
Speaker 1: like a murder or a rape or something like that.
Speaker 1: It was to ascertain if the identity of a British
Speaker 1: boy was actually related to a family who had originally
Speaker 1: immigrated to the United Kingdom from elsewhere. And he did. Uh.
Speaker 1: The first time it was used in a criminal case
Speaker 1: would be seven. That was yeah, not not long after,
Speaker 1: and that wasn't a case. Uh. The the suspect was
Speaker 1: named Colin Pitchfork, which is a heck of a name,
Speaker 1: talking about nominative determinism. Yeah, and he was arrested on
Speaker 1: suspicion of rape and murder. And he was the first
Speaker 1: criminal caught as a result of DNA screening. So this
Speaker 1: was DNA screen that led to his capture. He actually
Speaker 1: confessed to his crimes, so the DNA didn't lead to
Speaker 1: his conviction. He confessed, uh, and he received life in
Speaker 1: prison as a result. So I wanted to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit before we get into some of the pros
Speaker 1: and cons about what actually happens with DNA's because you
Speaker 1: hear or like DNA forensics and you're like what goes
Speaker 1: into that. Yeah, this is a great thing to contextualize
Speaker 1: right now, because there are a lot of fans and
Speaker 1: tech stuff who have probably seen and scoffed at the
Speaker 1: various entertaining but inaccurate crime shows on order spe CSI,
Speaker 1: CSI being the big one, like they're there are are
Speaker 1: forensic specialists who say that c s I is probably
Speaker 1: one of the most damaging things that have happened to
Speaker 1: their their career path ever, because people have unrealistic expectations. Specifically,
Speaker 1: juries have unrealistic expectations, which can hurt a trial case
Speaker 1: because juries will often one want DNA UH data when
Speaker 1: it's not even relevant to a case, Like they're like,
Speaker 1: it's not necessary for them to make a determination in
Speaker 1: a case, but they want it because it's one of
Speaker 1: those things that people associate with. Oh, d NA gets
Speaker 1: you the the locked in answer was that person air?
Speaker 1: Were they not there? Um, just run the DNA enhance
Speaker 1: the photograph. I don't see what the problem right exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's pull up one of those three dimensional holographic images
Speaker 1: and we're just we're just throw every single science fiction
Speaker 1: CSI trope in there. So early forensic analysis actually used
Speaker 1: a process called restriction fragment length polymorphism or r f LP,
Speaker 1: and that involves taking a sample of DNA that has
Speaker 1: repeating base pairs like they can repeat from anywhere between
Speaker 1: one and thirty times. They're called variable number tandem repeats
Speaker 1: or v N t r s. And what they would
Speaker 1: do is they would dissolve this DNA in an enzyme
Speaker 1: to break the strand at specific locations along that the DNA.
Speaker 1: So uh saying like um, when there are this many repetitions,
Speaker 1: this enzyme is going to break the strand at that point.
Speaker 1: So that way we can measure how long the strand
Speaker 1: DNA is in a out point. Yeah. So imagine that
Speaker 1: you've got like a ribbon, right, and let's say that
Speaker 1: the ribbon is maybe three ft long, and you're going
Speaker 1: to cut out a six inch segment of that ribbon.
Speaker 1: Use this enzyme and it cuts it at the very
Speaker 1: specific locations along that strand that you want. You do
Speaker 1: the same thing with the material that was left behind
Speaker 1: at the scene. So let's say you've got you've got
Speaker 1: your your DNA sample from your suspect, you've got the
Speaker 1: sample from the scene, and you compare the two and
Speaker 1: you're essentially measuring them against each other, like literally measuring
Speaker 1: the length of them, because it's those repeating pairs that
Speaker 1: determine how long that segment is. So if the two
Speaker 1: are about the same length, or actually they are the
Speaker 1: same length, then you know, or at least you you
Speaker 1: have a good uh inclination to say that this person
Speaker 1: was the one who left behind that DNA. That's not
Speaker 1: really used that frequently anymore, but more frequently now we
Speaker 1: use a method called short tandem repeat analysis, which is
Speaker 1: more reliable, more popular. And in this method, analysts take
Speaker 1: a sample of DNA and they count the repetition of
Speaker 1: those base pairs along certain locations the loci of that sample.
Speaker 1: So four or five base pair repeats like where you
Speaker 1: get you know, your your those nucleo tide pairings I
Speaker 1: talked about, Sometimes those pairings repeat in a sequence, right,
Speaker 1: They look for uh, preferably four or five base pair
Speaker 1: repeat segments, so that way, because it's less likely than
Speaker 1: if you would have two or three in a row. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the more you have in a row, the less likely
Speaker 1: you're going to find that exact same repetition in another
Speaker 1: in an unrelated person's DNA. And these are by the
Speaker 1: way called tetra nucleotide or penta nucleotide repetitions because of
Speaker 1: the number tetra being four, penta being five. Um. There
Speaker 1: those are best in order to indicate an accurate man match.
Speaker 1: So the FBI, like I said, says, thirteen specific locai
Speaker 1: to find this, you would do this in thirteen different
Speaker 1: locations along the strand of DNA. And if you were
Speaker 1: to find these, uh, these base pair repeats that are
Speaker 1: identical in both and both samples, that's a really good
Speaker 1: indication that they belong to the same person. And this
Speaker 1: this investigation technique, while it is, while it's pretty solid
Speaker 1: and there's solid science behind it, it doesn't work in
Speaker 1: every In every case, it's not a silver bullet. And
Speaker 1: this is kind of some dark territory. Yeah. Yeah. In fact,
Speaker 1: there there are a lot of reasons why, uh, this
Speaker 1: can be this can be problematic. Um. One other thing
Speaker 1: I want to talk about before we get into the
Speaker 1: challenges specifically things like contamination and chain of possession and
Speaker 1: chain of custody, thank you, Before we get into that,
Speaker 1: is to talk about all right, so you know, I
Speaker 1: gave these these overviews of how they're analyzing the DNA,
Speaker 1: but One of the big issues here is that often
Speaker 1: when you're in the field and you're looking for anything
Speaker 1: that has, you know, remnants of DNA on it, you
Speaker 1: may not have a very large sample to work with. Right,
Speaker 1: So you've got a tiny amount of DNA. How do
Speaker 1: you make sure you can do the tests you need
Speaker 1: with a tiny little amount? And the answer is you
Speaker 1: duplicate the crap out of it? What how? Yeah? Okay,
Speaker 1: so this is this is gonna get super weird because
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get into molecular biology and chemistry but starting
Speaker 1: and I want to let okay, So they use a
Speaker 1: process called polymerase chain reaction or PCR to duplicate a
Speaker 1: specific region of the DNA in a sample. So this
Speaker 1: process was developed in three by Carrie Mollis who actually
Speaker 1: he won a Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work
Speaker 1: in this field. And what they'll do is they'll take
Speaker 1: samples of DNA. They'll take a string of DNA, so
Speaker 1: you've got your double helix, right, and then you heat
Speaker 1: it to between ninety four and ninety six degrees celsius
Speaker 1: for a few minutes. Yeah, so it's almost boiling um
Speaker 1: for a few minutes. And this is to d nature
Speaker 1: the sample, which means that the DNA straightens out, so
Speaker 1: it's no longer twisted ladder. It's a ladder, and the
Speaker 1: rungs split apart, So those base pairs split and you
Speaker 1: get two strands two half strands of d N A alright,
Speaker 1: So then you end up changing the temperature. You lower
Speaker 1: it to between fifty and sixty five degrees celsius for
Speaker 1: a few minutes, so that first one only takes a
Speaker 1: few minutes to so you lower it down to fifty
Speaker 1: to six degrees celsius for a few more minutes. That
Speaker 1: allows the left and right primers. These are small sections
Speaker 1: of DNA that have matching nucleotides to the two separated
Speaker 1: pieces that you've created. Think of them as almost like
Speaker 1: half zippers. So you've got the right and left half
Speaker 1: of a zipper on either like that. They're spreading out
Speaker 1: there there there's apart from one another. You've got a
Speaker 1: small section that interlocks with each side. Because that you've
Speaker 1: got the the complementary base pairs. Uh, those will then
Speaker 1: connect to those sections. Now that's only a tiny little
Speaker 1: part overall part of the full DNA, but um they
Speaker 1: then raise the temperature to seventy two degrees celsius for
Speaker 1: a few minutes to allow the tach polyme race. Now,
Speaker 1: this is the material that can then build and synthesize
Speaker 1: new DNA to the two separate strands. So if you
Speaker 1: think about it like a video game. All right, so
Speaker 1: you get your little you get your little segment that's
Speaker 1: locked onto the half ladder of DNA, the stuff you
Speaker 1: started off with in the first place. At one end
Speaker 1: of that, imagine that you get a little bitty blob,
Speaker 1: all right, that little big blob just builds the corresponding
Speaker 1: rungs and goes down the line rebuilding the d N
Speaker 1: A and it doesn't you know, there's one on both sides.
Speaker 1: There's a primer on each half strand of DNA. So
Speaker 1: at the end of this process, you end up with
Speaker 1: two strands of DNA. Okay, I see, now you started
Speaker 1: with one, but because you've used this molecular biology slash
Speaker 1: chemistry approach, you've been able to duplicate it. And then
Speaker 1: you repeat that process. So you do it again. Those
Speaker 1: two become four, the four become a. You see how
Speaker 1: this expands very rapidly. You do it over and over,
Speaker 1: so that way even if you started with a very
Speaker 1: small sample of DNA, by the end, you've got plenty
Speaker 1: to work with, so you don't have to worry about
Speaker 1: you know, we had one little drop of sweat at
Speaker 1: the scene and and we blew it on on a
Speaker 1: test that didn't work out. You don't have to worry
Speaker 1: about that. I'm sorry to be like, uh, emotionally or
Speaker 1: mentally a nine year old here, Jonathan, but can we
Speaker 1: can we make it a booker? I just love picturing
Speaker 1: us as cops or like, no, no one knows who
Speaker 1: stole the vus. We have only this single. The Mysterious
Speaker 1: Picker has struck again. Yeah, yeah, okay, so you're in Yeah,
Speaker 1: well we weren't talking about urine. We were talking about
Speaker 1: the boogers. All right, you got me. But this is
Speaker 1: but this is a great that that's a great explanation
Speaker 1: of how this occurs. Because given that you're essentially destroying
Speaker 1: the evidence every time that you you conduct this kind
Speaker 1: of this this kind of investigation, than being able to
Speaker 1: reproduce it is fundamental. Yeah, it's absolutely key because again,
Speaker 1: if you do not have very much of that material,
Speaker 1: then you really have to be careful. And there are
Speaker 1: a lot of things that can complicate this, and that's
Speaker 1: kind of where we were leading to a little bit earlier.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of reasons why you cannot just
Speaker 1: say that DNA forensics is going to solve, you know,
Speaker 1: the crimes out there as long as someone's left something behind.
Speaker 1: Because even though it's versatile, even though we have this
Speaker 1: amazing capability, life is weird and things can go wrong,
Speaker 1: and they can go wrong either accidentally or on purpose.
Speaker 1: So one thing that can happen is multiple people could
Speaker 1: be involved in a an incident crime of some sort,
Speaker 1: and so the more people who are involved, the harder
Speaker 1: it is to be absolutely certain that the DNA samples
Speaker 1: you're working with all linked to a specific individual. In fact,
Speaker 1: there are currently some changes in the way DNA can
Speaker 1: be handled UH in cases court cases actually to the
Speaker 1: point where it's in the legal case since UH in
Speaker 1: Texas and other places as well, and so forensics labs
Speaker 1: are having to put in greater restrictions because forensics analysts
Speaker 1: would go into testify in court cases and say there's
Speaker 1: a one in a billion chance this belonged to someone else.
Speaker 1: But if you start to factor in that there is
Speaker 1: more than one person's DNA found at the scene and
Speaker 1: the contamination issues that result from that. Then people would
Speaker 1: say like, all right, well, really it's more like one
Speaker 1: in a thousand or one in a hundred. And then
Speaker 1: at this point you might say, well, the DNA evidence
Speaker 1: is not strong enough for it to be a compelling
Speaker 1: argument for the guilt or innocence of a person, because
Speaker 1: there's enough like if you're in a really dense urban
Speaker 1: area and you say there's a one in a hundred
Speaker 1: chance that's you know, it's it's hard to say that
Speaker 1: shouldn't introduce reasonable doubt that it doesn't meet the burden
Speaker 1: of reasonable doubts, But and then you have to try
Speaker 1: to chase down all the other possibilities. And that's that's
Speaker 1: if there are multiple people involved. But even if there's
Speaker 1: not multiple people involved, obviously you have to be very
Speaker 1: cognizant of the possibility of contamination. Yeah, okay, we we
Speaker 1: can talk about this a little bit because we this
Speaker 1: is something that you might not see on Hollywood as
Speaker 1: often as you see it in real life. Yes, actually, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: so let's say you know the let's say you're the detective,
Speaker 1: right and Noel is the prosecutor, and I'm the I'm
Speaker 1: the JABRONI at the scene. You was supposed to pick
Speaker 1: up the stuff and bring it, right Yeah, So you're
Speaker 1: you're your job is to actually go in and collect
Speaker 1: the evidence before anyone else can go through that area,
Speaker 1: right yeah, because as soon as you introduce other people,
Speaker 1: then you've introduced other DNA that could be left at
Speaker 1: the scene. But I've been having a I've been having
Speaker 1: a crazy time work lately, and I've been cutting corners
Speaker 1: a little and everybody knows. Nobody said anything yet because
Speaker 1: it's not a big deal yet. But here's what happens. Uh,
Speaker 1: while I'm on while I collect the evidence, let's see,
Speaker 1: I get blood samples, and I'm on the way back,
Speaker 1: I stop it cook out because my diet is as
Speaker 1: much of a train wreck as my life and I'm
Speaker 1: not and because i'm personally I shake hands with six
Speaker 1: people as I'm walking back into our building. I don't
Speaker 1: wash my hands. And I also kept the sample for
Speaker 1: some reason in the bag from cookout. Yeah, that would
Speaker 1: there there might be a chance that that was encountered
Speaker 1: some form of contamination from the scene to the point
Speaker 1: where you get to the lab and then you you
Speaker 1: run the d NA. Yeah, right, Well, clearly the suspect
Speaker 1: was a roast pig, right, Yeah, clearly suspect was a
Speaker 1: roast pig. Or even more dangerously, clearly the suspect, uh,
Speaker 1: the suspect maybe someone that already pings in our database
Speaker 1: who just got out of prison for grand theft auto
Speaker 1: and now works out of cookout. Yeah. Yeah, that's I
Speaker 1: mean that that's a you know, it's it seems like
Speaker 1: it's a convoluted example except for the fact that this
Speaker 1: is the sort of stuff that can happen r Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not. I would say it's possible, but that one
Speaker 1: is not plausible. No, no, But but the example you
Speaker 1: give does show that there has to be great care
Speaker 1: are the the people who come in to collect the
Speaker 1: evidence have to do so before there can be a
Speaker 1: lot of disturbance of the crime scene. Because the more
Speaker 1: disturbance there there is, like I said, the more chances
Speaker 1: other people will leave behind DNA skin cells or or
Speaker 1: um sweat or blood or whatever it might be. Um
Speaker 1: might be that there were other people who were involved
Speaker 1: in it who have no or you know, people who
Speaker 1: maybe the person who stumbled upon the scene left something
Speaker 1: behind without intending to like cutting a hand on a
Speaker 1: on a piece of glass or something, letting themselves into
Speaker 1: see what's happened. Yeah, even something as simple as that.
Speaker 1: So there's there's that you have to be aware of
Speaker 1: contamination there. You also have to be aware of contamination
Speaker 1: through the moment you've collected it, all the way through
Speaker 1: the testing phase. So that's where the chain of custody
Speaker 1: comes in. By the way, if you ever see people
Speaker 1: like putting stuff in plastic bags in order to preserve it,
Speaker 1: that's pretty much a fiction because play stick will will
Speaker 1: contain moisture, right anything, Any moisture that's in the bag
Speaker 1: will stay there, and moisture can can degrade DNA samples.
Speaker 1: So usually they're actually put in paper, so it's usually
Speaker 1: a paper envelope or a paper bag that's quickly labeled.
Speaker 1: And then there's this chain of custody that must be
Speaker 1: documented through the entire process until it gets to the lab,
Speaker 1: and then at the lab. Even at the lab, they
Speaker 1: have to be very careful with the equipment they're using.
Speaker 1: They have to make certain that it's completely clean. That
Speaker 1: way you don't end up cross contaminating from a previous
Speaker 1: test into your current test. That's happened a couple of times.
Speaker 1: There actually been a couple of cases. Yeah, there was
Speaker 1: a case where, uh, there was a victim of a
Speaker 1: crime and there was another crime that was committed, and
Speaker 1: the initial DNA test results of the crime that was
Speaker 1: committed came back with the victim from the other crime
Speaker 1: as a positive. And they realized that the reason why
Speaker 1: that was happening was that there were two different DNA
Speaker 1: tests that had been performed, and the victim from the
Speaker 1: first one that their DNA had not been completely cleaned
Speaker 1: out of the system before they started doing the next test,
Speaker 1: and so they were getting these false positives, and they
Speaker 1: knew it couldn't have been the victim because the victim
Speaker 1: was the victim was victimized, the victim was not capable
Speaker 1: of committing that crime. Um, so it was already like
Speaker 1: one of those things that proved that there was an
Speaker 1: issue here. And in almost every case, in fact, I'll
Speaker 1: go ahead and say the vast majority of cases, this
Speaker 1: has to do with a person either mistakenly or purposefully
Speaker 1: not following procedure or not making certain that that everything
Speaker 1: is on the up and up. Rather than the process
Speaker 1: itself being a failure, it's it's a human error, either
Speaker 1: intentional or otherwise introduced typically um and so another thing
Speaker 1: that you have to worry about is whether or not
Speaker 1: someone has purposefully introduced DNA. There have been cases where
Speaker 1: in order to try and either uh to hide one's
Speaker 1: involvement in a crime or to implicate someone else specifically
Speaker 1: in a crime, people have left behind samples of DNA
Speaker 1: in order to throw people, throw investigators off the track.
Speaker 1: Whether again, whether it is to protect yourself, Like let's
Speaker 1: say that you committed the crime, and you leave behind
Speaker 1: the DNA of you know, your your your hated cousin,
Speaker 1: so that your cousin takes the rapid you don't, or
Speaker 1: you're an investigator and you're like, well, there's this really
Speaker 1: awful guy, and we want to get him for this crime.
Speaker 1: We really like him for this crime, but we don't
Speaker 1: have the direct evidence for him. However, I do have
Speaker 1: this DNA from a separate incident. I can leave this
Speaker 1: behind the crime scene collected, and therefore we can finally
Speaker 1: get the guy. I'm pretty sure he did it anyway,
Speaker 1: you know, solid solid stick, Steve four percent sure. So
Speaker 1: that's again, this is not something that happens all the time.
Speaker 1: It's not not something that's even prevalent, but it's it's
Speaker 1: one of those things that you have to be aware of.
Speaker 1: That's why these things like the chain of custody is
Speaker 1: so important to maintain. I have a question, sure, uh,
Speaker 1: and I don't know if I'm jumping ahead here, please ask.
Speaker 1: But I was kind of foreshadowing this when we're asking
Speaker 1: about hair follicles. So the it sounds like the home
Speaker 1: run for h for DNA testing would be something, as
Speaker 1: you said, containing living cells, so blood, bodily fluid, stuff
Speaker 1: like that. But if that's a home run, the kind
Speaker 1: of stuff that people are much more likely to leave
Speaker 1: behind would be things like hair follicles or flakes of skin.
Speaker 1: You know, So, what what's the deal with that? How?
Speaker 1: How does that work? It's still the same same process
Speaker 1: in the sense that these are things that can leave
Speaker 1: behind traces of DNA like as long as as long
Speaker 1: as they For instance, let's say that you have you're
Speaker 1: at a murder scene scene and you are you are investigating.
Speaker 1: One of the things you're going to look for are
Speaker 1: traces of any skin under the victim's fingernails, because that
Speaker 1: that's a an indication that the victim fought back against
Speaker 1: his or her murderer and may in fact have samples
Speaker 1: of that skin underneath his or her fingernails, And so
Speaker 1: you can collect that and then do the same process
Speaker 1: I was talking about. You can extract the DNA from
Speaker 1: those cells and then do the same process to duplicate
Speaker 1: that DNA and then run it either against suspects DNA
Speaker 1: or or use a database. We mentioned the databases briefly
Speaker 1: a little bit about Yeah, let's do that, because there
Speaker 1: are a couple of different ones. There. There are state databases,
Speaker 1: there's a national database, and then there's the FBI's database.
Speaker 1: Uh So these are all databases that continue in the
Speaker 1: DNA information of various people who have been booked for
Speaker 1: specific types of crimes. It's not every crime. Don't worry,
Speaker 1: the FBI does not have your genetic blueprint because one
Speaker 1: time you purposely parked in a handicap spot. Although Jonathan
Speaker 1: and Nolan I do judge you for that, Yes, we
Speaker 1: think you should definitely never do that. If you don't,
Speaker 1: if you do not have a the handicap label, uh,
Speaker 1: then don't park in that spot. But now these are
Speaker 1: specifically pretty serious crimes where that's really the only way
Speaker 1: that they that that the state or federal government is
Speaker 1: allowed to to collect a DNA sample from you to
Speaker 1: use in this database. When they've got a lot of people,
Speaker 1: I've got some statistics here to yeah, please hit me. Okay,
Speaker 1: So let's let's go with the big one, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: The big one here in the States is the National
Speaker 1: DNA Index or in d I S. That's the that's
Speaker 1: the feed's that's the FBI. It contains a little under
Speaker 1: twelve million offender profiles, specifically eleven million, eight hundred nine
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty seven. It has to a little over
Speaker 1: two million R s D profiles and a little over
Speaker 1: six hundred thousand forensic profiles. That's as of June. If
Speaker 1: you visit the FBI's website, you can learn a lot
Speaker 1: about their biometric analysis, which does also contain print work.
Speaker 1: It's it's sort of a mixtape of all the stuff
Speaker 1: that they could use to investigate. And here's the thing
Speaker 1: you can do if you live in the US and
Speaker 1: you would like to feel a little bit less comfortable
Speaker 1: each day, Okay, it's there's a breakdown by state, so
Speaker 1: you can see how many offender profiles are are located
Speaker 1: in your state. Here in Georgia. In our case, it's
Speaker 1: two hundred nine thousand, nine hundred and thirty eight. Considering
Speaker 1: the population of Georgia, that is a significant number. Right,
Speaker 1: you can see the forensics profiles the arrestees. You can
Speaker 1: also see the number of investigations aided in labs participated. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the things I want to point out is
Speaker 1: that this also goes back into the drawbacks or the
Speaker 1: challenges of forensics, is that forensic labs can get really
Speaker 1: backed up with this stuff, Like the backlogs can be
Speaker 1: can be crazy because while I I you know, I
Speaker 1: mentioned that process just for duplicating the DNA, that can
Speaker 1: take a couple of hours to do that process, and
Speaker 1: then of course you've got all the cleaning of the
Speaker 1: material that has to happen in order for you to
Speaker 1: be able to use it again. That's not that doesn't
Speaker 1: even involve the actual analysis of the DNA that tends
Speaker 1: to require a forensic specialist to do this. It's not
Speaker 1: like it's all automated, although there are more and more
Speaker 1: automated systems that help, but generally speaking, it's it's sort
Speaker 1: of an augmented approach where you still have a forensic
Speaker 1: expert do the the look you know they're doing. They're
Speaker 1: looking at the DNA to look at those base pairs
Speaker 1: and actually makes certain visually that they are in fact identical.
Speaker 1: So it takes a lot of time. And meanwhile, while
Speaker 1: you're doing all this, more samples are coming in. So
Speaker 1: there's a backlog that starts to build up, and depending
Speaker 1: upon the area and the number of labs that are available,
Speaker 1: it might be a very serious backlog. And there was
Speaker 1: also a pre existing backlog because if we look at
Speaker 1: how recently this occurred, and off air we talked about this.
Speaker 1: In the course of your research, you send in some
Speaker 1: great stuff about cold cases. Yeah, so there was already
Speaker 1: a built in backlog for this technology, and they're already
Speaker 1: been cases of people who were in jail for years, decades, Yeah,
Speaker 1: who were innocent. Yeah, yeah, where the DNA evidence ended
Speaker 1: up clear daring them like it could not possibly have
Speaker 1: been that person. Um. And you know, actually, that's when
Speaker 1: I say that there are some serious restrictions in tax
Speaker 1: us about this multi person DNA approach. It's specifically so
Speaker 1: that there is every attempt to make certain that innocent
Speaker 1: people aren't incarcerated there is a huge obviously, there's a
Speaker 1: huge pressure on law enforcement to to assign guilt and
Speaker 1: uh and bring somebody in for particularly awful crimes. And
Speaker 1: there's an enormous pressure because of course, the community wants
Speaker 1: to feel safe, they want to feel that something is
Speaker 1: being done that has to be balanced against making sure
Speaker 1: you get the right person. Yeah. Yeah, because we know
Speaker 1: that we live in an age of instant gratification. Yeah,
Speaker 1: things should be right immediately and right the first time,
Speaker 1: and right now and right now. Yes, the three rights.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately, the wheels of justice. How's the old saying,
Speaker 1: go man? They grind slow but exceedingly fine, Yes, as
Speaker 1: opposed to go round and round. Yes, the wheels in
Speaker 1: the bus. I was thinking, you know, we would be here,
Speaker 1: terrible lawyers. Yeah, we would be Actually, I know I
Speaker 1: would be. I remember participating in a mock trial in
Speaker 1: school and not knowing what the heck I was doing?
Speaker 1: What was your what was your rule? I was defense
Speaker 1: and it was terrible. It was terrible. I did not
Speaker 1: want to do it. I was I was. I was
Speaker 1: bullied into it and I it was awful. I can
Speaker 1: see you doing like a judge or maybe a bailiff,
Speaker 1: who's over it, like, sit down? Yeah, no, I was.
Speaker 1: Uh my my client would have gotten the chair. It
Speaker 1: was terrible for a very minor offense too, That's how
Speaker 1: bad I was. So anyway, getting back into DNA forensics,
Speaker 1: Uh so, yeah, you mentioned cold cases, I've got one
Speaker 1: specific one I'll mention, and it's not it's one that
Speaker 1: has not been um scene to completion yet. In other words,
Speaker 1: there there hasn't been a conviction yet in this case.
Speaker 1: But it does show how how far reaching this can go.
Speaker 1: So in December, the body of a young lady named
Speaker 1: Crystal Lynn bez bes lana Wich was found along the
Speaker 1: Provo River in Utah. She was seventeen years old when
Speaker 1: she was killed, and she had been sexually assaulted and murdered. Uh,
Speaker 1: perhaps bludgeoned to death with rocks. That was what the
Speaker 1: police believed at the time. Now, the original investigator of
Speaker 1: the crime, it was a guy who became the the
Speaker 1: deputy sheriff, I believe, but Todd Bonner decided to continue
Speaker 1: investigation even long after all the leads were drying up,
Speaker 1: like they just could not find any leads. Uh, and
Speaker 1: in a lab was able to extract what's called touch
Speaker 1: d n A. It was left behind on a granite
Speaker 1: rock that the police had believed was used in killing
Speaker 1: this young lady. And the lab used a vacuum instrument
Speaker 1: to pull this touch DNA off the granite rock and
Speaker 1: then put it through this analysis process and the results
Speaker 1: ended up matching DNA from a suspect that people were
Speaker 1: interested in but had no direct connection to the crime.
Speaker 1: The suspect's name was Joseph Michael Simpson, and they got
Speaker 1: the sample DNA from a discarded cigarette butt he had
Speaker 1: tossed aside a cigarette but the cops scooped it up,
Speaker 1: they tested the DNA, they found a match. They arrested
Speaker 1: him back in Uh. He has a previous conviction for murder.
Speaker 1: He had actually been out on parole for eight months
Speaker 1: before before Brasilanta, which is death. Yeah, so he had
Speaker 1: been in jail for several years but got paroled and
Speaker 1: then uh, eight months later Brisilana, which was dead, and
Speaker 1: he's been linked to this and arrested for the crime.
Speaker 1: Now that being said, the last I checked into this case,
Speaker 1: you know, that was back in the last I checked
Speaker 1: into this case. It's still not it still hasn't been tried.
Speaker 1: There's been request for more evidence on the prosecution side,
Speaker 1: including uh, an actual DNA sample from Simpson himself to
Speaker 1: confirm that the findings are in fact accurate, so in
Speaker 1: other words, not just from the cigarette, but but from
Speaker 1: Simpson in custody. And then there's also a request to
Speaker 1: get a print sample because of a partial print that
Speaker 1: was left behind on the victim herself. So uh, this
Speaker 1: case is not one that's like cut and dry and
Speaker 1: it's definitive, but it does indicate that this approach is
Speaker 1: able to start pulling up connections that otherwise would have
Speaker 1: been unlikely or even impossible to make. And this brings
Speaker 1: us to this is just a sidebar, Okay, this brings
Speaker 1: us to a dangerous thing. And you know, of course
Speaker 1: that I who can sometimes be a cartoon of myself
Speaker 1: and am required to mention this. What do you think
Speaker 1: about the idea of blanket DNA sampling? They're taking every citizen.
Speaker 1: You know, some prominent members of the UK legal system
Speaker 1: have advocated this for all British citizens, and Kuwait is
Speaker 1: doing the same thing. Well, let me put it to
Speaker 1: you this way. Okay. There's always the argument that some
Speaker 1: people will make that if you're not doing anything wrong,
Speaker 1: then what do you have to fear? Right, Well, here's
Speaker 1: what you have to fear. I'm gonna tell you. Okay,
Speaker 1: So there have been at least a couple of companies
Speaker 1: that have shown that through a little bit of your DNA,
Speaker 1: they can do a very similar process to duplicating DNA,
Speaker 1: which means that they can synthesize your DNA, which means
Speaker 1: then that if your DNA can be synthesized, it could
Speaker 1: be cre aided and dropped somewhere. And you had never
Speaker 1: been to that place. Oh wow, So all of a
Speaker 1: sudden you get a summons for some horrendous crime in
Speaker 1: uh Iceland or something. You say, I've never been Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the weirdest thing because I've never been there. Like,
Speaker 1: but this is match to your DNA. There's a one
Speaker 1: and a billion chance that someone else did this, um
Speaker 1: and you you know that's that's a thing like, that's
Speaker 1: we're in a world where technologically it is possible to
Speaker 1: do this. Now is that likely to happen? So it's
Speaker 1: definitely like and it's in the realm of possibility but
Speaker 1: not plausibility. However, as long as it's possible, then I
Speaker 1: would argue that it is too invasive to demand from
Speaker 1: your population that everyone submit to d N A like
Speaker 1: submitting a DNA sample. Yeah. Yeah, what about let's take
Speaker 1: a step further. What about the idea that there would
Speaker 1: be what about the idea that this stuff, which is
Speaker 1: you set a blueprint in some ways. Also it's it's
Speaker 1: similar to Metadataeah okay, let's I can see where you're saying.
Speaker 1: So the ability then to build this enormous sample size
Speaker 1: let's say the entire population of the UK. I think
Speaker 1: right now they're only at maybe five of the population
Speaker 1: because you have to get you know, you have to
Speaker 1: get pinched. So if they had this enormous sample size,
Speaker 1: then they could start comparing and collating and analyzing this
Speaker 1: stuff on a larger scale such that they would be
Speaker 1: able to possibly again possibly not plausibly, uh predict um,
Speaker 1: not epigenetic trends, but but predict the likelihood of someone
Speaker 1: incurring a certain disease or something. Well, we're getting into
Speaker 1: more of a genomic sequencing at that point. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: getting into gatica. Yeah. Yeah, when you're when you're getting
Speaker 1: into genomic sequencing, it's it's much further. It's it's a
Speaker 1: much longer process because again, this is very close to
Speaker 1: when they call a genetic fingerprinting. It makes sense to
Speaker 1: call it that because you're really just looking at the
Speaker 1: physical resemblance of two strands, right, Like like two drawings,
Speaker 1: and there are two drawings of ladders, and if the
Speaker 1: two drawings of ladders are the same, then you know
Speaker 1: you've got a one and a billion chance of it
Speaker 1: not being that person. So that's a lot different than
Speaker 1: going through and identifying things like which genes do what
Speaker 1: I mean, we still don't even know, right, So in
Speaker 1: case you guys are not terribly familiar with with genetics,
Speaker 1: the genes can be pretty complicated things. Think about like
Speaker 1: a giant switchboard, right, You've got an enormous switchboard and
Speaker 1: there's like a thousand switches on little metal toggle switches,
Speaker 1: the classic updown toggle switches, right, unlabeled that you have
Speaker 1: a bank of lightbulbs in front of you, also unlabeled.
Speaker 1: You flip one switch and one light bulb comes on.
Speaker 1: You flip a set can switch. That lightbulb stays on.
Speaker 1: Three other lightbulbs come on. You turn off the first switch.
Speaker 1: Only one lightbulb goes off, and you start thinking, Okay, wait,
Speaker 1: what how is this real? Well, that's the thing about
Speaker 1: genes is that they it's not so simple as to
Speaker 1: say that this one gene is in charge of this
Speaker 1: one trait. It's it can be much more complicated, where
Speaker 1: it's a a selection of genes that some are active,
Speaker 1: some are not active. Um. So because of that, even
Speaker 1: if you've got all the DNA from an entire population,
Speaker 1: you might be able to say, well, this one person
Speaker 1: suffered from a particular inherited disease. Let's examine the DNA
Speaker 1: and then compare it to other people who have suffered
Speaker 1: from that same disease and see where the points of
Speaker 1: comparison are. But that is, I mean, it's a monumental
Speaker 1: task because you've just it's beyond taking thirteen points along
Speaker 1: a strand and comparing the them against a second sample. Right,
Speaker 1: It's it's a it's another it's almost like a a
Speaker 1: an order of magnitude greater in the amount of effort
Speaker 1: that you have to take. Yeah, that's a really good
Speaker 1: way to put it. And that that a squatches some
Speaker 1: of my apien predictions. I do have one other question,
Speaker 1: all right, So we talked about in identical twins. Right there,
Speaker 1: there is another there's another possibility where a person could
Speaker 1: get pinched with the wrong DNA. Are you going with
Speaker 1: a clone? What's your Well, there's a there's another possibility. Wait,
Speaker 1: maybe not. It's not the same as identical twins, but
Speaker 1: it throws another monkey wrench into this. Uh chimeras. Oh interesting? Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: Uh all right, Well I want to hear your thought
Speaker 1: process on this, because this is not something I specifically
Speaker 1: looked into, because chimerism is not that it's super rare. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not that it's like an episode of SPU for
Speaker 1: that time. Um, and so yeah, it's true though it
Speaker 1: sounds crazy. And you guys talked about this on one
Speaker 1: of your other shows, right yeah, and Forward Thinking we
Speaker 1: talked about chimeras, and yeah, it was one of those
Speaker 1: things where where the more you talked about it, the
Speaker 1: more the more like unsure I was that I was
Speaker 1: reflecting the reality because it seems so weird. It seems
Speaker 1: very very strange. So it's a person composed of two
Speaker 1: genetically distinct types of cells, So you might have Um,
Speaker 1: I think the first time I was discovered it was
Speaker 1: related to blood type, right, yeah, I believe so I
Speaker 1: believe you're correct, So somebody had more than one blood type,
Speaker 1: which is already so trippy to me. I just felt
Speaker 1: like to do the to do justice to this topic,
Speaker 1: we would have to mention that that is one of
Speaker 1: those very very exceedingly rare cases where DNA testing is
Speaker 1: not a and a silver bullet. Yeah, so you could
Speaker 1: in a bizarre like this is almost like a science
Speaker 1: fiction novel approach. Yeah, like to the point where you're like,
Speaker 1: for this to work, so many things would have to
Speaker 1: fall in line perfectly that you might as well say
Speaker 1: it's impossible. But imagine that you have a scenario in
Speaker 1: which you have a chimera and DNA is left behind
Speaker 1: at the scene, but it's only one type of DNA somehow,
Speaker 1: and then the sample they get is somehow just the
Speaker 1: other type of DNA, thus exonerating your your perpetrator. Um. Practically, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's no, that's impossible. The only way that that could
Speaker 1: really affect it is if there were somehow a chimera
Speaker 1: on the involved in this scene and it became a
Speaker 1: contaminating factor, because then they would say, well, aside from
Speaker 1: the victim, it seemed it appears that there were three
Speaker 1: people here. Yes, that that would certainly, that would certainly
Speaker 1: cause problems, right, that would certainly cause confusion in the
Speaker 1: whole process. But it's also so rare for someone to
Speaker 1: be a criminal. I think it's already yeah, begging, beggaring
Speaker 1: belief right right, like like like you you already have.
Speaker 1: Like if you think of the population of people who
Speaker 1: have some form of of that, you know, the chimera
Speaker 1: DNA thing going on, and then within that population, what
Speaker 1: percentage of those people are our master criminal? Yeah, are
Speaker 1: are committing these sort of crimes. It's got to be
Speaker 1: pretty pretty small number. I'm sorry, man, I'm sorry. I
Speaker 1: just had to bring it up. No, No, it's fine, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's you know, but what if So one other
Speaker 1: thing I wanted to talk about. I almost forgot about this.
Speaker 1: So did you read up about the um the technology
Speaker 1: of reconstructing a person's face using just DNA material, and you,
Speaker 1: like you, you had sent that to me off there,
Speaker 1: and I was initially skeptical when I was looking at it.
Speaker 1: So it's it's called Snapshot, and it's from a company
Speaker 1: called Parabond and Snapshot what it's what it attempts to
Speaker 1: do is take the information from a DNA sample and
Speaker 1: create a essentially a police sketch of a person, a
Speaker 1: three dimensional uh representation of what a person might look like. Now,
Speaker 1: when I say might look like, you've got to be
Speaker 1: super generous with this because if all you have is
Speaker 1: the DNA, if that's all you have, like, you don't
Speaker 1: have any any knowledge of what the person's face looks like, otherwise,
Speaker 1: how old they are, they're high, or anything. What you'll
Speaker 1: be able to do is probably approximate their skin tone,
Speaker 1: their ethnicity, their gender at least their biological gender, the
Speaker 1: their hair color, their eye color, that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: whether or not they have freckles, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But beyond that, you're not gonna be able to tell
Speaker 1: their age. You're not gonna tell their high or weight,
Speaker 1: So you can't you can't tell how heavy said or
Speaker 1: thin they may be. How you don't know how much
Speaker 1: how much like what sort of wrinkles would you need
Speaker 1: to add in if they're you know, if they're older. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't know any of that, uh, And you wouldn't
Speaker 1: know their skull shape, Like you wouldn't know their face shape,
Speaker 1: right like the DNA wouldn't. So so what you can
Speaker 1: do is create like a very generic looking person but
Speaker 1: with those traits. So it may not be so useful
Speaker 1: in the sense of using this as a means of
Speaker 1: trying to track down the suspect. There may not come
Speaker 1: in handy. Where it might help is if you have
Speaker 1: unidentified remains. So let's say you've found the remains of
Speaker 1: a person and you're able to extract some DNA information,
Speaker 1: but you're not able to ascertain the identity of this
Speaker 1: this person. Uh, this would allow you once if you
Speaker 1: have the person's like skull, like if if that's part
Speaker 1: of the remains that are left behind, you then know
Speaker 1: at least the dimensions of the skull. And they're also
Speaker 1: other technologies that allow people to approximate what a person's
Speaker 1: face looks like based upon their skull shape. So combining
Speaker 1: those two where you you say, all right, this is
Speaker 1: what they're they probably look like based upon the the
Speaker 1: shape of their skull. Plus here are their characteristics that
Speaker 1: they had according to their DNA, then you might be
Speaker 1: able to create a few different looks for that particular
Speaker 1: individual that might help in identifying who that person was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that that I think is the most tremendous possibility
Speaker 1: of this technology, absolutely right, because we're seeing already that
Speaker 1: the study of DNA and and the application of this
Speaker 1: sort of science has fundamentally changed the nature of crime
Speaker 1: and investigation. Yeah, to the point where again it can
Speaker 1: affect juries, uh and there, and their perception of a
Speaker 1: case to the so so it can be a frustration,
Speaker 1: right like if you have if you have other lines
Speaker 1: of evidence that clearly indicate that the person accused of
Speaker 1: the crime has committed it, but because there was there
Speaker 1: was no DNA evidence, or maybe there was some problem
Speaker 1: with the chain of custody, that can create enough doubt
Speaker 1: in a jury's mind. A jury that's been conditioned to
Speaker 1: believe the DNA evidence is the end all be all
Speaker 1: that it can it can cause problems in that case.
Speaker 1: This is this is the thing is that human beings
Speaker 1: were messy, right Like we're not just messy and that
Speaker 1: we leave DNA behind. We're messy in the way we
Speaker 1: try to process information. And so sometimes you know, when
Speaker 1: you go through an entire process of when a crime
Speaker 1: is committed, to figuring out who potentially did it, to
Speaker 1: apprehending that person, to then trying that person for the crime,
Speaker 1: to then deciding whether or not they're guilty. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's so much stuff going on through that whole process that,
Speaker 1: you know, honestly, I think we should have a whole
Speaker 1: podcast devoted to it, you know what. I think that's
Speaker 1: a great idea. Yeah, I mean I'm not talking about
Speaker 1: an episode. I mean we gotta have a podcast, like
Speaker 1: an entire show, a show specifically dedicated to this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. Yeah, you know, I completely agree, and we'd
Speaker 1: like to hear from you if you agree as well.
Speaker 1: You if you like this stuff, you can check out Oh, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: I want to put you on the spot here because
Speaker 1: as he puts you on the show, would you like
Speaker 1: to come, uh look at some stuff like this with
Speaker 1: Matt Nolan I over on stuff they don't want you
Speaker 1: to know. Yeah? Absolutely, all right, certainly. Okay, Well you
Speaker 1: agreed on air, so that counts. That's like a pinky problem. Here.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing is that if you were to pull
Speaker 1: the how Stuff Works podcasters and ask them, would you
Speaker 1: be interested in occasionally hosting a show about crime? I
Speaker 1: think an overwhelming majority of us would say yes. Like,
Speaker 1: here's the thing. It's the quiet ones you gotta worry
Speaker 1: about right, Scott, Benjamin crazy interested in this stuff, so interested. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, he'll be coming up on your show a
Speaker 1: little bit later, right, Yeah, I'm gonna have him on
Speaker 1: and we're going to talk about Volkswagen and the scandal
Speaker 1: about Volkswagen's method of cheating emissions testing. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: we're gonna go into great detail. That's gonna be in
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks, so you guys keep an ear
Speaker 1: out for that. But uh so it'll be crime, It'll
Speaker 1: just be corporate crime. So Ben, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for coming on the show. Obviously, guys, you gotta check
Speaker 1: out stuff they don't want you to know. Check out
Speaker 1: car stuff, check out all the videos that then works
Speaker 1: on brain stuff, what the stuff. These are great shows,
Speaker 1: and uh you know, if you are not familiar with them,
Speaker 1: check them out because if you like this, you're gonna
Speaker 1: love those. That's that's a guarantee. You're too kind of Johnathan.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it immensely. I'm glad I grew a little
Speaker 1: bit of face scruff so you can't see me blushing.
Speaker 1: I hope that if you are checking out and enjoying
Speaker 1: tech stuff, that you are also checking out some of
Speaker 1: Jonathan's other work. We we work together on a number
Speaker 1: of weird not just to get rich quick schemes, but
Speaker 1: those two and our hair brained inventions. Yeah, our boy.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you. If we can boil an egg,
Speaker 1: a six minute egg two and a half minutes, it's good.
Speaker 1: We've gotten Yeah, it's still poisonous, but yeah, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't eat it, but you can boil it. So
Speaker 1: you can also check out I really um, I personally
Speaker 1: am a fan of forward thinking, both the video and
Speaker 1: the audio series. Uh and it is worth your time
Speaker 1: if you ever want to laugh your keystro off. You
Speaker 1: can also check out some of Jonathan's work on brain
Speaker 1: stuff and what the Stuff. Yeah, you can't even watch
Speaker 1: us be twins? Oh man, you might. You might not
Speaker 1: want to, you know what. I still like it. It
Speaker 1: is very cheesy. I mean, I'm you know, if you
Speaker 1: find cheesy humor to be totally cringeworthy, then you probably
Speaker 1: don't want to see it. But if you want to
Speaker 1: hear me make like the worst James Bond villain style
Speaker 1: accident possible. Oh I love it all right, guys. If
Speaker 1: you have any other suggestions or tech stuff, whether it
Speaker 1: is a topic or a guest host or someone I
Speaker 1: should interview, anything like that, or you just have comments
Speaker 1: about this particular episode, send them to me. My email
Speaker 1: address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: or drop me a line on Facebook, Twitter or Tumbler.
Speaker 1: I use tech stuff H s W at All three
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon for more
Speaker 1: on this and happens of other topics. Because it has
Speaker 1: to have works dot com