Slashdot Mirror
Cotton Swabs are the Prime Suspect In 8-Year Phantom Chase
matt4077 writes "For eight years, several hundred police officers across multiple European countries have been chasing a phantom woman whose DNA had been found in almost 20 crimes (including two murders) across central Europe. It now turns out that contaminated cotton swabs might be responsible for this highly unusual investigation. After being puzzled by the apparent randomness of the crimes, investigators noticed that all cotton swabs had been sourced from the same company. They also noted that the DNA was never found in crimes in Bavaria, a German state located at the center of the crimes' locations. It turns out that Bavaria buys its swabs from a different supplier."
Aliens did it?
æeee!
Is it really too much to ask for a SERVER at the other end of that hyperlink?
nyud.net doesn't seem to have it cached, neither does Google. And MirrorDot is no help at all:
Are there any newer slashdot caching tools I don't know about? Specifically one that has this article?
It reminds me of early MOSFET technology. No one could get MOSFET's to work on the same level of BJT's because there was horrible leakage in the gate. After several years it became apparent that the gate oxide was contaminated by sodium ions that carried current through the gate.
(Disclamer: This story was relayed to me by one of my professors. I'm not sure how accurate it is.)
The police actively don't hire people that are too smart. Which scares the shit out of me.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I don't have to explain my DNA being at the crime scene, I have to explain DNA that matched mine being at the lab.
You took a sample of my DNA. You took it to the lab. Please prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you didn't screw up and contaminate a sample somewhere with my DNA.
Furthermore, spurious DNA matches are not as improbable as cops and prosecutors like to suggest.
DNA is lousy forensic evidence, and should be used only for exoneration.
And the scary thing is that other forensic "science" is even worse.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Police labs are incredibly sloppy. You have to either have negative controls or some sort of validation or acceptance testing on your chemicals and supplies. They have all of these chain-of-custody rituals, but then they use supplies from Wal-Mart.
In the Jayden Leskie case the lab which searched for DNA on the victims body detected the DNA of an unrelated rape victim. Samples from the owner of the DNA had been processed by the same lab earlier in the same day.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
The police actively don't hire people that are too smart. Which scares the shit out of me.
Intellectual outliers destabilize control structures.
Being predictable to your teammates/backup under all circumstances is an essential part of performing a life and death job - whether performing undersea construction or policing the 'projects.'
Having a tendency to come up with bright ideas under pressure is simply a liability in the world of street level law enforcement.
Judge Dorsey ruled that Mr. Jordan was not denied equal protection because the city of New London applied the same standard to everyone: anyone who scored too high was rejected.
Because this statement makes just as much sense:
Judge Dorsey ruled that Mr. Jordan was not denied equal protection because the city of New London applied the same standard to everyone: anyone who was foreign was rejected.
That judge needs a new job fast.