Essays & Comment

ARRESTING EVIDENCE
DNA fingerprinting, still hotly contested, can be dead-on accurate.
But does a national DNA database threaten privacy more than it does criminals?

BY RICHARD DAWKINS

AM TOLD, ON GOOD AUTHORITY, THAT DEFENSE well versed in genetics, they must feel, might use DNA evi-

I attorneys in the United States sometimes object

to jury candidates on the grounds that they are
well educated in science, or have some knowl-
edge ofgenetics. What can this mean? Are geneticists known
to harbor deep-seated prejudices against certain social
dence to rule against their clients.
I raise the issue not to cast stones at lawyers, though they
make fine targets, but to highlight a problem that is both
new and quite old. As science grows increasingly techni-
cal and specialized, more and more juries are being asked
groups? Are mathematicians particularly likely to be of the to understand evidence that lawyers themselves may not
"flog 'em and string 'em up" persuasion? Of course not. fully comprehend. At the same time, all the physical evi-
The lawyers' objections are more ignobly based. dence presented in a court-whether from a suspect line-
As any follower of
the 0.). Simpson trial
knows, genetic research
is increasingly making
its way into the crim-
inal courts, and it is
extremely powerful.
(The odious Monica
Lewinsky, in the hands
of the even more odi-
ous Kenneth Starr, has
brought DNA even fur-
ther into public con-
sciousness. And as this
article goes to press, the
FBI has announced it
has assembled a nation-
al DNA database ofsam-
ples obtained from peo-
ple convicted ofcertain
serious crimes .) If your
client is innocent, DNA Patrick Tosani, Portrait #7, 1985 Portrait #9, 1985
fingerprinting may well
provide a knockdown way to establish that innocence. If up, a polygraph test or a DNA sample-relies on the the-
the man is guilty, DNA evidence has a good chance of ory of probability, and it is that venerable theory, as much
establishing his guilt in cases where no other evidence can. as the specifics of DNA fingerprinting, that is often poorly
As it happens, DNA fingerprinting is quite hard to under- understood. It is not just scientists who have been mistrusted
stand at the best of times-let alone under the pressure of or ignored by lawyers, but scientific reasoning itself
trying a criminal case-and there are some controversial
aspects ofit that are even harder to grasp. You would think, s A TOOL FOR IDENTIFYING PEOPLE, DNA IS
then, that honest lawyers, wishing to seejustice done, would
welcome jurors capable of following the arguments. But
lawyers being lawyers-that is, fixated on winning their
A unmatched. A gene is a body's version of a
bar code: the DNA in each of my cells (give
or take a minuscule minority of mistakes, and not includ-
cases at any cost-they often do the opposite. Jurors too ing red blood cells, which have lost all their DNA, or repro-

20 THE SCIENCES' Novemb er /De cember 1998

ductive cells, which carry a random half of my genes) is
identical to the DNA in all my other cells. It differs from
the DNA in every one ofyour cells-and not in some vague,
impressionistic way , either, the way our faces or signatures
differ. It differs at a prec ise number ofpositions dotted along
the billions of DNA base pairs that we both possess.
So what are the snags?How can lawyers bamboozle juries
into misinterpreting or ignoring such important evidence?
Why have some courts been moved to the despairing
extreme of ruling it out altogether? There are three major
classes of potential problems: one simple, one sophist icat-
ed and one silly. I'll come to the silly problem and the
more sophisticated difficulties later, but first, as with any
kind of evidence, there is the simple-and important-
possibility ofhuman error. Or rather, possibilities, for there
are plenty ofopportunities for mistakes and even sabotage .
A tube of blood can be mislabeled, either by accident or
malice. A sample from the scene of a crime can be con-
taminated by skin cells suspended in the sweat from a lab-
oratory technician or a police officer.
The danger ofcontamination isparticularly great in those
cases for which an ingenious technique known as PCR
(polymerase chain reaction) is used to create millions of
cop ies ofa given sequence of DNA. The advantage of the
technique is obvious: a smear of sweat on a gun butt
includes too little DNA to be analyzed, but PCR can take
Portrait #5, 1985
that bit of sweat and multiply it into a usable-analyz-
able-sample. Unfortunately, PCR also amplifies any con-
taminants along with the true signal. Stray scraps of DNA
from a technician's sw eat are amplified as effectively as the
specimen from the scene ofthe crime, with obvious poten-
tial for injustice.
Although PCR is used quite frequently in DNA fin-
gerprinting, the danger of contamination is minimal
when proper precautions are taken. Moreover, when mis-
takes are made they almost always work in the defendant's
favor, either by muddling the data or by implicating oth-
ers who are obviously innocent and have been at the crime
scene only for official purposes. In any case, human error
is not peculiar to DNA evidence. All kinds of evidence
are vulnerable to bungling and sabotage, and all must be
handled with scrupulous care . Courts of law are already
accustomed to the need to take precautions, and yet mis-
takes still happen, sometimes tragically. DNA evidence is
not immune to human bungling, but neither is it partic-
ularly vulnerable-PCR aside. If all DNA evidence were
to be thrown out because ofoccasional mistakes, the prece-
dent should rule out most other kinds of evidence, too.
T
HE MORE SOPHISTICATED DIFFICULTIES THAT
bedevil DNA evidence take longer to explain .
They, too, have their antecedents in more
conventional kinds of evidence, though that point often
does not seem to be understood by the courts. For any
kind of identification evidence, there are two types of
error, corresponding to the two possible types oferror in
any statistical evidence: a false positive and a false nega-
tive. A guilty suspect may not be recognized, and thus
escape-false negative. Or an innocent suspect may be
convicted because he happens, by ill luck, to resemble the
genuinely guilty party-false positive. (Most people would
see the latter as the more dangerous error.)
In the case of DNA evidence, the danger of a false-pos-
itive conviction is the-
oretically very low in-
deed. The police have
a blood sample from a
suspect, and they have
a specimen from the
scene of the crime . If
the entire set ofgenes in
both sampleswere writ-
ten down, the proba-
bility of a false convic-
tion would be one in
billions and billions. It
is theoretically possible,
too, that the sexual lot-
tery could throw up
the same genetic se-
quence twice: an "iden-
tical twin" of Sir Isaac
Newton could be born
tomorrow. But the
Portrait #2 , 1984 number of people that
would have to be born
to make that event at all likely would be larger than the
number of atoms in the universe.
Unfortunately, it is not practical to work out a person's
complete genetic sequence for the sake ofsolving a crime.
In practice, forensic detectives concentrate on smallsections
ofthe genome, searching for sequences known as "tandem
repeats" that are easy to measure and known to vary in the
population. Tandem repeats are among the "junk" DNA
sequences that make up most of every organism's ge-
nome. They can be repeats of a single base placed one be-
hind the other (asin a tandem bicycle) or alternations ofthe
No vem ber/ D ecem ber 1998 • T H E SCIE N CE S 2\
same two bases, or repeats of a more complicated pattern.
Different people have different numbers of tandem
repeats in particular places. I might have 147 repeats of a
particular piece ofnonsense, whereas you have eighty-four
repeats of the same piece of nonsense in the correspond-
ing positions on your genome. In another region, I might
have twenty-four repeats to your thirty-eight. Each per-
son has a characteristic genetic fingerprint made up of a
set of numbers; each number represents how many times
a particular piece of nonsense is repeated.
The beauty of tandem repeat numbers is that they are
easy to measure. You begin by snipping a stretch of DNA
'-
Willie Cole, Domestic I.D., IV, 1992
into fragments, using restriction enzymes that home in on
a certain base sequence and break its molecular bonds. Not
all of the fragments will contain tandem repeats, but some
ofthem will, and the length ofeach fragment will be large-
ly determined by the number of tandem repeats in it. You
don't have to get embroiled in sequencing individual bases;
you can simply cut and measure.
EPEN DI N G ON HOW MANY PIECES OF THE
D genome you search, DNA fingerprinting can
be made more or less accurate. Even at a sin-
gle locus the odds against a random match may be pretty
good: between one in a hundred and one in 1,000 or more.
2 2 THE SCIEN CES· N o ve mb er t Decemb er 199 8
To be certain, however, forensic DNA fingerprinters usu-
ally check half a dozen different locations. When they do,
the chances of error become quite low indeed. But just
how low is important; it may determine the fate of a per-
son's life or liberty.
Return for a moment to the distinction between false
positives and false negatives. DNA evidence can clear an
innocent suspect, or it can incriminate a guilty one . Sup-
pose semen is recovered from the vagina of a rape victim.
Circumstantial evidence leads the police to arrest suspect
A. Suspect A gives a blood sample, and it is compared with
the semen sample, using a DNA test to look at one tan-
dem-repeat locus. If the two are
different, suspect A is in the clear.
But what if suspect A's blood
matches the semen sample at that
locus?Suppose they both share the
same bar code pattern-call it pat-
tern P. That finding is compatible
with the suspect's guilt, but it
doesn't prove it. He could just
happen to share pattern P with the
real rapist. The police must now
look at some more loci. If the sam-
ples still match , what are the odds
that such a match is merely coin-
cidental? Here is where investiga-
tors must start thinking statistical-
TH E DD OF MI TAKE
ly. In theory, by taking blood from
a sample ofmen in the population
at large, they should be able to cal-
culate the likelihood that any two
men will have identical tandem
repeats at each relevant locus. But
from which section of the popu-
lation do they draw their sample?
Ifa woman told the police that
the rapist had a beard, and the
police arrested a bearded suspect,
it would be unjust for the police
to stand him in a lineup with
nineteen clean-shaven men . By
the same token, a DNA lineup can
be unfairly stacked against the suspect. Suppose that, in the
world at large, only one in a million men has pattern P.
Does that mean that there is a million-to-one chance against
suspect A being wrongfully convicted? No. Suspect A may
belong to a minority whose ancestors immigrated from a
particular part of the world. Local populations often share
genetic peculiarities, for the simple reason that they are
descended from the same ancestors.
Between two million and five million South African
Dutch, or Afrikaners, are descended from a single shipload
of immigrants who arrived from the Netherlands in 1652.
Of those descendants, about 8,000 (or about one in 300)
have the blood condition porphyria variegata, which ismuch
 rarer in the rest ofthe world. They apparently have it because
they are descended from one particular couple on the ship,
Gerrit Jansz and Ariaantje Jacobs. Other populations often
have locally high frequencies of other particular genes, for
the same kind of reason. If, to return to my hypothetical
court case, suspect A and the real criminal both belong to
the same minority group, the likelihood of chance confu -
sion could be dramatically greater than you would think if
you based your estimates on the population at large. The
point is that the frequency of pattern P in people at large is
no longer relevant. The police need to know the frequen-
cy of pattern P in the group to which the suspect belongs.
The need to consider baseline frequencies is nothing new,
and it applies to things as well as people. I once served on
a jury in the Oxford Crown Court for a case in which a
man was accused ofstealing three coins from a rival numis-
matist. The accused had been caught with three coins in
his possession, which matched the ones that had been lost.
Counsel for the prosecution was eloquent:
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, are we really supposed to
believe that three coins, of exactly the same type as the three
missing coins, would just happen to be present in the collec-
tion of a rival collector? I put it to you that such a coincidence
is too much to stomach.
Jury members are not permitted to cross-examine. That
was the duty of counsel for the defense, and he, though
doubtless learned in the law and also eloquent, had no more
identity from eyewitness testimony are far greater than from D
clue about probability theory than the prosecutor. I wish
he had said something like this:
M'Lud, we don't know whether the coincidence is too much to
stomach, because m'leamed friend has not presented us with any
evidenceat all asto the rarityor commonnessof these three coins
among the population of numismatists in England. If these coins
are so rare that only one in a hundred collectors in the country
has anyone of them, the prosecution has a good case, since the
defendant was caught with three of them. If, on the other hand,
these coins are as common as dirt, there is not enough evidence
to convict. (To push my point to the extreme: three coins that I
have in my pocket today, all current legal tender, are very prob-
ably the same as three coins in Your Lordship's pocket.)
The equivalent point can be and is made about DNA
evidence. Fortunately, provided enough genetic loci are
examined, the chances of a misidentification, even among
members ofminority groups, even among family members
(except identical twins), are much smaller than they are
with any other method of identification, including eye-
witness evidence.
E
XACTL Y HOW SMALL THE RESIDUAL POSSIBILI-
ty of error is may still be open to dispute. And
that is where I come to the third category of
objection to DNA evidence: the just plain silly. Lawyers
are accustomed to pouncing when expert witnesses seem
to disagree. Imagine that two geneticists are summoned to
the stand and asked to estimate the probability ofa misiden-
tification with DNA evidence. The first expert says a
million to one against. The second says 100,000 to one.
Pounce. "Aha! Aha! The experts disagree! Ladiesand gen-
tlemen of the jury, what confidence can we place in a sci-
entific method if the experts themselves can't get within a
factor of ten of one another? Obviously, the only thing to
do is throw all the evidence out, lock, stock and barrel."
But in those cases, although geneticists may be inclined
to give different weightings to imponderables such as the
racial subgroup effect, any disagreement between them is
only about whether the odds against a wrongful identifi-
cation are hyper-mega-astronomical or just plain astro-
nomical. The odds cannot usually be less than thousands
to one, and they may well be up in the billions. Even accord-
ing to the most conservative estimate , the odds against
wrongful identification with DNA are hugely greater than
they are in an ordinary identity parade. Imagine the judge's
response to a defense attorney who protested: "M'Lud, an
identity parade of only twenty men is grossly unfair to my
client. I demand a lineup of at least a million men!"
A few years ago, after reporting that the DNA evidence
had been thrown out in a case tried at London's Central
Criminal Court, the Old Bailey, the newspaper The Inde-
pendent predicted a flood ofappeals on other cases. The idea
was that everyone then languishing in jail as a result of
DNA identification evidence would now be able to appeal,
citing the precedent. But the flood could have been even
greater than The Independent imagined. If this exclusion of
A evidence.
DNA evidence was really a serious precedent for anything,
it would have cast doubt on all cases in which the odds
against a chance mistake were less than a million to one .
If a witness says she "saw" somebody and has identified
him in a lineup, lawyers and juries are satisfied. But the
odds ofmistaken identity, when the eye is involved, are far
greater than the odds of misidentification by DNA finger-
printing. Ifone took the precedent seriously, it would mean
that every convicted criminal in the country would have
excellent cause to appeal on grounds of mistaken identity.
Even a suspect who was seen by dozens of witnesses with
a smoking gun in his hand could rightly argue that the odds
of injustice were less than a million to one.
HE POWER OF DNA FINGERPRINTING IS AN
T aspect of the general power of science that
makes some people fear it. It is important not
to exacerbate those fears by claiming too much or trying
to move too fast. But the question ofa national DNA data-
base is starting to preoccupy most nations in different ways,
as the recent FBI announcement has made strikingly clear.
In theory, it would be possible to keep a national data-
base ofDNA sequences from every man, woman and child
in the country. Then, whenever a sample ofblood, semen,
saliva, skin or hair was found at the scene of a crime, the
police could simply search the database for suspects.
That very suggestion elicits howls of protest: It would
be an infringement of individual liberty. It is the thin end
N ov em be r / D ecember 19 98 • THE SCIEN CES 23
of a wedge, a giant step toward a police state. I have always forecast the exact date ofa person's death. As the astronomer
been a little puzzled about why people automatically react Sir Arthur Eddington said: "Human life is proverbially
so strongly against such suggestions. If! examine the mat- uncertain; few things are more certain than the solvency
ter dispassionately, I think that, on balance, I come out of a life-insurance company." We all pay our premiums.
against it. But it is not something to condemn out of hand. Those ofus who die later than expected subsidize (the heirs
Ifit could somehow be guaranteed that a DNA database of) those who die earlier than expected. Insurance com-
would be used only for catching criminals, it is hard to see panies already make statistical guesses that partly subvert
why any noncriminal would object to it. Plenty ofactivists the system by enabling them to charge high-risk clients larg-
for civil liberties will still object in principle. But I gen- er premiums. They send a doctor to listen to your heart,
uinely don't understand why, unless they want to protect take your blood pressure and investigate your smoking and
the rights of criminals to per- drinking habits. If actuaries
form crimes without detection. IF ACTUARIES COULD GET knew exactly when everyone
I also see no good reason against was going to die, life insurance
a national database of conven- their hands on a national DNA would become impossible. In
tional, ink-pad fingerprints database, life insurance could principle, a national DNA data-
(except the practical one that, base, ifactuaries could get their
unlike with DNA, it is hard to become virtu ally impossible. hands on it, might lead society
do an automatic computer closer to that unfortunate out-
search for conventional finger- come. In the extreme case, the
prints). Crime is a serious prob- only kind of death risk that
lem that diminishes the quality of life for everyone except could be insured against would be pure accident.
the criminals (and perhaps even for them: presumably there Similarly,people who screenjob or schoolapplicants could
is nothing to stop a burglar's house from being burgled). If use DNA information in ways that many people might fmd
a national DNA database would substantially help the police undesirable. Some employers already rely on methods such
catch criminals, the objections had better be good ones to as graphology (the analysis of handwriting), supposedly to
outweigh the benefits. assess character or aptitude. And unlike the resultsofgraphol-
Here is an important caution, though: It is one thing to ogy, DNA information might be genuinely useful for judg-
use DNA evidence, or mass-screening identification evi- ing abilities. Still, I would be one of many who would be
dence ofany kind, to corroborate a suspicion that the police disturbed ifselection panels made use of DNA information, .
have already reached on other grounds. It is quite anoth- or at least if they did so secretly.
er matter to use it to arrest anyone in the country who
matches the sample. If there is a certain low probability of U T WHAT IF SUCH A DATABASE FELL INTO THE
coincidental resemblance between, say, a semen sample and
the blood of an innocent person, the probability that the
same person will also be falsely suspected on independent
B hands of a Hitler? critics inevitably ask. On the
surface, it is not clear how an evil government
would benefit from a databaseoftrue information about peo-
grounds is obviously far lower. ple. Evil governments are so adept at using false informa-
If a sample from the scene of a crime in Edinburgh hap- tion, one might say, why should they bother to abuse the
pens to match my DNA, should the police be allowed to truth? Regimes bent on genocide, however, are special ca-
hammer on my door in Oxford and arrest me on no other ses.Although it is not true that you can recognize aJew from
evidence? I think not, but it is worth remarking that the his DNA, particular genes exist that are characteristic ofpeo-
police already do something equivalent with facial features, ple whose ancestors come from certain regions of, say, cen-
when they release a drawing ofa suspect, or a snapshot tak- tral Europe, and there are statisticalcorrelations between the
en by a witness, to national newspapers and invite people possession of certain genes and beingJewish. It seems unde-
from all over the country to call ifthey "recognize" the face. niable that, if Hitler had had a national DNA database at his
disposal, he would have found terrible ways to abuse it.
ETT IN G CRIME ASIDE, THERE IS A REAL DANGER Are there ways to safeguard society from those potential

S that the information in the national DNA data-

base will fall into the wrong hands. For exam-
ple, a substantial number of men wrongly believe them-
selves to be the biological fathers oftheir children. Anyone
with access to the national DNA database might discover
the truth, which could lead to huge emotional distress, mar-
ital breakdown, nervous breakdown, blackmail or worse.
There may be some who think the truth should always out,
however painful. But I think a good case could be made
that the sum total of human happiness would not be
enhanced by a sudden outburst of revelations about every-
body's true paternity.
Then there are the medical and insurance issues. The
entire life insurance business depends on the inability to
ills, while still deploying a DNA database to catch crimi-
nals? I'm not sure. I think it could be difficult. You could
protect honest citizens against insurance companies and
employers by restricting the national database to noncod-
ing regions of the genome. The database would refer only
to tandem repeat areas ofthe genome, not genes that actu-
ally do anything. That would prevent actuaries from work-
ing out life expectancies and talent scouts from second-
guessing abilities. But it would do nothing to protect peo-
ple from discovering (or having blackmailers discover) truths
about paternity that they would prefer not to know. Quite
the contrary. When a skeleton exhumed in South Ameri-
ca was proved to belong to Josef Mengele, the Nazi war
criminal known as the "Angel of Death," the identifica-

24 THE SCIENCES· November/December 1998

tion was based entirely on tandem repeat DNA from his
bones and from the blood of his still-living son.
I have no easy reply to that objection except to say that,
as DNA testing becomes easier, it will increasingly be pos-
sible to discover paternity in any case, without recourse to
a national database. A man who suspects that his child is
not really his can already take the child's blood and have it
compared with his own.
A
T HEART, OF COURSE, SUCH QUESTIONS ARE
ethical ones, hence fraught with doubt, emo-
tion and uneasy value judgments. And yet to
answer them at all well-to truly do them justice--we first
have to weigh their statistical underpinnings dispassionate-
ly, to test their premises in the cold light oflogic. Unfortu-
nately, societies rarely do so. Scientists are often called as
expert witnesses on the technicalities ofmetal fatigue, on the
infectivity ofmad cow disease and on countless other factu-
al matters. But then, having delivered their expertise , they
are dismissed so that those charged with the serious business
ofactually making the decisions can get on with it. The impli-
cation is that scientists are good at discovering detailed facts
Lois Guarino, ,Identity (from The Origin of Carla series), 1986
but others--often lawyers or judges-are better qualified to
integrate them and recommend what needs to be done.
On the contrary, I think, a good case can be made that
scientific ways of thinking are valuable , not just for assem-
bling the detailed facts but for reaching the final verdict.
When there has been an airplane crash, say, or a disastrous
riot at a sporting event, a scientist might be better quali-
fied than ajudge to chair the inquiry, not because of what
scientists know, but because of the methods they use to
find things out and make decisions . The case of DNA fin-
gerprinting suggests that lawyers would be better lawyers,
judges better judges, politicians better politicians and citi-
zens better citizens if the y knew more science and , more
to the point, if they reasoned more like scientists. •
RICHARD DA WKINS is the Charles Simonyi prcfessor for public
understanding ifscience at the University if Oxford, and the author
of THE SELFISH GENE, THE BLIND WATCHMAKER and CLIMB-
ING MOUNT IMPROBABLE. This article is adaptedfrom his book,
UNWEAVING THE RAINBOW: SCIENCE, DELUSION , AND THE
ApPETITE FOR WONDER, published in November by Houghton
Milflin Company. Copyright © 1998 by Richard Dawkins.
Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
N ovem ber /De cem ber 1998 • THE SCIENCE S 25