The Evaluation of Forensic DNA Evidence*

Footnotes

• ↵ * This article is an excerpt from the Executive Summary of the report “The Evaluation of Forensic DNA Evidence”, Committee on DNA Forensic Science: An Update. National Research Council, ISBN 0-309-05395-1, 1996. U.S. $37.95. To order, contact National Academy Press at 1-800-624-6242 or 202-334-3313; 2101 Constitution Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20418; or http://www.nap.edu.

• Abbreviations and technical terms are defined in the glossary. The underlying concepts are explained in the overview and in appropriate chapters in the body of the report.

• ↵ † The 2p rule involves replacing the quantity p² for a single-banded VNTR locus with the much larger quantity 2p in the product rule. This substitution accounts for cases in which one VNTR band from a heterozygote is not detected, and the person is mistakenly classified as a homozygote. The substitution also ensures that the estimate of the profile frequency will be larger than an estimate from a more precise formula that accounts for the population structure explicitly. The technology for PCR-based systems however, does not have these problems, and the 2p rule is inappropriate for these systems. Therefore, Recommendation 4.1 calls for using p² + p(1 − p) (rather than 2p) in place of p² for such systems.

• ↵ ‡ Member, National Academy of Sciences.

• ↵ § Member, Institute of Medicine.