Tuesday 24 November 2015

False conclusions

Having done her best to confuse people by inserting uninformed comment by an anonymous forum poster in an article quoting an expert, HideHalfwit now comes out with this:

This thread was about John Lowe's report indicating that there was a match to Madeleine and it was possible that she could have been in the car.

With that established there are still many questions surrounding the DNA and dog alerts so I would like to throw this into the mix...
Oh yes? Says who - you? I think not. We'll be retracing your footsteps to the beginning of the thread shortly, but let's get a couple of things clear first

* John Lowe does NOT indicate that ''it was possible Madeleine had been in the car'' Nor does he indicate that ''there was a match to Madeleine''

Instead, he concluded that the result was 'too complex for meaningful interpretation/inclusion.'

*He does not conclude that there was a match to Madeleine - he posed that as a question

He makes no conclusion as to her presence or absence from the car.

So why are you misrepresenting these results?

ALL of the components behind the sofa matched the corresponding components in the DNA profile of Maddie


Are we to presume that the blood found behind the sofa WAS CONFIRMED to be Madeleine's?

No.
That would involve making two false assumptions, firstly that the sample found was blood, which was not determined, and secondly that the DNA recovered came from Madeleine. We do not know how many components were recovered and whether those components could also be found in any other family member 

I can anticipate your response to this. It goes ''But the blood dog alerted, so it must be blood''

No.
The blood dog alerted, that is certainly the case. However, we already know that the dog can alert to a residual scent, where no physical residues remain. We also know that they can alert to a microscopic quantity of their target substance.

Therefore, we cannot positively connect the DNA recovered to the alert of the dog. We do not know the source of the DNA and the dog does not alert to DNA. In other words, the minute quantity of DNA present  could be quite coincidental to the dog alert.

This in no way plays down the efficacy or reliability of the dogs, which is second to none, but you cannot extrapolate from a dog alert to speculate on the source of a DNA residue. 

Please stop trying to mislead people

4 comments:

  1. Hello, I was just looking at the DNA problem. up to now I've not done so as it is a minefield and as you know my Vogel has found a new owner years ago. It is largely irrelevant to the case as it stands in law even if results were 100% certain and 15 out of 19 alleles of Maddie make it 99% certain is was her DNA, it merely supports the dog alerts in 5A and the car but cannot be used in a Portuguese court as proof.
    What I think is more interesting are the reactions to the news by the McCs, filtered through family and friends to find explanations for the results, rather than simply denying the probability/possibility. Lowe is also very careful to note that the DNA from the pillowcase could also be from Amelie in the first report.

    Iirc you noted that a full and reliable DNA spectrum was obtained from what was probably a Guthrie card.

    As the ambassador himself intervened with the PJ when they asked for Maddie's clothes - the PJ afaik didn't have a reliable sample at the time the pillowcase had to be collected from Rothley.
    Note also that Danny Krugel was given several eyelashes (Maddie's) by the McCs which had been found on presumably the same pillowcase.

    So when did the FSS finally get the Guthrie card which surely should have been made available to the Portuguese investigation?

    I'll go through all the red islands above again, but the essence of your answers is that the DNA results were inconclusive due to the LCN and possible contamination of same.

    Even so, the McCs did us the favour of not denying the possibility of such a result at all, but to supply 'explanations' which are far more informative than intended.

    So if I say that it corroborated the dog alerts in x out of y locations, i.e. that there was something to be found which when analysed produced inconclusive results, that would be it in a nutshell?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi tigger, there is still a fair bit which you have confused, there. Just as one example, the caution after the result was obtained from the pillowcase was because the DNA analysis had shown the sample to be from a female child of Kate and Gerry McCann (to an extremely high probability). However, at that time it had not been checked against Amelie's profile; once it was, and the profiles were found to differ, then by a process of elimination the sample could only belong to Madeleine. I'm not sure exactly when they received the Guthrie card because that information was not released, but it was certainly some time before the case was shelved. As to whether it should have been made available to the Portuguese investigation, it makes no difference as the information was shared. It was probably much simpler and quicker for the police in the UK to obtain it.
    The results were not inconclusive because of the methodology or contamination - there was no contamination discussed at all - they were inconclusive because of what was found; DNA from multiple contributors, making it impossible to determine the origin of the sample.

    Would it help if I summarised the DNA evidence and put it in a separate post?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. O yes! Please! You will have my undying gratitude! A summary would be great. Thanks.

      Delete
    2. Okay, will do. Make take a couple of days

      Delete

Please leave a message. I will reply as soon as possible, with a selection of articles taken from 2007, cut and pasted together. Or maybe one of my smashing videos.

For a landscape gardening quote, please leave a daytime number and state preferred shade of Ronseal.