Little Grey Cells........

The Belgians are not famous for much.

Lace

Perfume

Hercule Poirot


er.....that's about it.

However, someone clearly thinks that because Hercule used his fictional ''little grey cells'' to solve ridiculously convoluted crimes, this must be true of real Belgian detectives.

Not on the evidence so far.

Halfwit frequently quotes from the following article someone apparently translated from a Belgian Police site. 

She does so because they roped in an ''expert'', therefore it must be true.

I'll demonstrate that is not always the case, and that the article which follows is complete cobblers.

Enjoy.


I'll say in advance, it is not always clear who is commenting here - I've copied it as it appears

To help us in our words, our association uses an expert on the subject. It is Madame S. Adamis, Expert on Judicial Unit Expertise Genetics at the Catholic University of Louvain (GNEX - UCL).

Children Association Kidnappés: Do you know the technique of LCN and it is commonly used?

Well, she wouldn't be much use to you if she didn't, would she? 

S. Adamis: LCN (Low Copy Number) is a technique developed by the laboratories of Forensic Science Service English to analyze samples containing a very small number of DNA molecule. The basic principle is to increase the number of cycles of PCR to increase sensitivity [Gill, 2000; Whitaker, 2001]. This technique has two major drawbacks:

1) it produces unbalanced profiles for one or the other marker, with possible disappearance of an allele due to stochastic effect.

2) it leads to the detection of either allele in the negative controls of unknown origin.

I wouldn't worry too much about these, as they are not relevant here and relates to statistical observations in a random process. She goes on to talk about the limitations of LCN-DNA analysis, which again are not especially relevant, except it is worth taking note of her caution with respect to contamination inherent in the environment, from the atmosphere or surfaces. It's often not understood that a large component of dust is dead, sloughed skin cells. These could potentially contaminate a sample of DNA retrieved from a crime scene. How LCN samples are analysed is that they are first replicated so that there is a larger sample to analyse. The problem with any contaminant DNA is that this too will be replicated, and thus what started as a tiny bit of contamination looks very different at the end. I hope that makes sense 

The first drawback led to obtaining profile incomplete, partially wrong and not reproducible. This little reliability goes against the spirit as advocated notably by the ISO 17025 standards in force in our country.
The second requires necessarily work in special conditions to avoid contamination inherent in the environmental conditions and in particular from human DNA present in the dust of the atmosphere or on the surfaces of objects. Seen the limitations of this technique, the conclusions could be easily attacked and cancelled during a trial. This technique is not used routinely in DNA laboratories in Belgium.

AEK: If on an analysis of DNA, 15 markers out of 19 belong to a person "x", can we conclude that this is this person?

Now, this is an interesting question, as the expert is being asked for an opinion based on only half the information, or the wrong question is being posed. The first part of the answer is very important, so I have highlighted it 

SA: If the profile is complete and quality, and that the markers are analyzed information then no doubt!

And that is the key information. Imagine the sample being analysed had been taken from remains, and when analysed it yielded 15 of 19 markers FROM A SINGLE INDIVIDUAL and with no DNA from someone else. Could you make an identification based on that? Yes. Categorically yes.

However, that is not what happened. We know the DNA recovered in the sample from the car was not from a single individual. They recovered 37 markers. Just do the Maths. You can't get 37 markers from a single individual.  Hence the section which follows in green, although correct, has nothing whatsoever to do with this case

The result is discriminatory. This result is very reliable. The order of error is 1 for 1 billion! It is almost impossible it otherwise. 

For a conclusive DNA profile, it takes a minimum of 7 markers. In case you are presenting, 15 markers on 19 leave no doubt. This result is quite reliable and usable in court. The error rate for a one billion is so unlikely that the result is recognized by judges without lawyers can not bring them into doubt.

So now we come to the next big error, again highlighted. This is one of the crucial discrepancies in this case - there never was a first report which said that 15 of the 19 markers belonged to Madeleine, but did not mention the others. It is unclear how this myth arose, but it can only be the case that someone at the Portuguese end did not understand what they were being told, and that is, I'm afraid, the fault of the police. How can I say so with certainty? Because I wasn't confused in the slightest, so either a failure to translate it properly or explain it properly seems likely.

We open a parenthesis. We understand even better the attitude of the PJ. In the face of inconsistencies we are talking about earlier, the police have doubts. Can dogs detect traces of blood and the smell of a corpse. The doubts turn into belief. But it lacks something. All these elements are not sufficient to face charges in a court. It lacks a confirmation. A scientific confirmation. This confirmation comes with the first analysis report which said that 15 DNA markers on 19 belong to Madeleine. It does not need more police. The proof is there. Self-explanatory. The first report analyses prove the guilt of parents in the eyes of investigators. 

This report should be considered as a proof by, I believe, all police forces. Once parents have been placed, logically, in the particular status "arguidos." Of course, an error rate of 1 to 1 billion is not a profile of 100%, it Clarence Mitchell rightly so. 

Then we get to the part about a second report. There wasn't a second report. End of story. There certainly was not a second document which contradicted the first. The document which Amaral claimed contradicted the first did not contradict it at all, it merely summarized it 

So to take the section highlighted in green, this is also completely untrue. AT NO POINT does John Lowe say that the samples have been contaminated. He explained, perfectly lucidly, that the 37 marker sample contained many markers in addition to the 15 found in Madeleine's profile. He stressed that some of these were quite common, they could even be found in people working in the lab. He did not say the sample had been contaminated.

Where, then, there is a huge surprise. A second report by the FSS comes and totally contradicts the first. Distroying evidence that the police have thought. According to the report, the samples have been contaminated finally making them very unreliable. Several DNA have been mixed to create the DNA of anyone!

EAK: If you get DNA from three different people, can we recreate the DNA of anyone?

SA: If the DNA is collected DNA mixed with that of 3 individuals in an equivalent manner, then we could actually find the DNA profile of anyone. The mine just like yours. But it is important that the mixture is perfectly equivalent. In which case the reliability rate is very low, from 1 to a billion 1 per 1,000 or 1 in 100. It is therefore more question to consider this result as discriminatory.

Section in yellow - no, none of those happened. There was no botched analysis; there was no second analysis at all, so god alone knows where that came from! There weren't two contradictory reports. 

Section in green -  This is a complete piece of invention. There is no evidence that a ''third'' report was sought, the samples were not inadvertently lost or destroyed.

This kind of analysis is destructive of the samples - that's how it's done. One takes the DNA strands and breaks it into pieces, to put it simply. With such a tiny extraction of DNA it is not possible to keep some back for a second go. The results remain, though, and they could easily have sought another opinion based on the results, not that it would have reached any other conclusion, but there is no evidence that they did so.

It also needs pointing out that legislation DEMANDS that certain samples are in any case destroyed after a period of time if they are not required. This advice was sent out WITH EVERY COMMUNICATION from the lab, so there can be no excuse. There is no confirmation anywhere that the samples were deliberately 'destroyed' and it is my belief that this is a confusion arising out of the fact that running an LCN-DNA analysis effectively destroys the sample used. Whoever posed the questions and wrote the text is very very poorly informed.

So what happened? NRL unreliable? The contaminated samples at the second analysis, but not the first? The first botched analysis by the FSS? There would be a good way of knowing. As two expert reports contradict each other, we practise a third analysis in an independent lab. But, alas, following an incident that remains unexplained, the only existing DNA samples were inadvertently lost or destroyed by the laboratory. What makes impossible a third analysis

For the purposes of this discussion, let us call the sample of Madeleine's DNA that was obtained from her pillow in Rothley or wherever they got it the "known sample." The DNA found in the Scenic and the apartment would have been "questioned samples."

I don't know why it is necessary to refer to them in these terms. It is more correct to refer to them as Madeleine's PROFILE, and the Investigated samples, but whatever floats your boat.

Regardless of the number of markers you are testing, if the DNA in ANY of the markers in a questioned sample does not match the DNA in the known sample, then the questioned sample does not come from the same person who was the donor of the known sample of DNA.

This is actually wrong in it's current form, so it has perhaps been poorly translated. It is more correct to say that if any marker in a given PROFILE does not match the known PROFILE, ie Madeleine's, then it is not a match. However, if the sample contains DNA from more than one person, ie more than one PROFILE, it does not exclude the known PROFILE as a contributor

This next sentence is very important

Firstly, the expert says she has not seen anything in writing to date. Then, with the greatest respect, she should not be offering an expert opinion. I do not know any validated expert who would do so. She seems, therefore, to have merely commented on questions put to her by a journalist who is not in full possession of the facts

Secondly, she makes an entirely false assumption - that they recovered only 15 markers and the rest were too degraded. We know this is not the case. They recovered a mixed sample, from at least three contributors. Given that the car was in regular use by Madeleine's parents and siblings it is not just perfectly possible but more than likely that the matching markers come from them

And here is an interesting fact - if you take any given profile, and compare it to a mix of DNA from three unrelated contributors, on average you will be able to match 12 markers, based on purely random factors. Therefore to match 15 markers from 3 potentially related contributors is not only possible, but likely.

This does not mean that Madeleine can be ruled out as a contributor to that sample from the boot - neither could you or I, probably, with 37 markers available, but it certainly does not place her there.

I have not seen anything in writing to date, but I have been assuming that the FSS was able to extract 15 markers from the sample of DNA found in the back of the Renault Scenic, and that the other four markers were so degraded (by heat, sunlight, efforts to clean them up, whatever) that they could not be analysed. If they had 4 out of 19 markers that clearly were NOT a match for Madeleine's DNA, that would have been the end of it, in my opinion; the DNA from the Scenic could not have been hers.

This next section is totally irrelevant, even if it were correct, which I don't believe it is. 

I have read that the Portuguese require 19 markers for a conclusive result on a DNA analysis because under their laws that is how many markers are required for a positive match on a paternity test. This is more markers than I have ever heard of being required anywhere for forensic purposes in a criminal case. 

In the UK, 10 markers are tested, plus the sex of the donor is determined, and a 10:10 match is considered conclusive.

None of these figures are relevant at all, given that the sample was not a confirmed match for Madeleine 

 In America, the FBI CODIS database contains 13 markers. Individual states in America are allowed to pass their own laws about how many markers must be tested before evidence can be introduced in court, but most of the 50 states use 13 because there is so much interface with the FBI database. Therefore, in America, a 13:13 match is considered conclusive that the questioned DNA and the known DNA came from the same person. 

Neverthess, if Portuguese law requires analysis of 19 markers, then that's what must be done. Period.

Regarding your specific questions:

(1) Only identical twins are born with identical DNA, and even in that case, every individual on earth begins to accumulate mutations to his/her DNA that may make it possible to distinguish even between the DNA of identical twins. There is a laboratory in Texas called Orchid Cellmark that claims it already can do this, but so far as I know, this technique has never been used in court.

This has only been used once in law enforcement to the best of my knowledge, to try to determine which of a pair of monozygous twins committed a crime. In the end the culprit owned up in any case, so it was never used. That was in a recent case in France, since this article was written.

There are techniques which can be used to identify individual mutations down to what is referred to as a ''base pair'' level. This was not available at the time and I do not believe it would be feasible now. Even if Madeleine's DNA showed a mutation which was specific to her, there would be no value to identifying this in one of the existing samples when there is a theoretical chance of DNA transfer from her belongings

The next section is not relevant, but it is interesting so I have left it in.

The DNA of everyone on earth is at least a 99% match. Yep, that's right. The DNA of the most profoundly mentally disabled person who ever lived was a 99% match for Albert Einstein's. The DNA of the poorest beggar on the streets of the poorest city in the world, whoever that unfortunate soul happens to be, is a 99% match for the Queen's. Rather humbling, isn't it? (Note: Studies published in 2001 indicated that the DNA of all human beings was about 99.9% alike. More recent information, obtained from the human genome project, indicates that the accurate figure is probably somewhere in the range of 99 - 99.5%.)

The DNA of siblings is even more alike than that of individuals selected at random, which makes sense, considering that they inherit their DNA from the same two people. Within that 1% or less variation, however, there are literally tens of thousands of different combinations that make the DNA of any one individual unique from that of everyone else, including his/her siblings.

The FBI's CODIS database, which contains the DNA profiles of approximately 6 million convicted criminals, has been extensively studied. No 13:13 match of genetic markers has ever been found except between identical twins. There was a widely reported case several years ago in which a forensics examiner for the state of Arizona in America found a 9:13 match between two unrelated individuals, and there has also been a report of a 10:13 match between two related individuals who were products of an incestuous relationship.

Given the experience with CODIS, I think it is highly, highly unlikely (as in, the odds in favour of it would be one in the tens of millions) that one would find a 15:15 match on genetic markers between two different members of the McCann family.

(2) As I have posted before, DNA cannot be used to determine whether a person was living or dead at the time the sample was taken. A DNA sample taken by swabbing the inside of the cheek of a living person one hour before death and another sample taken from the same person one hour after death would look identical under a microscope.

The above is correct. DNA is a complex molecule, not a living entity

What MIGHT be possible, and it would depend on several different things, including the degree of experience and skill of the forensic examiner and the quantity of DNA available, would be that a forensic examiner asked to attempt to extract DNA from some object that appeared to contain a substance that might be a bodily fluid - a piece of clothing, say, or a piece of carpet from an automobile - MIGHT be able to recognise the type of fluid and therefore tell whether the donor had been alive or dead. There are certain types of fluids - one is an exudate from the lungs that is only seen after death - that might be recognisable as such. In Madeleine's case, however, with so little material available, I am virtually certain that this would not have been possible, i.e., it would not be possible to tell whether the donor of the questioned sample of DNA found in the back of the Scenic was alive or dead at the time the DNA was deposited there.

No, nothing of that kind was possible, and no fluid was found 

(3) If the forensic technicians were able to extract 15 markers from the material in the Scenic that were a match for the known sample of Madeleine's DNA and the other four markers could not be tested because they were degraded, there would be a high probability mathematically that the questioned sample of DNA came from Madeleine.

Except that is not what happened 

Just to give you an example, at the time the forensic examiner in Arizona found the 9:13 match on DNA markers, the FBI said that the chances of that happening would be 1 in 113 billion. Well, that obviously isn't right, because there WAS, in fact, a 9:13 match, and there are nowhere near 113 billion people in the world. There is something called the "prosecutor's fallacy," which is an example of mathematical analysis called "binary classification" which shows that even 10:10 or 13:13 DNA matches are subject to error rates much higher than prosecutors sometimes attribute to them. However, whilst saying that the chance of an incorrect finding is 1 in 113 billion is clearly ridiculous, my opinion would be that the chance of two DNA samples belonging to different people if the results of the forensic analysis shows a 15:19 match would be miniscule - at least 1 out of hundreds of thousands, if not millions. It would not, however, be a smoking gun. Any DNA scientist will tell you that DNA is only one piece of the puzzle in any case and should be viewed in the context of all the other evidence. However, if FSS got a 15:19 match between Madeleine's known DNA and the questioned sample from the hire car, and 4 other markers were too degraded to be tested, in my opinion, that would be a powerful piece of circumstantial evidence.

It would. But that didn't happen

This next section is puzzling. She says she has seen nothing in writing, yet the section contains a partial quote from John Lowe's report, from which the important bit - the part about the 37 markers - has been omitted. So I have no idea what has transpired here. Is this still the expert speaking? If so, she cannot possibly have been shown the entire report, as her conclusions would have been very different. Is she being fed snippets? If so, it seems to be in a calculated fashion, designed to misrepresent Lowe's work and the report's conclusions. Extremely puzzling.


Edited to add - as I suspected, the rest of this ''article'' is nothing to do with any expert, but rather the musing of some anonymous loon. I will try and make it a bit clearer later by cleaning up the font, but it may take some time as frankly I don't trust Halfwit so I am cross-referencing with the original French 

But in fact, I don't know exactly what they got. I don't understand what John Lowe is saying. This is the statement from him that I find so troubling: "Let's look at the question that is being asked: 'Is there DNA from Madeleine on the swab?' It would be very simple to say 'yes' simply because of the number of components within the result that are also in her reference sample. What we need to consider, as scientists, is whether the match is genuine - because Madeleine has deposited DNA as a result of being in the car or whether Madeleine merely appears to match the result by chance."

What is he saying? Um, Mr. Lowe, when the "components" (also known as "markers") within the result (AKA questioned sample) are the same as those in her reference sample (AKA known sample of Madeleine's DNA), then you're SUPPOSED to say "YES," or actually you're supposed to say the final results are inconclusive because 4 of the markers were too degraded to be tested, but all the others matched. How the stuff got where it was found is not the subject of DNA analysis. That's the kind of thing that an expert witness should be prepared to be asked about on the stand at a trial; could the questioned sample of the DNA have gotten where it was found by accidental transference, for example, from another object?

DNA analysis is just that - ANALYSIS. Either they were able to extract markers from the DNA found in the Renault Scenic that were not degraded and could be analysed, or they were not. Either those markers matched the markers in the known sample of Madeleine's DNA taken from her pillow in Rothley, or they did not. Was the gentleman quoted correctly? If so, why all this double-speak? If it's the case, why in heaven's name not just SAY, "There are limits to LCN DNA technology, and the sample from the automobile was too small for any analysis to be definitive." Or, "When we tried to analyse the questioned sample from the automobile, we discovered that the DNA of two or more people were mixed together, and given the minute amount of material we had to work with, we simply were unable to separate them. We cannot say for certain when this happened, but regrettably, it made it impossible for us to determine with any reasonable degree of certainty whether the DNA was Madeleine's."

In the above paragraph, she hits on the answer - no, the gentleman was not quoted correctly AT ALL 

My guess - and it is just a guess - is that no one leaned on the FSS. I don't think anyone had to. My personal opinion is that they were freaked out by what happened with the trial at Omagh and knew that if they came up with DNA results that didn't stand up in this case, they could kiss their cash cow of being one of the few labs in the world that can do LCN DNA analysis good-by. Trouble is where they are concerned, there is more than one thing that can cause police departments and other agencies the world over to doubt your results. One is to make mistakes and be wrong. Another is to be too afraid to call it 

It is unclear whether this paragraph has been added by Halfwit or whether it is still the expert speaking. I suspect not.


So - some suggestions.

I will be going through some of the other junk posted by HideHo and pointing out the very many errors. In the meantime it would be very helpful if she could provide a link to the original article, not her version of it, and clarify who is the author of the above passages, as it is very unclear.

Persistently claiming that 15/19 meant it was Madeleine is simply a falsehood. If you really think that helps anyone, you are as off your head as Textusa and all the other brain donors.

I would also stop posting that heap of shite you posted tonight which claims the 15 markers were ''unique to Madeleine'' as that too is bollocks and it's also where I am heading next

Footnote

In case you were thinking of coming back with ''Mr Amaral says this'' or ''Mr Amaral says that'', let me save you the bother.

I have nothing personal against Mr Amaral. But he is a bloody chimp when it comes to forensics. Sorry if that offends anyone, but I'm afraid it's true.

Forensic science is mostly commonsense and lateral thinking.

''There is a big gap in the blood spray pattern - why is that?''

Well, just think about it. What could cause a gap like that? Maybe that's where the assailant stood? If that wasn't possible, then was there a second assailant? Has a piece of furniture been moved? It's just a case of thinking through the possibilities.

It seems that before conducting the interviews, the PJ locked their collective brains in a cupboard.

They are not the first plods to do so. They won't be the last.

Edited to add

Clearly I was not the only one to question the origin of some of the statements included in HideHalfwit's post, as she has posted a series of links in response to requests to clarify who is saying what.

Unfortunately, it doesn't help me a great deal, as some of it, attributed to an anonymous contributor, is only available to members of the JH forum, so I can't access it.

What is apparent, though, is that some of the above sections which Hideho attributed to the ''expert'' are nothing of the kind, and have been added by some JH loon or HdH herself

Her claims to have amalgamated it all are pretty empty, frankly, as her link just takes us to the same page as before, with a variety of bits and pieces posted on it, none of them properly attributed.

Therefore, I will have to work my way through the original french version and highlight the passages which cannot be attributed to the original author