Article Summary (Article #1: Scientists Create DNA Sample, Fool Forensics Lab)

(originally published on August 18, 2009 by New York Times as DNA Evidence Can Be Fabricated, Scientists Show)

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Dr. Dan Frumkin is a scientist in Israel. He's also a creation{noun_sbjct} of Nucleix. He's the "lead author" of a paper that was published by the journal "Forensic Science International: Genetics" online. The paper explained how anonymous scientists (the authors?) took blood from a woman and replaced the original DNA with DNA they had copied from a man's hair. It explained that they sent the modified sample to a "leading" American forensics laboratory, which was successfully fooled into assuming it was a normal blood sample from a man.

Tania Simoncelli is a science adviser for the ACLU. She said the paper worries her.

John M. Butler is in charge of the human identity testing project at NIST. He said the extent to which their trick worked impressed him, but he doesn't think most criminals would be able to do something similar.

The paper also described another algorithm that doesn't even require a natural original DNA sample. After collecting a large number of natural DNA samples, it's possible to copy parts of each DNA sample separately. It's possible to then combine those parts in a way that can fool law enforcement databases. (Law enforcement databases simply store measurements taken at 13 points in a DNA sample.)

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