Amanda Knox guilty - all because of a cartwheel

[Chris_Halkides]

Congratulations

Well, I would expect that Meredith's DNA was in a greater concentration because, well...it's her bra.

Raffaele's was in a higher concentration, most likely due to more direct contact than the remaining 3 signatures.

I don't see how this is anything new or different from what has been established/noted before. Anytime you're ready to knock off the mental gymnastics, it would be greatly appreciated.

Congratulations. You have just turned 25 years of DNA forensics on its head.

 

[BobTheDonkey]

Congratulations. You have just turned 25 years of DNA forensics on its head.

Really?

I think Stefanoni would agree with my assessment. Rather, I think my assessment is in agreement with that of Stefanoni.

Ya know, a real forensics scientist.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

DNA from touched documents

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Your falsehoods can't even be classified as rhetoric, as rhetoric implies some capability to convince.

I didn't say the DNA-from-dust technique is not developed enough. The very article which you googled and posted (perhaps without reading) said so:

"Human DNA has been identified in household dust for the first time.

The amount of DNA in dust is tiny and from so many people that singling out any individual could be tricky. With further research it might be possible to find ways of recreating someone's profile or even working out how recently they'd visited a crime scene from the decay of their DNA."

Halides' 2008 NewScientist article which he posted and contradicted the very argument he was trying to make a week or so ago

If FOA tries to present themselves as being at the forefront of talking truth, maybe you should pony up, yourself.

Is that clear now about the DNA-from-dust business? I didn't say it's immature, your link said so. Right?


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I take it that's your way of saying that you don't have a 2010 reference.

If I had just been shown to be wrong about as many things as you have today, I might be a little too humbled to go into attack mode so soon. It is interesting that you are not.

Here is another paper that you won't bother to read properly:

Recovery of DNA and fingerprints from touched documents.

Sewell J, Quinones I, Ames C, Multaney B, Curtis S, Seeboruth H, Moore S, Daniel B.

Forensic Sci Int Genet. 2008 Sep;2(4):281-5. Epub 2008 May 16

 

[Kermit]

Congratulations. You have just turned 25 years of DNA forensics on its head.

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You seem to think that a person who wears an undergarment regularly should not have a higher DNA reading than someone who has had a brief (albeit violent and recent) encounter with the garment.

 

[Kermit]

If I had just been shown to be wrong about as many things as you have today, I might be a little too humbled to go into attack mode so soon. It is interesting that you are not.

Here is another paper that you won't bother to read properly:

Recovery of DNA and fingerprints from touched documents.

Sewell J, Quinones I, Ames C, Multaney B, Curtis S, Seeboruth H, Moore S, Daniel B.

Forensic Sci Int Genet. 2008 Sep;2(4):281-5. Epub 2008 May 16

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You're starting to look foolish, Halides. As a consolation prize, I'm going to ask Google to make you the Google Poster Child of the Month.

The paper you have referred to only deals with the recovery of DNA from paper documents once they have had a special treatment.

In this thread you had introduced the idea that DNA which Raffaele could have theoretically have left in fingerprints on the outside of Meredith's door, had somehow transported itself, and multiplied itself in the process, and deposited itself on the bra clasp.

Not quite the same thing.

Just like the DNA-from-dust argument. There's science, there's technology, but there's no forensic applicability to this case.

Get back to your googling.

 

[Kermit]

Halides, a fast request / suggestion (seriously):

Please read the articles which you link to which supposedly support an argument you're making.

Some readers may see a link of yours, and if - like you - they don't read it, they may think that just because there's a link (even if it's only to Dr. Seuss's Cat In The Hat), that there is some basis of support for what you're saying.

In fact, from your own debating point-of-view, it would be better to link to Cat In The Hat, because most of your links actually support the opposite of what you are arguing.

 

[Fiona]

While we are on that subject, it would help if Halides1's links were actually links

 

[Chris_Halkides]

you are wrong again, Kermit

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You're starting to look foolish, Halides. As a consolation prize, I'm going to ask Google to make you the Google Poster Child of the Month.

The paper you have referred to only deals with the recovery of DNA from paper documents once they have had a special treatment.

You misunderstood what you read, and not for the first time. The treatments discussed in this paper were to enhance the fingerprints themselves. They did not help the DNA recovery; they hurt it: “Treatment of samples with DFO or Ninhydrin resulted in reduction in the amount of DNA recovered.”

Bye,

post script

Your argument about dust is not exactly wrong, but it is myopic, as I demonstrated on the other thread. It will be interesting to see how you manage to mangle the interpretation of that figure, but straightening it out will have to be someone else's problem.

 

[Fiona]

http://www.officer.com/publication/article.jsp?pubId=1&id=25197

This is a 2005 article about finger print dna. It is written by a jounalist and therefore it has the advantage of clarity and the disadvantage of not being the actual paper. Nevertheless I found it more helpful than the abstracts linked above.

In particular it states that fingerprints do not yield enough cells for normal testing and therefore LCN techniques have to be applied

To obtain a DNA profile, he says, "in theory, all you need is one cell. In practice, however, using PCR commercial technology, 1 nanogram (or 150 to 160 cells) of DNA is required for amplification. A typical diploid cell has about 6.6 picograms of DNA (a picogram is 1/1,000th of a nanogram)."

Since there was 1.4 ng from RS on the bra clasp it would seem to follow that it cannot have been from contamination from his fingerprints. It is very likely that techniques have improved a lot since 2005, but my reading of this article suggests that fingerprints just don't comprise that many cells. Any links to later work showing otherwise will be helpful if anyone has them

ETA: As an aside, I noticed this when I was digging about

http://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...serid=10&md5=0955489e26c681c89be0c9ce84b3253a

Abstract

In this work we aimed to compare the application of increasing PCR cycle number, whole genome amplification and nested-PCR on fingerprints genetic analysis. Results were compared for correct alleles, allele dropin and allelic dropout. We concluded that increasing the number of PCR cycles is yet the best way to attain the required sensitivity.

(My bolding)

It struck me that this pretty much the same situation as Stefanoni faced with the knife: and they appear to have found that increasing the number of cycles was useful: which is what Stefanoni did, I believe. Seems to me that the technique is not unheard of, at least

 

[Fiona]

And just on the various claims about what is required to get dna on to something, there is a little confirmation that friction has an effect, here


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20206575

. Friction as the manner of contact significantly increased the rate of transfer.

This is from the same researcher who did the work on transfer I linked a long time ago: so he is at least well qualified in his field. It seems to show that there is some validity in inferring that significant quantities of dna are more likely if there is friction and that it is not true to say that no inference can legitimately be made based on quantity

 

[Kermit]

Kermit (that's me) said to Hilades: "The paper you have referred to only deals with the recovery of DNA from paper documents once they have had a special treatment.

In this thread you had introduced the idea that DNA which Raffaele could have theoretically have left in fingerprints on the outside of Meredith's door, had somehow transported itself, and multiplied itself in the process, and deposited itself on the bra clasp."
================

Kermit (that's me) also said: "In fact, from your own debating point-of-view, it would be better to link to Cat In The Hat, because most of your links actually support the opposite of what you are arguing".
================

Having said that to you in my above posts, you shoot yourself in your other foot with your followup post:

You misunderstood what you read, and not for the first time. The treatments discussed in this paper were to enhance the fingerprints themselves. They did not help the DNA recovery; they hurt it: “Treatment of samples with DFO or Ninhydrin resulted in reduction in the amount of DNA recovered.”

What have you proven?

1) That my post was correct, just go to the Abstract which I found concerning your referenced document: http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S187249730800046X
See my first bolded text:

"This study investigated the various factors affecting DNA profiling from DNA recovered from fingerprints deposited on paper before and after fingerprint enhancement treatments. The DNeasy® plant mini kit (QIAGEN®) was found to improve DNA recovery from paper by over 150% compared with the QIAamp® mini kit. A significant decrease in the amount of DNA recovered was observed following treatment with DFO and/or Ninhydrin. This decrease in yield did not have a comparably significant effect on the quality of the SGM Plus™ profiles. Furthermore, this study found that whilst certain paper types, such as newspaper, magazine and filter paper allowed for the good recovery of DNA, common office paper and white card, strongly interfered with the recovery of DNA resulting in poor quality profiles."

2) You can try to insinuate that I got something wrong, and that the article is only about the second bolded text, however, that only digs your hole deeper: you brought up this whole DNA-from-fingerprints business (just as you brought up the DNA-from-dust business) as an explanation for Raffaele's DNA on the bra clasp. You linked an 2003 article which said there's science there but indicated that the technique is at an inicial stage. I asked for a 2010 reference and you gave me this 2008 reference which a) deals with recovering fingerprints from paper which has had a special treatment, and b) in fact finds problems with this technique which you had been previously using to support your argument.

So where does that situate your 2008 reference as support for your statement that Raffaele's DNA could have been transported from his fingerprints on the outside of Meredith's door to the bra clasp under the pillow?

Your argument about dust is not exactly wrong, but it is myopic, as I demonstrated on the other thread.

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Thanks for admitting I am right. If myopic means that I spotted you referring to a technique for DNA profiling which is still immature and therefore not applicable to the review of the investigate techniques followed in Perugia, then, yes I am.

It will be interesting to see how you manage to mangle the interpretation of that figure, but straightening it out will have to be someone else's problem.

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?????
I think you suffered a cut-and-paste problem there because neither I nor anybody else knows what you're referring to.

 

[stilicho]

So where does that situate your 2008 reference as support for your statement that Raffaele's DNA could have been transported from his fingerprints on the outside of Meredith's door to the bra clasp under the pillow?

Boy, is Chris H ever going to be blown away by the fully translated "motivations" report.

This might sound like an odd question but exactly why is RS supposed to have had his prints on the doorknob to Meredith's room? Is this verified?

He was alleged to have attempted to break down her door because there was blood everywhere (his 112 call) and yet there was almost no visible blood. I had thought he was kicking it, not turning the doorknob. Maybe I have the wrong version of the story.

And this would be the same doorknob to Meredith's door that AK said was typically closed and locked anyhow.

---------

I just looked:

LG: Yes, and I know that you had tried to open the door together, hadn't you?

AK: Yes. Raffaele tried giving it a kick, and also pushing it with his shoulder to open it, because we didn't know why that door should be locked.

---------

He kicked it. He heaved against it with his shoulder. So when did RS put his prints on the doorknob? Were his doorknob prints entered as evidence?

 

[Matthew Best]

He kicked it. He heaved against it with his shoulder. So when did RS put his prints on the doorknob? Were his doorknob prints entered as evidence?

I would guess he put his prints on it before he kicked it and heaved against it with his shoulder. Round about the time he discovered it was locked. Or do you think he had some other way of figuring out it was locked than by trying the doorknob?

 

[BobTheDonkey]

I would guess he put his prints on it before he kicked it and heaved against it with his shoulder. Round about the time he discovered it was locked. Or do you think he had some other way of figuring out it was locked than by trying the doorknob?

Even if he did try the doorknob, can you explain how the DNA was in sufficient enough quantities to be transferred to the clasp and yet in a small enough quantity that it was not detected on any of the other swabs taken at the crime scene?

 

[Matthew Best]

Even if he did try the doorknob,

Do you think he didn't? What seems more likely - (a) he tries the doorknob, discovers it is locked, then tries to break it down; or (b) he just tries to break it down straight away?

 

[Fiona]

To me it seems more likely that Amanda would try the doorknob first. Were her prints on it?

 

[BobTheDonkey]

Do you think he didn't? What seems more likely - (a) he tries the doorknob, discovers it is locked, then tries to break it down; or (b) he just tries to break it down straight away?

That is neither here nor there. Excellent red herring though.

My question calls not into incredulity whether Raffaele tried the doorknob - in fact, the second half of my post assumes that he did.

Let's say he did. Now, where does that leave us?

With a requirement for a sufficient level of DNA to leave a significant trace on the clasp 47 days after the murder and yet not enough of a trace to have been picked up by any of the other testing.

 

[stilicho]

I would guess he put his prints on it before he kicked it and heaved against it with his shoulder. Round about the time he discovered it was locked. Or do you think he had some other way of figuring out it was locked than by trying the doorknob?

No, it was AK who found it locked and she didn't think it was unusual. If you read her testimony, she says RS kicked it and threw his shoulder against it.

Was any evidence produced in court linking RS's fingerprints to the doorknob?

 

[stilicho]

Let's say he did. Now, where does that leave us?

Not deliberately trying to be obtuse but where did this idea that RS had his fingerprints on the doorknob come from?

 

[Fiona]

Halides1 or Dan_O made it up? Just a guess