Go back to previous page
Forum URL: http://www.webbsleuths.com/cgi-bin/dcf/dcboard.cgi
Forum Name: more and more JBR
Topic ID: 1902
Message ID: 29
#29, Even More MIsrepresentation from DocG
Posted by Dave on Nov-23-03 at 07:12 PM
In response to message #28
DocG posted:

"By "we" you of course mean: team Ramsey. This is lawyer talk, Dave."

No, this is typical of scientific talk, especially when intended for laypersons when discussing the consensus of opinion on a subject. I suppose that people who don't know anything about science could confuse the two, but they are actually quite different.

-------------------------

"...the DNA could and in all likelihood does have an innocent source."

"Could" yes. "...and in all likelihood." Baloney. As anyone familiar with basic forensics knows, the likelihood is that this is the DNA of the perpetrator because of where and when it was found. Also, there are no reports of her fighting with anyone just prior to her murder. I'm not aware of "innocent" explanations of DNA found under the fingernails of a murder victim. Perhaps DocG would enlighten us, citing the counterexamples to Forensics 101.

Slightly off-topic: In many of his posts, DocG repeatedly makes statements about probability and likelihood, yet in all his posts, I have not ever even once seen so much as a single calculation --- nor even a hint of one. All that I have ever seen is bold declarations, most often with no further discussion at all, just like this one. In the scientific community, this behavior is completely unacceptable, and he would have been challenged over and over again, then probably ostracized for failing to back up his claims with data or even offering any kind of plausible argument to support them.

-------------------------

"It's mixed and degraded, NOT typical of a fresh deposit, certainly not characteristic of DNA scratched by the victim from the skin of her attacker."

This bold declaration by DocG (speaking as though he were an expert witness at a trial, no less) means absolutely nothing in terms of value as evidence. What matters is: Can a profile be developed? If so, whose DNA was it? Then, Lou Smit's question: Does this person have a very good explanation as to how their DNA came to be at this crime scene? That is what matters. This is forensics 101. Other posters have already addressed "degraded" and so on earlier in this thread, and I defer to those posts.