To all my friends who ask me not to think too much, please ponder upon the following. We think we know everything and there is nothing more to learn. How wrong we are? I have come to realise that every living day is another fresh day to acquire knowledge.
At the end of the 19th century, investigative officers thought they had a full-proof system to track down criminals. Anthromorphological features as described by witnesses and evidence at crime were sufficient to convict suspects. We all know how unreliable are accounts by bystanders or witnesses.
This arrangement worked fairly well when it was practised in the West where individual variations in hair, eye colours and other obvious physical were there. The British Colonial Police had a tough time policing as the natives all looked the same in their eyes. That is when fingerprinting techniques became the state-of-art avantgarde armamentarium in crime-busting. For some time, the method was thought to be so unique that it could never be wrong.
Then it became apparent that this investigative tool was observer dependant. Slowly studies started showing high false positives between 1:18 to 1:30 as it involved human judgement, hence exposed to cognitive biases and this analysis lacked scientific scrutiny.
Soon trickled DNA as a device to aid investigators. Suddenly, it became a big shot in the arm for many a prisoner who was wrongly convicted for a crime they did not commit. And, the technique got cheaper, widespread and ultra-sensitive.
Unfortunately, DNA detection grew too sensitive for its own good. There is even a case where a person transmitted his DNA to a murder victim just because he had been transferred in the same ambulance and had used the same pulse oximeter!
Hence, perhaps DNA is not the end of it all to solve all unsolved criminal cases.
So friends wake up. One can never think that he has reached the pinnacle and there is nothing more to learn. One cannot depend on age-old wisdom and think that it would take us through the end of times. Go forth and explore...
At the end of the 19th century, investigative officers thought they had a full-proof system to track down criminals. Anthromorphological features as described by witnesses and evidence at crime were sufficient to convict suspects. We all know how unreliable are accounts by bystanders or witnesses. This arrangement worked fairly well when it was practised in the West where individual variations in hair, eye colours and other obvious physical were there. The British Colonial Police had a tough time policing as the natives all looked the same in their eyes. That is when fingerprinting techniques became the state-of-art avantgarde armamentarium in crime-busting. For some time, the method was thought to be so unique that it could never be wrong.
Then it became apparent that this investigative tool was observer dependant. Slowly studies started showing high false positives between 1:18 to 1:30 as it involved human judgement, hence exposed to cognitive biases and this analysis lacked scientific scrutiny.
Soon trickled DNA as a device to aid investigators. Suddenly, it became a big shot in the arm for many a prisoner who was wrongly convicted for a crime they did not commit. And, the technique got cheaper, widespread and ultra-sensitive.
Unfortunately, DNA detection grew too sensitive for its own good. There is even a case where a person transmitted his DNA to a murder victim just because he had been transferred in the same ambulance and had used the same pulse oximeter!
Hence, perhaps DNA is not the end of it all to solve all unsolved criminal cases.
So friends wake up. One can never think that he has reached the pinnacle and there is nothing more to learn. One cannot depend on age-old wisdom and think that it would take us through the end of times. Go forth and explore...
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