From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Tue Nov 26 2002 - 14:30:19 MST
Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
> ...
>
>### For me, the feeling of righteous satisfaction at having a murderer
>terminated is worth facing the risk of being terminated myself, as a result
>of a wrongful accusation, as long as the relative risk is small enough.
>Since well-done DNA testing is 99.9999 accurate (or better), I feel it's
>enough, especially if it's associated with additional evidence (security
>camera footage, witnesses), and the local cops have no record of any
>suspicious activity.
>
>In other words, I am ready to take responsibility for my beliefs, even if it
>means being killed.
>
>Rafal
>
Where do you get your estimate of the accuracy of the testing? (I
realize that you stipulated that the testing be well done, but please be
aware that this isn't usually the case. Only a small number of sites
are typically checked, e.g.)
How accurate do you estimate that the test would need to be for the
official murder to be defensible? Is 50% false positives good enough?
10%? 1%? I don't believe that you'll get anywhere near 0.0001% this
year, or next. And probably not in the next couple, either. (After
that, who knows? With the current rate of change, it's possible.)
OK. How accurate to you believe the current tests to be? Why do you
believe this? At one point, a few years ago, I heard that they
typically checked only 10 sites. This is good usually enough if the
test is to confirm what they have other good evidence to believe, which
was the use at that time. Do you have any information that as they have
begun to use the database for original suspect selection that they've
improved the testing in the necessary way for statistical reasoning? (I
don't, so I have been presuming that the original techniques have been
maintained.)
-- -- Charles Hixson Gnu software that is free, The best is yet to be.
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