Using DNA to Sketch What Victims Look Like; Some Call It Science Fiction

Southall, Ashley. "Using DNA to Sketch What Victims Look Like; Some Call It Science

Fiction." The New York Times. N.p., 19 Oct. 2017. Web.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/19/nyregion/dna-phenotyping-new-york-police.html

In the article “Using DNA to Sketch What Victims Look Like; Some Call it Science Fiction” Ashley Southall discusses how the New York Police Department turned to a forensic technique called phenotyping to attempt to identify the severed body parts of a woman. Phenotyping uses DNA from the biological matter people leave behind to predict their appearance. Scientists scan a person’s genes for variations known to influence traits and then plug those markers into a set of algorithms to generate a profile. In this case, the tests revealed that the woman was primarily of sub-Saharan African descent and her sex and ancestry to create a generic sketch of a face from a database of demographic information.

        Critics have raised concerns about the lack of peer-reviewed science surrounding phenotyping and the fact that the way that the DNA is collected and used is susceptible to human bias, error, and abuse. Dr. Yaniv Erlich, a computer science professor at Columbia University who studies genetics, said the idea that phenotyping could meaningfully predict something as complex as individual looks is “on the verge of science fiction.”

Police officials are focused on using phenotypes to identify victims, but they could still use it to search for suspects. The problem with using the technology for suspects is that it puts actual people under suspicion without any basis in fact or science according to Robert Perry, the legislative director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. On the other hand, Chief Katranakis explains that, “The power of exclusion from phenotyping is greater than that of inclusion.” In other words, phenotyping helps the police avoid targeting the wrong people in their investigations.

        This article is important because it deals with a forensic technique growing in popularity as a tool to help investigators identify victims and search for suspects. It is definitely still a controversial science and very much in the early stages of development, so it is significant that the author described phenotyping in such detail and introduced the reader to its benefits and shortcomings. This article is also important because while another breakthrough in DNA technology is groundbreaking and can close cases when applied to forensics, the expanding possibilities of DNA often result in a violation of privacy or an unfair use of the information. For example, Southall mentions that the New York State Commission on Forensic Science recently adopted guidelines for familial testing (DNA searches for relatives of potential suspects) which can be an invasion of privacy and can result in bias concerning which people are targeted for genetic surveillance.

Overall, Southall wrote an incredibly interesting and thorough article. She drew the reader into the article by describing a real case that phenotyping is being used to solve in order to illustrate the type of standstill and cold cases that this technology is most useful for. She also included faces developed using phenotyping to help the reader better understand how the science works. Southall also did a great job presenting the arguments of proponents and critics of phenotyping in order to paint a complete picture of the technology. However, I think that the author could have discussed how accurate phenotyping actually is. She writes about how the science has helped investigators solve crimes and cited some specific ones, but she didn’t include exactly how that happened. I think it would have been very helpful if she had shown the differences between an image developed through phenotyping in relation to a picture of the actual person or if she had used an expert quote to describe how close the science comes to resembling the person.