Harvard, Berkeley Experts Say DNA’s Snare could get More Perps if cops check for Kin’s Genetic Fingerprints Too

US Police, FBI agents, and other law enforcers are missing a good bet if they continue looking for perfect matches between crime scene evidence and DNA data bases, Harvard and UC Berkeley researchers say in this week’s Science magazine. Near-misses could well reveal a criminal’s close relative. That could be just the break needed to track the bad actor down. Such kinship searches are already employed in the UK. The NY Times’s Nicholas Wade put in his lede that much of the technique’s power was demonstrated in systems used to identify World Trade Center victims from traces of recovered DNA. The most-obvious snappy lede, however, seems to have been taken in the UC Berkeley press release by Liese Greensfelder: “We may not be our brother’s keeper, but our brother’s DNA could help land us in jail…” Funny, how ambitiously-crafted press releases can force reporters to craft second-choice, duller verbiage at deadline.

Stories:

Boston Globe Gareth Cook; NY Times Nicholas Wade; Washington Post Rick Weiss; AP Randolph Schmid;

Grist for the Mill: UC Berkeley Press Release;