I tentatively disagree on the interpretation of the experts’ report, ‘reliability’ means a different thing for court DNA procedure vs. Bayesian analysis. I doubt they would say, “this kind of thing is 99% likely to point to the correct suspect, so it is mostly reliable by our standards”.
I doubt they would say, “this kind of thing is 99% likely to point to the correct suspect, so it is mostly reliable by our standards”.
If they didn’t have the option of saying that, then it’s hard for me to see what the point of the review was. Is it your position that Conti and Vecchiotti would have been likely to use the same strong language as they did, regardless of the position of this evidence along the continuum of reliability? Could they have said anything harsher if it were truly unreliable? Do you think a similar review of the DNA evidence against Guede would have produced a similar level of criticism?
I tentatively disagree on the interpretation of the experts’ report, ‘reliability’ means a different thing for court DNA procedure vs. Bayesian analysis. I doubt they would say, “this kind of thing is 99% likely to point to the correct suspect, so it is mostly reliable by our standards”.
If they didn’t have the option of saying that, then it’s hard for me to see what the point of the review was. Is it your position that Conti and Vecchiotti would have been likely to use the same strong language as they did, regardless of the position of this evidence along the continuum of reliability? Could they have said anything harsher if it were truly unreliable? Do you think a similar review of the DNA evidence against Guede would have produced a similar level of criticism?