Are Multilocus Matched Profiles Truly the Duplicate Records in DNA Profiling Databases?
David N. Stivers, Yixi Zhong, and Ranajit Chakraborty Human Genetics Center, University of Texas School of Public Health, P.O. Box 20334, Houston, TX 77225 Simple consequences of Mendelian genetics imply that relatives share more alleles in their DNA profiles as compared to unrelated individuals, and further, individuals of the same population are expected to share alleles more frequently than pairs of individuals chosen from different populations. While this had been the logic of detecting and eliminating the inadvertent presence of duplicate DNA profiles in large forensic databases, several court proceedings have seen allegations suggesting that forensic laboratories have mistakenly purged databases, forcing elimination of multiple locus matches in their databases. In this presentation, we show that such allegations are scientifically flawed, and the detection and elimination of profiles that show multiple locus matches are legitimate and valid. Through the use of the ITO method of a
