Archaeological Geneticists Call Jack The Ripper DNA Study 'Unpublishable Nonsense'
Source: Forbes
Archaeological Geneticists Call Jack The Ripper DNA Study 'Unpublishable Nonsense'
Kristina Killgrove
Senior Contributor
Science
Archaeologist, Writer, Scientist
News media was buzzing today with a claim that scientists had finally figured out the real identity of the notorious 19th century serial killer Jack the Ripper thanks to DNA and an old shawl. The only problem? Archaeological geneticists say the research is neither new nor scientifically accurate.
Writing last week in the Journal of Forensic Sciences, Jari Louhelainen of Liverpool John Moores University and David Miller of the University of Leeds published an analysis of "forensic stains" on a silk shawl purportedly linked to a woman named Catherine Eddowes, murdered by Jack the Ripper more than 130 years ago. The stains could not be definitively classified, but the researchers hypothesize that one is related to blood spatter and one possibly to semen.
Testing the forensic stains led Louhelainen and Miller to write that "the completed DNA sequences displayed an overall match for both the suspect candidate and the victim. This suggests that the stains originated from a single source. In other words, the victim's stains are from one individual, and stains linked to the suspect are similarly from a single person."
The researchers claim that this is "the most systematic and most advanced genetic analysis to date regarding the Jack the Ripper murders." They also say that they show that "the presence of mtDNA on the shawl matches the female victim's mtDNA derived from stains on it and that mtDNA also on the shawl matches the suspect candidate's mtDNA. Furthermore, both are on the same piece of evidence and originate from specific, forensically relevant stains that are in concordance with Jack the Ripper's modus operandi."
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Adam Rutherford, a genetics expert and science writer, took to Twitter to point out that the study, first of all, is not new. It was initially described in a 2014 book, and Rutherford challenged the claim then for BBC Inside Science. He also questions the provenance of the shawl. While Louhelainen and Miller suggest in their paper that appropriate chain of custody was employed, and that they attempted to exclude contemporary people's DNA, Rutherford notes that "the way it has been handled since would render DNA analysis cripplingly problematic." This particular silk shawl has made the rounds, with photographs of people holding it with their bare hands. Hardly a pristine object for DNA analysis.
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Read more: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2019/03/18/archaeological-geneticists-call-jack-the-ripper-dna-study-unpublishable-nonsense/#67193c8db900