SAN MARCOS – Research published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences claiming to identify the notorious 19th century murderer through DNA analysis grabbed headlines around the world in the spring of 2019.
Careful analysis by Kim Rossmo, a research professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Texas State University, questioned the investigative logic of the study and concludes it was a forensic failure. He recently completed a major research project on the systemic causes of wrongful convictions, funded by the National Institute of Justice, and noticed many of the same problems in the Ripper paper.
“The underlying errors in reasoning and logic here—tunnel vision, suspect-based focus, confirmation bias, uncritical acceptance of assumptions, unreported error rates, and probability mistakes—are the same ones commonly found in wrongful convictions and other criminal investigative failures,” Rossmo said. His commentary is published in the current edition of the Journal of Forensic Sciences.
Rossmo, a retired Canadian police detective inspector, has long been a student of the Jack the Ripper case. He previously examined it from the perspective of a geographic profiler, determining through mathematical modelling that the killer likely lived close to the notorious Flower and Dean Street.
The problems Rossmo identifies in the DNA research include:
“Tunnel vision involves a narrow focus on a single theory, such as the exclusive targeting of Kosminski for the mitochondrial DNA test, and can lead to a premature shift from an evidence-based to a suspect-based investigation,” Rossmo said. “Confirmation bias, a type of selective thinking, then becomes a problem. Human inclination is to confirm our theories by seeking out supporting information, interpreting ambiguous information as backing our beliefs, and minimizing inconsistent information.”
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Russell Edwards' book was the worst book I had ever read. I could not get through one chapter before I gave up and threw it out because he devoted more of the book to himself than the actual case. Edwards boasts and boasts about himself and about 'the moment' he got the shawl like it was the greatest moment in history, like his whole life had been leading up to that moment and on and on and then I had enough. Ripperologists, do not waste your money on 'Naming Jack the Ripper' because this book does not do what it says on the cover.