Kosminski and Victim DNA Match on Shawl

[Observer]

Chris pointed out in the other thread, that Jari has apparently been made aware of this issue. I would think his reaction at being told about it would be very telling. If he seemed non-plussed as though he was well aware of it then it's probably a case of Edwards misreporting the results. If, on the other hand, he seemed surprised, then we probably have a real problem.

Hi Theagenes. It doesn't seem to have deterred him to any extent in appearing alongside Mr Edwards. This to me suggests all is well between the two men. Good post by the way.

[Patrick S]

You're missing my point.

Worship doesn’t enter into it Mick. The thing is I'm told that the "mistake" made by Dr Louhelainen is so basic, so simple that even I would be able to see where he went astray. For the third time, (I'm beginning to sound like Pinkflume) I find it remarkable that a scientist of his standing should make such a basic error.

From page one of this thread, just after I read the link to the Daily Mail article I realised that Mr Edwards book was aimed at the general public. Some of the things he's suggesting are downright silly. In the grand scheme of things is he doing any harm? Hell no. He is not the first to court controversy in writing a suspect based Ripper book, and he'll not be the last. Good luck to him I say. Oh I know the nutcases in here will disagree with me, the knives are out you see, "he's conning the public", will be the call. All I can say is this. Lord forbid if any of their theories make it into book form. As an example, can you imagine the furore should “Sheepgate” hit the bookstores?

Observer

I agree with all of your points, Observer. I don't think you are in danger of sounding like "Pinkmoon", though. I have a vision of a person sitting alone in a dark room, muttering over and over, "None of this is true because the shawl could not have been at any of the murder sites....."

In any event, I'm sorry if I missed it, but what's the error by Louhelainen you mentioned? I'm not sure I've heard it.

[Observer]

You beat me to it Debs. You're both spot on.

I don't understand this unquestioning worship of people with academic qualifications.
Even the real experts (of which JL probably is one) aren't always infallible. And when what tiny aspect of their work we have is only available through a popular book, and a couple of brief interviews, then we can't accept anything.

You're missing my point.

Worship doesn’t enter into it Mick. The thing is I'm told that the "mistake" made by Dr Louhelainen is so basic, so simple that even I would be able to see where he went astray. For the third time, (I'm beginning to sound like Pinkflume) I find it remarkable that a scientist of his standing should make such a basic error.

From page one of this thread, just after I read the link to the Daily Mail article I realised that Mr Edwards book was aimed at the general public. Some of the things he's suggesting are downright silly. In the grand scheme of things is he doing any harm? Hell no. He is not the first to court controversy in writing a suspect based Ripper book, and he'll not be the last. Good luck to him I say. Oh I know the nutcases in here will disagree with me, the knives are out you see, "he's conning the public", will be the call. All I can say is this. Lord forbid if any of their theories make it into book form. As an example, can you imagine the furore should “Sheepgate” hit the bookstores?

Observer

[Fantasio]

3. As Fantastic proposed...

FantasiO, not FantastiC (it's a french comics character, not mr. Fantastic of the american F4).

[Rob Clack]

I personally think £130 is a steep price - but the list of speakers (including Sarah Wise and Paul Begg) is very good this year and with Russell Edwards' and Dr Jari Louhelainen's (as I must henceforth cut and past every time) involvement it is not to be missed - in my opinion.

Some lucksters (who must be called Robert) even got their tickets early apparently - before all this hoo-ha.

Can't be me, as I won't be there.

Robert

[Chris]

At the moment we are reliant on 100 different versions of what various scientific Wikipedia articles say.

Not at all. The same database that Dr Louhelainen is quoted as saying that he used to evaluate the frequency of 314.1C, is freely available here:

http://empop.org/modules/haplotype/

If you run a search for 314.1C (under Profile) and specify the range as 314-316 (because the search engine is clever enough, in effect, to correct 314.1C to 315.1C before it does the search), then you'll see that nearly all the sequences in the database have this mutation.

[Theagenes]

You beat me to it Debs. You're both spot on.

I don't understand this unquestioning worship of people with academic qualifications. Some of the PhD theses I've had to read in my time wouldn't really warrant anything more than the bin. That's becoming increasingly the case in recent years in some institutions. I could mention one about a massacre of aborigines in 19th-century NSW, but I'd better not. The killings certainly occurred but the thesis, and subsequent book, about them is as useful as Edwards's - not big enough for a door-stop, and not much use for owt else.

Even the real experts (of which JL probably is one) aren't always infallible. And when what tiny aspect of their work we have is only available through a popular book, and a couple of brief interviews, then we can't accept anything.

So question on I say.

No doubt! It seems I owe Lynn Cates an apology as there may be one or two "science worshipers" here after all.

Even subject matter experts make mistakes all the time -- they're human. This is why peer review exists and why it is critical.

After reading the book, even taking everything at face value (a generous concession), the only real potentially significant item is the proposed Eddowes match, so focusing on that question seems to be most important to me.

On the face of it, this did seem to have real potential, but the problems that have now been brought light regarding the reported mutation are very legitimate and are in need of addressing -- but it's not that complicated and i think Jari (sorry it's just shorter to type his given name) could address this very quickly without needing to wait for his publication which will be months down the road at best.

As Chris tried to explain to Observer, the issue being brought up is not that hard to understand. You might have to be an expert and have access to the data to have an answer to the problem, but you don't need to be an expert to understand the nature of the problem.

For those who want to have a better understanding I recommend visiting the other thread. For those who are a happy with a synopsis in laymen's terms, I'll give it a try:

Basically the sequence in question where the supposed mutation occurs is a problematic one because of issues in the Cambridge Reference Sequence, the original baseline reference genome that samples are compared to. These issues can sometimes cause problems in the way the bases in this part of the sequence are reported. There is really no such thing as 314.1C -- as Chris said it's just a misreporting of 315.1C, which is a very common result.

The literature that has been found that discusses this problem with results being reported as 314.1C are mostly articles discussing different software programs and how they compensate for the reporting problem.

So yes, this result of 314.1C is something that even an expert like Jari could have misinterpreted because it is problem area -- particularly if, for example, he is using older software that doesn't account for the problem. If this is what happened then it demonstrates exactly why peer review is so critical, because while it could simply be an honest mistake, it's one that would have probably be caught before publication under normal circumstances.

Now that said, I would agree with Observer on the general point that it would still be unusual for Jari to have missed this, as a quick scan of the literature would have revealed the potential problem here -- it is an issue, but it seems to be a "known" issue. And because of that I think Jari deserves the benefit of the doubt until he has a chance to address it, because we are still basing this on what was reported in Edwards book. And I think anypne who has read it carefully will understand that nothing in the book can be trusted as far as accuracy -- even sections that appear to be more or less quoted from Jari. But he really does need to address it soon because right now it doesn't look good.

I think there are several possible scenarios here:

1. Jari was fooled by his software or whatever and mistakenly thought he had a very rare mutation. He told this to Edwards before checking it out more thoroughly and Edwards ran with it. Now that he has been made aware of the problem (according to Chris), we may see him back off his conclusions.

2. Same scenario as above, but Jari caught the issue. It would not surprise me a bit if Jari, in doing more research realized the problem himself and told Edwards he was mistaken, but it was either too late to change the book or Edwards simply ignored the correction and printed the preliminary results because it supported his position -- the book is filled with this kind of cherry-picking.

3. As Fantastic proposed, Jari may have been talking about a different mutation that really is rare and Edwards garbled or conflated what was told to him. Given the problems with the book that Mick Reed has post so many excellent examples of, I don't think that this possiblility should be discounted.

Chris pointed out in the other thread, that Jari has apparently been made aware of this issue. I would think his reaction at being told about it would be very telling. If he seemed non-plussed as though he was well aware of it then it's probably a case of Edwards misreporting the results. If, on the other hand, he seemed surprised, then we probably have a real problem.

[Lechmere]

I personally think £130 is a steep price - but the list of speakers (including Sarah Wise and Paul Begg) is very good this year and with Russell Edwards' and Dr Jari Louhelainen's (as I must henceforth cut and past every time) involvement it is not to be missed - in my opinion.

Some lucksters (who must be called Robert) even got their tickets early apparently - before all this hoo-ha.

[Chris]

Debs, I think he will do a peer-reviewed paper, to talk about his new technique at least.

There's an important point there. Scientific journals are interested in publishing papers only if the work is novel in some sense. They wouldn't be interested in publishing a paper that simply described the application of standard sequencing techniques.

It seems to me that the most important information for us - exactly what parts of the sequences were matched, and what those matching sequences were - is the least publishable part of the work in scientific terms.

On a more positive note, that information could be released without the need for any peer-review process, and without the need for any great expenditure of time by Dr Louhelainen.

[Lechmere]

The fact that they are both going to this years conference shows they are not hiding from the 'enthusiast' audience and as I said irrespective of what is actually covered on their respective official talks and irrespective of what questions are formally asked, no doubt much much more information will be divulged and available afterwards for digestion.
At the moment we are reliant on 100 different versions of what various scientific Wikipedia articles say.

[MrBarnett]

It will be interesting to hear them answer questions side by side. During the Alan Titchmarsh interview, ER was asked if Dr L (whose name he had trouble pronouncing) was '100% certain that it was Kosminski' and his answer was 'Yeah'.

MrB

[Robert]

Debs, I think he will do a peer-reviewed paper, to talk about his new technique at least.

Ed, 100 witnesses = 100 different versions especially when abstruse scientific matters are concerned.

[Debra A]

Debra
I think maybe some people have had replies - but again he is a busy academic and if he gets bombarded with emails from unscientific enthusiasts then it is understandable that replies may be slow in coming back. If he had time to do these replies then no doubt he would have time to construct an academic review paper - which would be a lot more valuable than piece meal replies to e-mails.
But these issues can be put to him at the conference in person and there will undoubtedly be opportunity to talk to him outside the confines of his specific slot at the event.
Perhaps you should book a ticket!

November isn't very far off. Patience!

£130 to ask one very important question?!

[Debra A]

I very much doubt that Dr Louhelainen will leave these questions unanswered for another six weeks.

Fingers crossed.

[Debra A]

So far as JL is concerned, it will depend on what he's there to talk about. According to the programme Lechmere posted yesterday, he is only is only going to talk about how he extracted the DNA. If he really does confine to that, it will be almost useless.

That's right, Mick. I wonder if he will be talking mainly about the laser microscope and the way he was able to remove single cells set on a slide and extract DNA from them. I think that is important to him.