After the DNA Wars: A Mopping up Operation

The “DNA Wars” we are told are over. Two of the key, and at times most effective, participants in the battle, the FBI's Bruce Budowle and the leading early scientific skeptic, Eric Landers, have declared their own private truce and suggested that all are included. The controversial report of the first National Research Council Committee on DNA Evidence has in crucial respects been replaced by a second National Research Council Committee Report on DNA Evidence that has debuted to far better reviews than its predecessor and is likely to erase the earlier report's influence as courts grapple with DNA evidence. Yet all is not quite as peaceful as it appears; DNA2, despite its virtues does not adequately resolve all questions about the significance of DNA evidence, and some veterans of the DNA wars are not yet content to lay down their arms. We can better understand why the Landers-Budowle truce and DNA2 may not resolve all conflict if we first understand why disputes over the population genetics and statistical issues raised by the forensic use of DNA identification evidence became so heated that people came to speak of the “DNA Wars”.