Highlights
- •General strategy for dealing with low statistical power in missing person and disaster victim identification cases.
- •Method for selecting a likelihood ratio (LR) threshold for identifications through DNA-database search.
- •Error rates estimated by conditional simulation.
- •Examples based on unsolved cases of ‘Missing Grandchildren of Argentina’.
- •Freely available software.
Abstract
The present work proposes a general strategy for dealing with missing person identification
cases through DNA-database search. Our main example is the identification of abducted
children in the last civic-dictatorship of Argentina, known as the “Missing Grandchildren
of Argentina”. Particularly we focus on those pedigrees where few, or only distant
relatives of the missing person are available, resulting in low statistical power.
For such complex cases we provide a statistical method for selecting a likelihood
ratio (LR) threshold for each pedigree based on error rates. Furthermore, we provide
an open-source user friendly software for computing LR thresholds and error rates.
The strategy described in the paper could be applied to other large-scale cases of
DNA-based identification hampered by low statistical power.
Keywords
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Article Info
Publication History
Published online: April 14, 2021
Accepted:
March 30,
2021
Received in revised form:
February 11,
2021
Received:
September 16,
2020
Identification
Copyright
© 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
