ENFSI DNA Working Group
Definition
The European Network of Forensic Science Institutes DNA Working Group. Coordinates European forensic DNA standards, including the evaluative reporting guidelines adopted by most EU member-state laboratories.
- Full name
- ENFSI DNA Working Group
- Focus of this entry
- Evaluative reporting guidelines for DNA evidence
- Adoption
- Used by most EU member-state DNA laboratories
- Related output
- Coordinates broader European DNA typing standards
Common questions
What problem does an evaluative reporting guideline solve for DNA evidence?+
It standardises how examiners phrase the strength of a DNA match, typically as a likelihood ratio comparing two competing propositions, so that reports from different national laboratories use comparable language and are not overstated as identification when the statistics support only strong support.
Does every EU country apply the guideline identically?+
No. Adoption and the exact verbal scale used can vary by national laboratory and accreditation body, so the underlying likelihood-ratio framework is shared but the specific wording in a report can differ between jurisdictions.
Related terms
- Defence Attorney's Fallacy
- The incorrect argument that a large global or national population means many unrelated individuals could share the profile, while ignoring the geographic...
- Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium (HWE)
- The expected genotype frequency in a large, randomly mating population with no selection, mutation, or migration. Under HWE, the frequency of a...
- Likelihood Ratio (LR)
- The ratio of two conditional probabilities: the probability of the observed evidence given the prosecution's hypothesis (same source), divided by the probability...
- Prior Odds
- The ratio of the probability of the prosecution hypothesis to the probability of the defence hypothesis before the forensic evidence in question...
- Product Rule
- The rule that, under independence, the joint probability of a multi-locus genotype equals the product of the individual locus genotype frequencies. Used...
- Prosecutor's Fallacy
- The error of treating the RMP (or its reciprocal) as the probability that the defendant is innocent, or as the probability that...
- Random Match Probability (RMP)
- The probability that a randomly chosen unrelated person from the relevant population would match the evidence profile by chance. A very small...
- SWGDAM
- Scientific Working Group for DNA Analysis Methods; the US body that publishes interpretation guidelines and validation requirements for forensic DNA laboratories operating...
- Theta (FST) Correction
- A correction factor applied to allele frequency estimates to account for population sub-structure (the tendency for allele frequencies to differ between sub-populations)....