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Pet DNA testing company in doghouse after identifying human as canine
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2024
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They also don't report the confidence of their results. DNA tests, even the kind used for forensics in criminal investigations, don't give perfect results, there's always some uncertainty. I think there are probably a lot of instances where they have a very low confidence in the results but send them out anyway.
As of today, it is impossible to report an accurate confidence value for these kinds of analyses. The required theoretical work has not been done yet, and of course may turn out impossible. However, there are tons of ways to estimate confidence.
One of the other companies cited in the article seems to be a bit better about this. They seem to filter out non-dog DNA, and if there is not enough dog DNA left after this, then they report that the sample was bad.