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Within-Laboratory Precision and Among-Laboratory Concordance in RCMP and U.S. Forensic Laboratories

 

David L. Duewer1, Dennis J. Reeder1, Sylvain Lalonde2, and Ron M. Fourney3
1Chemical Science and Technology Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology
2Biology Section, Forensic Laboratory Edmonton, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
3DNA Methods and Data Base Unit, Central Forensic Laboratory, Royal Canadian Mounted Police

 

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All six Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) laboratories use a virtually identical RFLP measurement protocol, including: experimental procedure, equipment models, material sources, analyst training, and management policy. While very similar, many variants of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) –recommended RFLP protocol are used in U.S. forensic laboratories. Evaluation of historical cell line control measurements from casework autoradiograms has enabled the quantitative estimation of the within-laboratory precision and among-laboratory concordance components of measurement uncertainty for both sets of laboratories. Measurement precision is nearly the same in the two countries for DNA fragments of size 1000 base pairs (bp) to 10,000 bp. However, measurement concordance among RCMP laboratories is clearly superior to that within the U.S. forensic community. Concordance among U.S. laboratories is not improved through simple mathematical adjustments. As the number of RFLP data accessible through the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System increase, further reduction of among-laboratory RFLP measurement uncertainty could reduce the number of potential matches needing further evaluation. Community-wide protocol standardization efforts may be the most effective way to further improve among-laboratory RFLP measurement concordance.


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