There is a definite lack of common educational and training programs in Europe in Forensic Genetics and harmonization and implementation of expert qualification schemes are urgently needed. Currently, experts to carry out routine casework are recruited by governmental (Police, Justice), academic (Institutes of Legal Medicine), or private laboratories from academic graduates usually with a backg...

Among biomedical scientists, there is a great deal of controversy over the nature of race, the relevance of racial categories for research, and the proper methods of using racial variables. This article argues that researchers and scholars should avoid a binary-type argument, in which the question is whether to use race always or never. Researchers should instead focus on developing standards f...

The assignment of haplogroups to mitochondrial DNA haplotypes contributes substantial value for quality control, not only in forensic genetics but also in population and medical genetics. The availability of Phylotree, a widely accepted phylogenetic tree of human mitochondrial DNA lineages, led to the development of several (semi-)automated software solutions for haplogrouping. However, current...

While traditional forensic genetics has been oriented towards using human DNA in criminal investigation and civil court cases, it currently presents a much wider application range, including not only legal situations sensu stricto but also and, increasingly often, to preemptively avoid judicial processes. Despite some difficulties, current forensic genetics is progressively incorporating the an...

Many forensic genetics problems can be handled using structured systems of discrete variables, for which Bayesian networks offer an appealing practical modelling framework, and allow inferences to be computed by probability propagation methods. However, when standard assumptions are violated for example when allele frequencies are unknown, there is identity by descent or the population is heter...

Many forensic genetics problems can be handled using structured systems of discrete variables, for which Bayesian networks offer an appealing practical modeling framework, and allow inferences to be computed by probability propagation methods. However, when standard assumptions are violated—for example, when allele frequencies are unknown, there is identity by descent or the population is heter...

This review describes the social and ethical responses to the history of innovations in forensic genetics and their application to criminal investigations. Following an outline of the three recurrent social perspectives that have informed these responses (crime management, due process, and genetic surveillance), it goes on to introduce the repertoire of ethical considerations by describing a se...

Race is a core concept in science and society. Yet, the meaning of the concept is constantly changing and varies by language and country. In science, race was once an unchallenged concept that was used to describe human biological or genetic variation, but we now know that dividing individuals into races is typological and explains a small fraction of variation. In this sense, race is an outdat...