flawed paternity testing
Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2020 2:33 pm
This article is fascinating, and details the journalist's long battle with a company that does paternity testing, after they sued him.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/pe ... nter-libel
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/pe ... nter-libel
Kathryn and other customers who sought follow-up tests from labs using conventional methods again got results that contradicted HGC’s conclusions. And experts told me that some of HGC’s testing reports were scientifically implausible because the results were inconsistent with the known evolutionary history of the Y chromosome, which is passed from father to son.
Posing as customers to conduct my investigation at New Scientist, we sent in a blood sample from my editor (a woman who was not pregnant), plus cheek swabs from a male colleague and I. The results came back with a DNA profile for the nonexistent fetus, and indicated that I was its father.
All of this evidence — and more — was heard in March and April 2018 in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Toronto. Well before trial, my lawyers obtained a court order giving our main scientific expert, Bruce Budowle of the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth, access to HGC’s lab, its testing protocols, and results from studies that Melekhovets claimed had validated his test. It was the first time that any independent scientist had been able to scrutinize his work.