Skeptics Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for scientific skepticism. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
For example, how did they identify Osama bin Ladin? How can they identify with such confidence a DNA match?
How can you compare DNA against a sister and determine that it is indeed Osama bin Ladin?
The man could have been a relative, not a perfect match.
From NewScientist:
Using DNA from many half-siblings could produce a DNA match of greater than 90 per cent confidence, but it would be difficult to get as high as 99.9 per cent without a closer relative says Rhonda Roby, a forensic geneticist at the University of North Texas Health Science Center, Fort Worth.
Roby, who led the team using DNA evidence to identify the remains of people killed in the 9/11 attacks in 2001, says that the statistical analysis based on DNA from half-siblings is more complex and less reliable than analysis based on DNA from a closer relative like a parent or child.
There are reports that one of bin Laden's sons was also killed in the raid.
Roby says DNA from a son and several half-siblings could confirm Osama's identity with 99.9 per cent accuracy.
If, however, the government was able to obtain DNA from bin Laden's body, his son and also that son's biological mother – who might have been at the compound during the raid, it could perform DNA profiling with a "full paternity trio", assuring 99.9 per cent accuracy, Roby says.
According to ABC:
DNA collected from bin Laden's body Sunday was compared to DNA from multiple relatives, a U.S. intelligence official told ABC News.
The U.S. is believed to have collected DNA samples from bin Laden family members in the years since the 9/11 attacks that triggered the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.
The New York Times says the same:
Officials said they collected multiple DNA samples from Bin Laden’s relatives in the years since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Bin Laden did not have any full siblings. He did have more than 50 half-siblings, some of whom have close ties to the United States and had long ago distanced themselves from him.
Christie Wilcox explains in a Scientific American article how the get a DNA fingerprint and that nowadays it takes only a few hours.
