Impact of allelic dropout on evidential value of forensic DNA profiles using RMNE.

ABSTRACT

MOTIVATION Two methods are commonly used to report on evidence carried by forensic DNA profiles the 'Random Man Not Excluded' (RMNE) approach and the likelihood ratio (LR) approach. It is often claimed a major advantage of the LR method that dropout can be assessed probabilistically. RESULTS: In this article, a new RMNE measure is proposed that like-wise accounts for allelic dropout in an observed forensic DNA profile. We discuss the necessary calculations, underline their simplicity and provide a tool for performing the calculations.