Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Social and Behavioral Sciences
University of Michigan Law School
National Research Council Committee Report on DNA Testing in Forensic Science
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Law
Dna, Science And The Law: Two Cheers For The Ceiling Principle, Richard O. Lempert
Dna, Science And The Law: Two Cheers For The Ceiling Principle, Richard O. Lempert
Articles
The ceiling principle is an intentionally conservative way of estimating the frequency with which individuals who share particular alleles appear in the general population. It establishes frequencies for each allele by taking random samples of 100 individuals from each of 15 to 20 populations and using the largest frequency with which the allele is found in any of these populations or 5 percent, whichever is larger, as an estimate of the allele's frequency in the population of interest. These frequencies are then multiplied to yield an estimate of the likelihood that a randomly selected person would exhibit the same allelic …