Technology
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I have no idea how poorly the authors of the study communicated their work because I haven't read the study.
Jumping to the conclusion that it's junk because some news blogger wrote an awkward and confusing article about it isn't fair at all. The press CONSISTENTLY writes absolute trash on the basis of scientific papers. That's like, science reporting 101.
And, based on what you're saying, this still sounds completely different. RNA sequencing may be a mechanism to "why", but you would knock my fucking socks off if you could use RNA to predict the physical geometry of a fingerprint. If you could say we have a fingerprint, and we have some RNA, do they belong to the same person? That would be unbelievably massive.
If you read the press release, you'll see that they were rejected by all forensic journals and several general science journals. If you knew anything about science you would know that it costs money, out of the pocket of researchers, to be peer reviewed and published. So they are wasting money submitting their work that most journals deemed not worthy of publishing. If they were rejected by one and accepted by another, maybe we could talk about some merit, but being rejected by all is a tall order that simply says they either don't know what they're talking about or utterly suck at communicating. As rarely all journals share the same scope and point of view.
Now, normally I would read the article and tell you, how I did read the paper. Unfortunately I can't, because it isn't actually available, since Science Advances, who allegedly published it, or is going to publish it, has nothing of this article in their database. Trust me, I searched for it.
I would bet money that they are pampered silicon valley hedge fund babies who want to make it on academy with AI and are just going to blow money until they are recognized, no matter by whom as long as it gives them some veneer of prestige to form a startup and hoard money with some tech piece. My belief is supported on the fact that the research is being heralded by Hod Lipson who is part of Facility Makerspace, which is an entrepreneurship, robotics and tech oriented organization. They have no background, interest or passion for forensics, their whole shtick is finding ways to make money with tech. I've seen the types parading college halls like they own the place, acting as if they're the next Mark Zuckerberg, when they haven't even a fraction of the knowledge that he had when he dropped out.
I would certainly expect that you are more easily impressed than the people who actually know something about forensics.