Making decisions in missing person identification cases with low statistical power

The present work proposes a general strategy for dealing with missing person identification cases through DNA-database search. Our main example is the identification of abducted children in the last civic-dictatorship of Argentina, known as the Missing Grandchildren of Argentina. Particularly we focus on those pedigrees where few, or only distant relatives of the missing person are available, resulting in low statistical power. For such complex cases we provide a statistical method for selecting a likelihood ratio (LR) threshold for each pedigree based on error rates. Furthermore, we provide an open-source user friendly software for computing LR thresholds and error rates. The strategy described in the paper could be applied to other large-scale cases of DNA-based identification hampered by low statistical power.

Automated summary

The study proposes a general strategy for dealing with missing person identification cases through DNA-database search, focusing on the identification of abducted children in Argentina during a civic-dictatorship. The researchers provide a statistical method for selecting likelihood ratio thresholds and offer an open-source software for computing LR thresholds and error rates. This strategy could be applied to other large-scale DNA-based identification cases with low statistical power.