Episode 607 Scott Adams: Othram CEO David Mittleman About Genome Crime Solving, Mueller Reruns
Date: 2019-07-24 | Duration: 38:03
Topics
DNA provides height prediction, eye color, general characteristics Reconstructing damaged DNA samples from crime scenes “Touch DNA” and DNA by sniffing the air Othram - Justice through genomics https://www.othram.com Cameras everywhere and DNA ID advancements All major crimes may soon be solvable Mueller isn’t presenting an image that gives confidence in testimony Expect a ton of forgettable news from Mueller’s testimony DOJ opening MAJOR tech investigation Google has two bad options and an unsolvable problem Omar and Tlaib’s old tweets paint an interesting picture Andrew Yang’s favorite curse word and his poll numbers
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> [!note] Rough Transcript
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## Transcript
[0:05]
I'm pom pom pom pom pom pom pom pom pom pom pom pom hey everybody come on in here those of you who are not glued to the Muller testimony which I call the summer reruns it's Muller again you know you can't get enough of Mahler you know what I can't get enough of the Muller report we'll talk about that in a little bit but we have a special guest who I hope will be signing in any moment so we can we can talk to him all introduce them in a moment but but we have to do first things first and the first thing first is we have to do a little thing called the simultaneous sip it starts when you grab a cup or a mug or a glass it might be a Stein a cellist accurate it could be a thermos maybe a flask it could be a canteen or even a vessel of any kind you could fill it with your favorite liquid I'm partial to coffee and it's because
[1:05]
I'm partial to coffee and it's because of the dopamine yet I get every little sip of coffee that I enjoy with you goes straight to my brain wakes me up it makes the day amazing join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the simultaneous that good stuff let me do a little check in here and it looks as though we have our guests and I'm going to invite him and introduce them at the same time because I can do more than one thing at a time David are you here Dave hey let me give you a little introduction we have as our guest dr. David middleman and David is the CEO of auth room am i pronouncing that correctly yes
[2:07]
correctly yes the first technology company to apply all of the power keywords all of the power of modern sequence of modern sequencing and genomics in a forensics environment in other words solving crimes and dr. Middleton got his started in the human genome project so he knows what he's doing and later received his PhD in biophysics from Baylor College of Medicine and you've worked in the lezzy Baylor's human genome sequencing center and you've been involved in some startups and now you are the CEO of author and you know your stuff you know your genome would that be fair to say yeah all right so let's get right into the the fun meat of this what is it that the FBI and and crime organizations could do before with DNA and what is it that Ahram brings that's different and
[3:09]
that Ahram brings that's different and new sure so the you may have heard of CODIS that's the set of markers that I established for identifying people was built 30 years ago and it's it relies in looking at 20 markers in your DNA and if you take those markers and and and and mark them then if you leave your DNA somewhere they can make the claim that you were at that at that point either at a crime scene or somewhere and the DNA matches because the 20 markers that you have in the crime scene match so in essence the current DNA use would be not really much more sophisticated than a fingerprint in the sense that if you don't already have somebody's fingerprints on file it's not going to help you to catch their fingerprints at the scene because there's nothing to match it to would that be a good analogy that's correct the premise is that when you find somebody and that way if they committed another crime you'll catch them again
[4:09]
another crime you'll catch them again all right so what do you bring that's different from the that current model where they have to be in the database already or or you can't catch them there are two things that we're bringing the table the first one is instead of looking at twenty markers we look at the entire genome so there's there's three billion letters to look at lots of markers so we look at all of it the second thing that we do is we focus on using that information to either describe somebody or identify someone without having to have them in in the FBI database so they don't need to have been previously identified to be found using this approach and how does that work how do you find somebody by their DNA if you don't already have a copy to to look for so there's a lot of things you can learn from DNA you know just to run through a brief list first of all just looking at your DNA sequence you could infer where where you might have been from your ancestral
[5:11]
might have been from your ancestral lineage there's information that that you can find in the mitochondrial sequence that's the part of the DNA that you get only from mom and you can trace the maternal lineage several generations back if you're a guy you've also got a y chromosome that comes only from your dad you can follow that all the way back all the rest of your DNA can be used to basically match you as close as possible to parts of the world where other folks with the same DNA would have originated from those so give me that in in layman's terms is that going to tell me if I'm if you're looking for a perpetrator who's Irish or elbonian or or Anna could I mean through the history of time country borders have changed but certainly like gross approximations of where in the world your your folks or you may have come from is determinable from DNA okay and could you go so far as to tell somebody's let's say height or could you tell okay yes so so once we
[6:13]
could you tell okay yes so so once we get to that point the next thing we can do is and just jumping jumping back to the ancestry part is if you know where people who are from the world you can find people that are relatives right so you can find relative matches you can find recent close and distant relatives and then and then moving away from relationship testing you can definitely determine a lot of things about certainly physically and and there's there's things that you'll find for example I'm like you know tools like 23andme you know other sites that try to describe eye color hair color but it's gotten a lot more advanced my co-founder Steve Shu he works in an area called polygenic scores so so for a long time we were looking for markers where one gene would cause one disease sickle cell anemia is a good example you have one gene one little change and that one gene causes a very obvious change in the way you are yup sickle cell anemia now but what we've discovered is a lot of traits
[7:14]
what we've discovered is a lot of traits including physical traits they're determined by many genes and many markers in many genes and around genes and so that's why they call it telegenic there's lots of genetic factors that are playing a role and polygenic scores take sometimes tens of thousands of markers into consideration in determining what you look like and so so yes to answer your question using polygenic scores my co-founder Steve Shu has been able to predict height for example down to inches wow that's a pretty high research is is it possible and I'm sure you can't quite do it today but could you imagine a time where we could reconstruct an actual artist rendition of a perpetrator of a crime from nothing but a good sample of DNA so I think I think it would be challenging to draw someone's face from scratch from DNA but certainly a lot of the landmarks and a lot of the unique features on your face many of which are used in face recognition those
[8:15]
which are used in face recognition those probably have genetic correlates and so so certainly you would be able to to match faces to DNA sequences well so what what databases do you have available to you to you or just law enforcement have it available to find a relative because if you can find a relative then your your narrowing it down right so yeah we found a cousin and you can ask the cousin a cousin do you know anybody and your family who lives in you know Detroit and then you might you might be able to narrow down well but what databases does law enforcement have access to accepts or dated a law-enforcement's own databases so a lot of folks have been using public genealogy databases the one that's been on the news the most is Jed match there are some other commercial and public databases that are available that have aggregated consumer data there's 26 million people that have been tested with consumer tests and and that doesn't
[9:17]
with consumer tests and and that doesn't include everyone has been tested this is a consumer test like 23andme and ancestry but a lot of them will move their data to other sites so they can compare you know themselves so for example let's say you tested an ancestry and I tested at 23andme and we think we might be brothers there's no way for us to compare because the databases are separate so you and I might choose to put our data into a public database and there I can compare directly to you and say ah you're my brother you can use that same approach if you're trying to find the relationship to a sample from a person you don't know and it's a little more yeah so now you have me worried so I have used 23andme and I have checked the box that says can you see if you can connect me with any family members who might also be part of the system have I without knowing it have I released my DNA
DNA no beyond Biondi and 23andme you have not so 23 does an exceptional job of
[10:18]
not so 23 does an exceptional job of preserving privacy and they do not allow access to their database and you were entirely safe from any any public sharing if you keep your DNA within 23andme now but wait both but that means that law enforcement also does not have access to it right that's correct and whether that changes in the future who knows you probably remember in the 90s Internet service providers would guard their data very preciously but after a few subpoenas they kind of started working a little bit more so I don't know where the future will go but certainly their policy is not to cooperate with law enforcement and what about the ancestry databases ancestry.com and anything like that do they they also protect yours your DNA ancestry.com also also has a closed policy you can't search that database unless you're in the database so then one databases are there except for databases in which I have willingly given my DNA but they're going to
[11:19]
given my DNA but they're going to protect it so what sources do you have that you that law enforcement has access to yes so again we might choose to move our data to a public database one of them is called Jed match his GED MATC H and and that's one of a few databases that are out there that allow you to move your data willingly to a space where you can compare across companies okay but and at this point are there enough people who have done that so they what let's say what percentage of US citizens would you say have at least a relative in the first or second cousin closeness who are in a database would you say that we're at a point where 20 percent of us have at least one relative who's in a database that law enforcement could get to or is a closer to 80 percent well hopefully mastering it is
[12:21]
percent well hopefully mastering it is like you know if you look for example at Northern Europeans so people with northern European ancestry you probably need about a hundred thousand people unrelated to have a 90 percent chance of finding someone down to like a second or third cousin and so so that's that's kind of an indirect way of answering your question that's that's a analysis that we did you'd probably had a hundred thousand unrelated Northern Europeans to grab 90% of us Northern Europeans to a second or third cousin and and Jed match for example has over a million people in their database so I would say I would say there's a fair chance certainly for folks of Northern European ancestry that you can find you can find some connection now it's not perfect I mean a third cousin is very very distantly related obviously and and and it doesn't guarantee that you can work up
up we tree and figure out who the person is but I think there's a reasonable chance and I think it'll only increase if you look at the growth in consumer genetic
[13:22]
look at the growth in consumer genetic testing it's um it's grown tremendously and it's you know and and there's more and more data being pushed in the public sector so so the other thing that you guys do is you reconstruct bad DNA samples right so if there's a crime scene or it's an old crime scene yep so how how groundbreaking is your is your methodology for reconstructing some DNA that maybe in the old days you couldn't use at all yeah I think I think that's actually the the exciting part for me anyways because we know on the data side data will increase it's like it's like face recognition eventually there'll be more and more data the question isn't should be used if the question is how do we use it responsibly it would be no better to say we should stop doing face recognition that's not gonna happen on the lab side there the DNA as it sits you know DNA is pretty stable but as it sits for decades and decades if two things happen number one it gets chemically damaged and it begins to break into little pieces and the smaller the pieces the harder it is to analyze
[14:23]
the pieces the harder it is to analyze and the second thing is it gets mixed up with other stuff gets contaminated it can be mixed with other DNA can be mixed with bacteria and so all those things make it incredibly challenging and usually a very little DNA right it's like you have tons of blood there's like a little piece of a bone or you know a stain be the clothing and so it's a real challenge to be able to get any useful information off such a small sample and we've done a lot on the laboratory side to do things like complete the bacterial content so we can have more human and have the ability to pull that sequence more cost-effectively we we've done we've done work to see if we can really really take down to the lowest levels of limits and still you know very tiny quantities of DNA there's still be able to get most of the sequence back we don't get all the so yes so so we're competing with the the Muller investigation here so so good so I'm gonna guess I'll never compete with so
[15:24]
gonna guess I'll never compete with so let me ask some key questions and then it will wrap up with that what percentage of less a violent crime scenes would you guess leave at least some DNA somewhere if there's violence and it's the the United States and you know somebody got hurt what percentage of them that less they don't have direct witnesses would also have some DNA that would be useful half twenty percent eighty percent what would you say
that's a good that's a good question i I don't know okay but because I'm wondering how close are we getting to a prediction I made many years ago they're all badger crimes would be solved between you you've got the cameras that are gonna catch everything in public you've got DNA that will get a lot of stuff that happens behind closed doors and then have you heard of any technology that actually sniffs it can
[16:26]
technology that actually sniffs it can actually sniff a crime scene as if it were let's say a mechanical nose have you ever heard of that technology I have not because because I was wondering if that picks up DNA can you pick up DNA from the air you can DNA can be aerosolized but but generally these crime scenes these crime scenes would be you know the DNA would actually be on some material and be sitting there so you'd be basically it'd be less than it thing and more like scraping so if you had let's say you had a clean room and you introduced one naked human just as an experiment and said walk around the room and then leave would do you think we would ever be able to sniff that room and determine who was there based on their DNA um we'd be able to get some information so so you know the FBI talks a lot about touch DNA so it's like you touched a doorknob or your your your hand touched glass you know there's there's some oily residue left on the on
[17:27]
there's some oily residue left on the on the window or the glass can you pull DNA and the answer is probably yes but um but you know it may be small that you might only get some of the DNA right so getting all the DNA it's gonna be it's gonna be hard from just a little bit of just a little bit of a fragment alright um we're gonna we're gonna wrap up now is there anything that we need to know that we did not cover dr. David middleman CEO of author um what what is there anything that we left out um no I think I think I think you're spot-on I think in the next five to ten years I think face recognition and DNA analysis will allow you to basically identify track and resolve most most violent crimes and so so I think that's happening I think the most important thing we can do is number one consent and improperly explain to people what's happening when they share information about their DNA well in public databases and also to develop pulse you're on the right way to use it I think I think it's naive to just try to pretend it's not happening or or
[18:29]
to pretend it's not happening or or suggest that we shouldn't shouldn't use face recognition or DNA analysis I think we need an education and if there's a law enforcement in this country or other countries I suppose we want to contact you if they've got a cold case or for some DNA and they don't know what to do with it they would find you at a tharam yeah I am calm and domestic I'm bringing value to our government okay so you know so that's oth our a.m. and hopefully maybe we expose some more people to this idea they can find you maybe we solved a few crimes today I appreciate it thanks for having me all right thank you David yeah we're we're gonna thank you and move on alright I wanted you all to hear that because yeah it's really interesting to find out where things are heading you know we've got zillions of rape kits they haven't been tested we've got all these colds crimes we've got questions about crime everywhere and there are some technologies I could
[19:31]
and there are some technologies I could take a big bite out of that if we use them right all right you all want to talk about Muller I turned on Muller a little bit before I came on and I was listening to him and I'll tell you my first impression did you have the same first impression that Muller doesn't seem as competent as you hoped he would be for the the type of jobs they had did you all have the same reaction that I don't know if it's because of age baby there's age plus some specific physical problem now I don't have any reason to believe he's not mentally there but he's not presenting a an image that makes you confident wouldn't you say I would say that people's confidence and his his ability probably is a bit degraded this may also explain why he was so invisible
[20:31]
may also explain why he was so invisible during the entire investigation it seems as though he was just sort of missing in action now I thought I would just thought it was entirely because he was being professional and didn't want to talk to the press but maybe there was another reason maybe talking to the press was a bad strategy even if he'd thought it was something he should do for his job I would expect that there will be tons of news that comes out of this and it will all be forgettable news let me give you a preview of all the news that's going to come out of this blah blah blah he used these words before blah blah blah now he's using these other words we think these first words may be slightly in conflict with these other words unless you listen to what Bill Bar set which was interpreting his words but then there were his other words in the report and then he referred to the report where his words were and at the end of it you're gonna say well I
[21:34]
at the end of it you're gonna say well I think what happened was whatever I thought was going to happen in the first place I thought so people are gonna come away from this with exactly the same opinion they went into it most I mean I'm sure there'll be one or two people in the United States who changed their minds but I think the people who say there was nothing there are gonna listen to it and say we didn't learn anything do nothing there and the people who say there's absolutely something there are gonna come away from his egg well I guess we showed the country there's absolutely there and the only reason that Muller did not recommend indictment is because the president was a sitting president and then of course the president will come out and say well no collusion no obstruction of justice which and by the way when the president says no obstruction of justice yeah I would say that's a pretty generous interpretation of what's there I would rather say that what mullard what Muller concluded was
[22:37]
what mullard what Muller concluded was that there's not not evidence of obstruction of justice he didn't say that there's obstruction of justice he said well there's not not evidence so that's a weird standard to say that we we can't figure out this somebody didn't do it
all right so let's wait until the end of the Moller thing before we can say much maybe I'll pop back on here maybe I won't I don't know depends what they say here's some more fun apparently the Justice Department is opening an investigation of the major internet tech companies to determine whether they engage in quote anti-competitive practices how about that so the government has decided to maybe try to see if we could have a fair election this next time because as you know I
[23:37]
this next time because as you know I think there's Epstein was the expert who recently told Congress that Google alone could be moving millions of votes by manipulating the search there's also a new video from Project Veritas today in which a Google insider is saying that we should be worried about Google manipulating results The Insider doesn't seem to be somebody who was personally involved with any of that stuff it's just somebody who was on the inside who was worried about it same as we are but I don't know that they introduced any new information but it will look like that so it's it helps the narrative so this is interesting because here's the problem between now and the election I don't know how much the Justice Department can discover but I do think that the big tech companies and Google I think has the most don't worry about I do think that they are probably hustling to clean
[24:39]
that they are probably hustling to clean up their algorithms so their main it may not be any in the end there may not be any kind of legal action but this amount of scrutiny is going to make it difficult for Google to rig the election the way they obviously want it to now what's interesting is that when you and I say well Google obviously wanted and continues to want to manipulate results and they will go and do that but it makes you wonder if the people who were working there at Google would use the same words to describe what they are obviously doing I think we're beyond the point of wondering if it's happening is that fair to say is it fair to say we've gone beyond the point of wondering if Google is manipulating results and now we're just talking about it as a fact that happened right can we all agree with that now what what there is still a question about is how much difference
[25:39]
question about is how much difference they made and what their intentions were because those are different questions it's an it's fair to say that Google moved lots of votes it is not in evidence in a way that I would say is proven to say that they colluded to move them a certain way to get a certain outcome because I think if you talk to Google they say no all we're doing is de-emphasizing fake news and they could make a case on that I think they could totally make a case that they're not trying to move the election they're just showing less fake news but it would be them deciding what is fake and what is not so for example if you had a climate change denier somebody who is an actual scientist would there would their study get as much attention as the majority because the majority would say climate change is a big problem if you had an outlier who
[26:40]
a big problem if you had an outlier who said well I just did this study it's been peer-reviewed and all the good stuff but it goes against the majority would that get the same kind of play as if that study had gone the other way and and confirmed or even said climate change was way worse than we thought which one of those would have got an equal play well if you're Google you have to decide which of those two is true news and which of those is fake how in the world can Google possibly make that decision so they have two choices and neither of them are acceptable if I'm if I'm a you know side with Google without you hating me too much you have to acknowledge it's that it is in some ways an unsolvable problem because you're asking Google to make a judgment of what's true and what's not because if they just ran everything you would get as many Holocaust deniers as
[27:41]
would get as many Holocaust deniers as you had you know Holocaust historians and then if you're searching for information and you're you know you knew nothing about this topic you'd say I know Google has given me a lot of results that say the Holocaust didn't happen and also a lot of results to say it did so I don't know I guess I can't tell if it happened or not is that the world you want to live in no no you actually need Google to make some decisions about what's true because the alternative is even worse so you have two bad choices one bad choice is that Google doesn't make any decisions about what you see and then you eventually just see garbage garbage would be the guaranteed outcome of no filtering yeah absolute garbage eventually and the other and then if they go the other way and they do make the decisions how do you know they're making the right ones how do you know it's impossible
[28:43]
how do you know it's impossible you know how are they supposed to know what is true and and what's not the public can't tell the news can't tell which news are they supposed to look at don't you think that if Google got to decide what is real and what is not they would just say huh I guess Fox News is not real news or Breitbart is not real news so we'll just run MSNBC and CNN well that would be a problem that would be a real problem how about when they talk about all these hoaxes how many of them do they get right and how many doesn't thinking they get wrong so it's an unsolvable problem but we should at least know what we're seeing what we're not some transparency would be good so there's that to my great amusement and yours to some clever folks have dug into the the older tweets of Omar and Talib the two people who
[29:44]
of Omar and Talib the two people who were on the quote squad that the president referred to as maybe some people who should go back where they came from fix that and then come back here and and tell us how to do it now that the president was accused of being a racially insensitive for saying go back where you came from and then come come back after you've learned how to do it to people of color but it turns out that those same people of color are on record as using exactly the same language of you know why don't we deport you or go back to your country or whatever so they've used the same language in public in a political context now that should tell you that that's normal talk and if you are politically correct you'd say yes normal talk it's something that if you are a person of color and you're talking to someone who isn't or you're talking to someone who's the same same persuasion
[30:45]
someone who's the same same persuasion that you are well then it's okay but if you're a president Trump and you're not a person of color and you're talking to somebody who is well then it's not okay whose rule is that well much of society has that rule it's a rule that at least half of the country would say yeah yeah that is a rule it depends who's talking it's that it's only bad if the right person is saying it's the wrong person then it's bad it's not just the words are bad who is it who disagrees with that interpretation of the world President Trump and all of his supporters President Trump ran on the promise the promise I'm gonna call it a promise because I think it was as good as a promise the promise that he would not be politically correct president Trump candidate Trump ran on an explicit campaign platform of not
[31:45]
an explicit campaign platform of not caring what you think about that and if you think about it it might have been the smartest thing he ever did by simply saying I acknowledge that political correctness is the thing hear me hear me as clearly as you can I'm going to act like it isn't a thing I'm Joe if you vote for me you're gonna get you know this would be President Trump essentially I'm summarizing he's basically saying if you vote for me you're gonna get you're gonna get political incorrectness that's what I offer and I'm not apologizing for it I think it's an advantage and you should vote for it then millions of people heard his message and the totality of his message and said yeah yeah I'll take that this package is the package I want to vote for and then they voted for it and then he got in office and then he did exactly what he said he was going to do he talked in a politically incorrect
[32:46]
do he talked in a politically incorrect way what makes something politically incorrect versus just wrong you know where's the dividing line between things that all of us would agree okay that's just wrong you know that that's not political correctness that's just wrong where's that dividing line well one clear way you could make a dividing line is if he's saying the same sorts of things that other people are saying and the other people are not getting in trouble for it that would be one way to know it's a question of political correctness and not a question of the words or the ideas it's who's saying it and when that makes it wrong political correctness so I would say that remember how long ago was it was it was it ten years ago approximately ten or twelve years ago we were talking about President Trump's tweets about some members of the squad should go back home oh oh wait it wasn't ten years ago that's right it was one week ago and a
[33:53]
that's right it was one week ago and a week ago it seemed like the worst thing in the world and he's done this time and this time he's gone too far didn't you have all those thoughts one week ago and what do you think about it today today you think about it as oh it's something they said - all right moving on let's talk about Muller nothing a week ago it seemed like the entire world was on fire today it seems like oh okay it's just political incorrectness that's what he said he was going to do boom nothing so that's what we got otherwise we've got Muller to listen to and you all want to do that I can tell by my numbers on here most of you at least half of you have gone through watch Muller I'm gonna do that too if Muller makes any big news I might come back but I'm not expecting anything that would look like big news somebody said remember when stormy was
[34:55]
somebody said remember when stormy was going to take him down yeah did you see stormy damages latest tweet about her lawyer man did that hurt bad talk about something turning bad for a turning bad for Trump's opposition stormy Daniels and her avenatti they just went down and huge flaming balls of flame yes flaming balls of flame I just said that so Muller is boring us and I think maybe making the country really wish they'd stop talking about it I don't think somebody says we want more DNA talk we want our forty billion dollars back that's right okay nothing else going on and I'm gonna let you get back to oh this has to be
[35:55]
let you get back to oh this has to be mentioned if you haven't seen this on Twitter there was some entity that was interviewing the candidates and they talked to at least Buddha judge in at least Andrew yang I don't know else they talked to but at the end of their interview I guess they have a thing where they say what's your favorite curse word and so first they show Buddha judge being asked what's your favorite curse word and apparently he didn't know the question was coming because he was a little unprepared for it and he just laughs and says well I don't think that would be you know a good thing to say so that's Buddha judges answer is just smile and giggle and so I don't think I should say that and then they say they enter yang what's your favorite your favourite swearword and yang looks straight in the camera and he goes I want to say the word coz you've probably got kids in the room some of you but they bleep out his word but I think I think Yang's poll ratings were up three percent just because he looked at the
[36:56]
percent just because he looked at the camera and he didn't hesitate he goes so there was no question what the word was it was the f-word if you're listening to this and not reading my lips but it made me it made me think oh well there's a candidate who has at least a fighting chance of telling us the truth there's somebody who if you asked him a question he might actually answer the question and trying to think of any example where anybody is yet caught yang avoiding a question have you seen that yet has anybody seen the Andrew yang avoided question because I'll bet it's never happened but I'll bet you could find I bet you could find recordings of every other candidate sort of answering a different question or we're saying why the question isn't fair so he's the most interesting candidate by far I still haven't made connection with his somebody on his staff who was gonna hook me up with an interview I should follow up on that but for now
[37:58]
should follow up on that but for now let's go I'll watch Muller and we'll talk about that later bye for now