Rickeeeeeeeeeeeee!

[CARTOON REALITY]

You may be better off asking a barrister. Which I'm not, but that's not to say, in a manner of speaking, I wouldn't like to be. Those wigs and gowns look the part don't they? Especially when walking in solemn procession. And I believe the pay is rather good too, but that's not to say I would only be in it for the money - although come to think of it I probably would be.
Slow day Unit?
I'm designing an Easter Egg Hunt poster at the moment and pulling my hair out about lack of paid work.
If I make myself bald I can always wear a wig (the gown would be optional.)

[Dinosaur]

I'd imagine it's because they can't prove that there isn't someone else with the same DNA profile (albeit how unlikely), whereas they can definitively prove that two sufficiently differing results can't have come from the same person - at a guess. For R3 all they could really show decisively was that it wasn't him (assuming that his mother was really his mother), the result they've got has instead shown merely that it could be him

[CARTOON REALITY]

I have a relative who works in DNA research - he made one very good point about all of this, and a point all DNA specialists readily acknowledge - a reasonably high proportion of humans have a proclivity towards having extra-marital affairs and always have done (this is not behaviour from which males, females or members of royal families are exempt - and remember children fathered by a paterfamilias but not by the materfamilias are often absorbed silently into households without a word said, if the traffic is in the other direction how is the Paterfamilias to know he's been a cuckhold?) Therefore that chap they took the swab off, when one marches back through his forbears, the statistical probability of him not being a descendant of Richard goes through the roof.
It could be added that due to this very natural human conduct none of us are who we presume we are - nature does not care a whit for Surnames.
Now - who's your daddy?

[kevin wooldridge]

I have a relative who works in DNA research - he made one very good point about all of this, and a point all DNA specialists readily acknowledge - a reasonably high proportion of humans have a proclivity towards having extra-marital affairs and always have done (this is not behaviour from which males, females or members of royal families are exempt - and remember children fathered by a paterfamilias but not by the materfamilias are often absorbed silently into households without a word said, if the traffic is in the other direction how is the Paterfamilias to know he's been a cuckhold?) Therefore that chap they took the swab off, when one marches back through his forbears, the statistical probability of him not being a descendant of Richard goes through the roof. It could be added that due to this very natural human conduct none of us are who we presume we are - nature does not care a whit for Surnames.
Now - who's your daddy?

Absolutely right. One wonders why they didn't approach the British Royal family - perhaps because they might discover not, was all it was thought to be..!! I seem to remember Prince Phillip was happy to donate DNA to identify the bones of the Romanovs (his first cousins), but no-one seems to want to volunteer to go back beyond Princess Alexandrina (or Victoria as she is more popularly known).....there is a chap who has been trying to get Victoria's mother's personal physician disinterred from a cemetery in Sevenoaks for the past 30 years or so, 'cos he reckons there may be a genetic link to the current royal family. Now that would make good TV....

[Oxbeast]

[quote=kevin wooldridge]Absolutely right. One wonders why they didn't approach the British Royal family - perhaps because they might discover not, was all it was thought to be..!! QUOTE]

The current royal family is descended from the House of Orange and the House of Bourbon, two of Europe's tastiest houses. They are only distantly related to Richard III, last of the house of Plantagenet. It all gets a bit switched about in the 17th century http://www.britroyals.com/stuart.htm


A negative DNA match could proably be taken not to mean anything, wheras there was a paper trail leading to the relative in Canada which might indicate how close of a match to suggest.

[Dinosaur]

Eeerm, thats probably one reason they went for the exclusively female line, doesn't matter who the father(s) was, and pretty difficult to conceal who the mother was, if I'm remembering my 'birds and bees' education arightly, so matrilinear descent is reasonably secure

[Dinosaur]

...barring mixups in the maternity ward of course...}