There's been a heist at the Royal Institution,
and a man-made diamond was stolen.
That's the moment caught
on the Royal Institution's own CCTV cameras.
Tonight's audience, when you were queuing there,
you were witnesses to a crime,
and the thief has escaped.
APPLAUSE
This is the third and final of this year's Christmas lectures
from the Royal Institution.
And these lectures have explored the principles of forensic science.
And through the course of this final lecture,
we're going to try to identify and to bring to justice
a living body, a jewel thief.
Here in the court of the Royal Institution
we will put on trial a suspect accused of stealing
the precious man-made diamond.
So the sole purpose of forensic evidence is to assist the jury
in their decision-making in the courtroom.
And at the end of this lecture, you will be the jury,
and you will be deciding whether the suspect we have
is guilty of the crime for which they have been accused.
Now, as a forensic anthropologist, I often appear in court
as an expert witness.
And standing here in a witness box, as an expert witness, like myself,
we can offer opinions based solely on our professional judgment.
And what do we do? We take it very seriously.
We swear to tell the truth,
the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
They're really important words in there.
And some of the most influential figures in any courtroom
are the lawyers. And tonight, our defence lawyer is probably -
no, he is - one of the most respected,
and definitely one of the most feared advocates in Scotland.
Would you please welcome Mr Donald Findlay KC?
APPLAUSE
I would say I've had the pleasure, but it was not a pleasure,
of being cross-examined by Mr Findlay.
But what I'm going to ask you to do, if I may, Mr Findlay, is to talk
to what is our future jury, and what is their role
and their responsibility, because this is one of the most
important, serious things that you can do as a member of the public.
In this country, if there is an allegation that a serious crime
has been committed, and someone is arrested and charged,
they are entitled to have that case heard,
not by a judge, not by lawyers,
but by a jury made up of members of the public.
Tonight, you are our jury, and that's quite a responsibility.
In order to prove guilt in any criminal case,
the prosecution leads evidence
to try to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
If you have a doubt,
which is a kind of doubt you would have in your own lives
about an important decision you were going to take,
then you give the benefit of that doubt to the person accused.
The prosecution has to prove its case on the evidence.
It's not about personalities.
It's not about which witnesses you like more than any other witnesses.
It's about the evidence and the quality of the evidence
that you find proved.
And it's my job to make it difficult for the prosecution
to try to prove its case.
If, at the end of it all, you are left with a reasonable doubt,
then you are bound by law, and bound by the rules of this evening,
to acquit the person who is on trial.
Thank you very much indeed.
Mr Findlay is going to join us and sit through the proceedings,
and you will see him come forward at different times
to talk to expert witnesses.
I want you to remember that science isn't black and white,
it is a variety of shades of grey,
and scientists need to know how far they can go with the evidence.
And when you're an expert witness,
sometimes it feels like the expert witness is on trial as well.
So it's a very uncomfortable place for science to be.
But before we start anything,
we need a suspect,
and we're going to need some help in terms of identifying our suspect.
Now, you'll have seen these sort of wanted posters before,
and what we're going to want to do is we're going to fill in
the silhouette, because who is this person?
And we're going to start by doing it the old-fashioned way,
perhaps the way you might have seen it done in films.
If you could all look at the CCTV footage, which is of the burglary
that occurred earlier this evening,
and it's over so quickly, isn't it?
So we're going to be joined by a psychologist
from the University of Central Lancashire
whose team is working to establish the best procedures
to extract the memories of faces from eyewitnesses.
So would you please welcome Professor Charlie Froud?
APPLAUSE
Charlie, what we're going to do
is we're going to do it the old-fashioned way. We are, yes.
Not what we would necessarily do today,
in fact definitely not what we do today. Yes, that's right.
So we're going to try to build a picture of the thief.
What we have is some features.
We have some eyes, as you can see, some noses and some mouths.
And what we're going to do is I'm going to ask you to tell me
which picture you think is the best.
So we have some eyes.
So what I'd like you to do is I'd like you to call out
if you think, as I point, you think it's the thief.
What do we think about those? Yes or no? Yes?
Oh, very quiet.
No - oh, no. Not that one.
What about these?
AUDIENCE: Yes.
That's a little bit better. And these eyes?
AUDIENCE: Yes.
Maybe about the same. And these eyes?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
Bottom set of eyes?
AUDIENCE: No.
No. So maybe it's between these two.
So who thinks - we have to have another guess -
who thinks these pair of eyes?
AUDIENCE: Yes.
And these?
AUDIENCE: Yes.
It's about the same. Second one. I'm going to adjudicate.
So let's pick the second one then.
So we've got some eyes for our photo fit.
They can go in there, and let's look at some noses, then.
We'll do the same thing. What about this first nose?
AUDIENCE: No.
No. This nose?
AUDIENCE: No.
No. This nose?
AUDIENCE: No.
Oh, you don't like noses!
Maybe a yes in there with this nose.
AUDIENCE: Yes.
Oh, that's interesting. And this nose?
AUDIENCE: Yes.
I think it's number four. Number four? Yes, I think so.
There we go.
So let's do the mouths, then, same again. This first mouth.
AUDIENCE: No.
This one?
AUDIENCE MURMUR UNCERTAINLY
Perhaps a little bit.
This one?
A bit more perhaps for this one. This one?
AUDIENCE: Yes.
Ah, maybe. And this one?
AUDIENCE: No.
Oh! So we're going to pick this mouth. OK.
So this is who you think our suspect might be.
If we imagine there are glasses all the way around, of course.
We have to. We need to do that.
But what would we have done with that image in the past?
So in the past, the police would show this photo fit to other
police officers and members of the public for them to recognise.
And the truth is that the technique doesn't work very well.
So now the field has been transformed in the last 20 years.
But you spoke to one of the witnesses tonight.
Now talk us through.
I'm interviewing our young witness here, and the witness
is selecting faces from the screen, the best matches for the face,
really in terms of the region around the eyes, because we know
this is really quite important,
and those choices were combined together.
And then what she did was she uses some sliding scales to enhance
the age and the health of the person.
And then at the end, she added on some hair,
and actually a hooded top,
as she remembered what this man looked like.
And the final image, I think, is up in front of us.
And how many faces can we remember, do you think?
Recent research suggests that we remember a lot, Sue.
About 5,000 faces.
So it's a really large memory we have.
So what we've got here is we've got an eyewitness
working with you that feels that this is the best likeness.
We have all these witnesses in here
who've looked at the CCTV footage,
and they think it looks like this individual.
What do we have in terms of any similarities?
I mean, the photo fit was made in a very simple way, wasn't it?
We had five features that we picked, so there wasn't a lot of choice,
so we wouldn't expect a great likeness.
I mean, this is the latest system that the police
have been using in this country and abroad
to evolve the likeness of the face.
So where is our eyewitness who did that piece of work for us?
Thank you very much indeed for all your hard work.
Well, we've got good news.
We've got good news because the EvoFIT has done its job,
and the police have received a call from somebody claiming
that they know who the individual in the picture might be.
So we have a suspect, Charlie,
and maybe we're ready to start thinking about a trial? Possibly?
ANNOUNCEMENT: Call for Professor Charlie Froud.
Professor, you say to the members of the jury
that they individually might be able to recognise 5,000 faces?
This is what the research would suggest.
Some people will recognise less, some people more, but on average
for faces that we're familiar with,
we can, we can recognise about 5,000.
Very grateful to you, Professor, but what I'm interested in,
and the jury will want to bear in mind, is that in nearly half
of the instances of an EvoFIT,
it produced no identification result of any kind. Isn't that right?
Almost half. That's true.
So about 60% of the time somebody is able to say a name
for an EvoFIT image.
And so if we show that image to lots of people, it increases
the chance of that face being recognised.
Given that nearly half won't recognise it,
it also increases the chances of people not recognising it.
That's also true. Thank you very much, Professor.
ANNOUNCEMENT: Professor Froud, you may step down.
Charlie, thank you very much indeed. Thank you. Thank you.
APPLAUSE
Let's carry on, because there's another way in which we can
identify somebody, and that's the good old-fashioned line-up.
So we're going to see whether you as an audience can identify -
we're giving you another go at this.
And to run this line-up I'm helped by a psychologist
from the University of Birmingham
who studies facial recognition.
So please welcome Professor Heather Flowe.
APPLAUSE
Thank you.
Thank you, Heather, for joining us.
Can you talk us through, what is a line-up?
What does it mean? Love to.
So a line-up procedure is one in which the police have apprehended
a suspect, and that suspect may or may not be guilty.
So the police create a bit of a test for the witness, whereby they place
the suspect in with a group of individuals who look similar
in appearance to the suspect,
but who are actually not guilty of the crime.
OK. So let's welcome them in, please.
APPLAUSE
All right, wonderful.
I don't know about you, but I think they're all guilty.
But there we go. Look a bit shady.
All right, so drawing from your memories,
we want you to help us out.
Tell us which one of these individuals is the culprit.
So how many of you think number one is the culprit?
OK. What about number two?
OK, one or two. OK.
And what about number three?
Well, again, just one. Oh, one or two? OK.
Number four, put your hand up.
OK. And if you think it's five, put your hand up.
Oh, I think four's just got it, would be my thinking on it.
I agree. Number four, could you step forward, please?
Then I would say that our eyewitnesses have suggested
that you may be the person who has committed a crime.
And so we're going to call you back at a later date into the courtroom.
Thank you very much indeed to all of our line-up.
APPLAUSE
So, Heather, that wasn't clear-cut, was it, at all?
Where we didn't feel comfortable, there was a lot of consensus.
What does that tell us?
It was really interesting. There was a difference of opinion.
And one of the things that I did
is I actually baited you into picking someone.
And Mr Findlay would find a lot of fault with that,
because I didn't tell you that the perpetrator
might actually not be present, that it's OK not to identify anyone,
because it's really important not only to identify the guilty,
but also to exonerate innocent suspects.
The other thing is that all of the faces that you saw
were facing forward.
All you had the opportunity to see during the line-up test
was the frontal part of the individual's faces, right?
You also didn't see those faces move.
So you didn't get all of these rich cues that might help you remember,
such as other parts of the face.
So our line-up, we don't do that any more,
although it looks great in the movies as well, doesn't it?
But you've been developing new techniques that will help us
perhaps get that line-up into a better place scientifically.
I know this is at a research stage. It is.
But would you like to tell us a bit about it? I would love to tell you.
So for about the last ten years, my colleagues and I
have been developing a new line-up procedure.
So the witness who is looking at the faces in the interactive
line-up procedure is able to grab those faces with their mouse
and rotate the faces into any pose desired.
And what we have found when we test this procedure against all
of the other line-up procedures that are used around the world,
and there are many different kinds,
is that it allows witnesses
to better be able to detect guilty from innocent suspects.
And that's really important.
So we had two of our audience participate with you.
They've not been in here when we did the line-up,
so they don't know who we've chosen. Excellent.
APPLAUSE
What's your name? Matthew.
Matthew. Nice to meet you. I'm Heather.
Joe. Joe. Nice to meet you.
OK, so you're about to take a line-up test,
and the perpetrator that committed the heist
might not actually be present in this line-up.
So what I want you to do is to take a look at the individuals
in the next line-up, and see if you recognise any of them
as the perpetrator. So go ahead and click "Next".
So what you can do is hold down the mouse button,
and then use your finger to rotate the individuals in the line-up,
so you can see them from different vantage points.
You can see how the individual facial features are moving together.
What we found in our experiments is if you allow witnesses
to have control over the faces in the line-up,
what they most often do
is they rotate the faces to match the vantage point
from which they studied the perpetrator.
We control this in experiments where people either get to see
the front of the face when the crime is committed,
or the side of the face when the crime is committed,
and we find that people rotate the images to match that.
So are we ready to have a selection, do you think?
Yeah, let's do it. Are you all ready?
OK. So please enter in a number or write "not present"
to indicate your identification decision.
Fantastic.
Which number did you choose? Number two. Number two.
And how confident are you?
Around 60%. 60%. OK.
What did you choose? Number four.
Number four. Around 10%. Around 10% confidence.
Thank you very much. Let's give them a round of applause.
APPLAUSE
Really interesting, Heather. Yeah. Because we have a two. Yes.
We have a four. Yes.
In this case, we have witnesses who had very low confidence.
I would say 10% is most definitely too low of confidence
for that individual to be able to make an identification.
And the one that's even at 60%,
I don't think would really stand up in a court of law either.
And do we know ultimately which the room selected?
So the room identified the suspect.
So we have identified a suspect, which is Ben.
APPLAUSE
ANNOUNCEMENT: Call Professor Heather Flowe.
Professor, when it comes to asking someone to make an identification,
what, if anything, do you do to test their ability
to identify someone?
That's outside of the purview of an expert witness to do that.
So no, we do not test the individual witnesses in a case.
And of course, some people may be no good at that.
I mean, do you think I would be able to identify someone?
I really don't know.
Well, there might be a problem, you see,
because I have a thing called face blindness or prosopagnosia,
that I don't recognise faces. This is true.
So do you, from your considerable experience, accept that the ability
of people to identify must vary, as in fact, we've already seen,
given that we have three people in one way or another identified?
Yes, and that's why we have to choose the most robust
identification procedure, so that it will boost everyone's ability
to make accurate identifications.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
ANNOUNCEMENT: Professor Flaherty, you may step down.
APPLAUSE
Both Charlie and Heather's research is revealing how to best help people
successfully recall facial memories.
But we all find it easier to recognise people that we know,
members of our family, for example,
but difficult if the individuals are strangers.
But there are others who seem to be sort of superhuman,
and have superpowers, and they're called super recognisers.
So I want you to welcome a retired police officer who established
and ran the world's first super recogniser unit
at New Scotland Yard.
Detective Chief Inspector Mike Neville.
APPLAUSE
A super recogniser.
Tell me what that means, and tell me about the unit that you set up.
Right, so a super recogniser is a person
with a fantastic natural memory.
You're just born with this wonderful memory.
You can remember lots of faces.
And when I worked at Scotland Yard, I had responsibility for taking
all the CCTV images in,
and as I circulated them and said to officers,
"Who are these criminals?",
there were certain officers who made lots and lots
and lots of identification,
and we identified these people who've got this superb skill.
Can you give us one of your success stories, if you wouldn't mind?
Everybody likes a forensic story.
Well, the greatest success, I think, is the Novichok case,
which you'll remember some Russian assassins came to Salisbury,
and they needed to find out who they were, where they'd come from.
So two super recognisers were tasked to watch thousands of hours
of footage of people entering this country from Russia.
Then they were tasked to watch a week's footage of Salisbury,
and they were asked, is anybody in set A in set B?
And that's how they found them.
So it's good how the human mind is better than a computer.
And what percentage of the population have got this skill?
We think 1-2% have got some of the skills.
They could be here right now.
So we're going to test where our super recognisers
might be in the audience this evening.
Thank you very, very much. Thank you.
APPLAUSE
Now, we've now got Steve and Rob here from WiFi Wars,
and you're going to run us through a game
to see if we can spot any super recognisers in our audience.
That's exactly right. So over to you. Thank you.
All right. So, yes, we are now going to test all of you
and see how you get on at recognising some suspects.
So I need you all to have your phones at the ready.
You've already connected.
Now I'm going to show you a face from three different angles.
So take a look at the big screen and commit this to memory.
There's the first person.
From three angles.
And now you have ten seconds to tell me which of these three faces
was that person, starting now?
So A, B or C on your phone.
Choose A, B or C, which one you think it was.
You've got a few more seconds to do that.
There's lots of nodding. You seem confident, but let's find out.
Time is up.
I can now tell you - you're all green at the moment,
let's see how that goes.
First thing to tell you is the correct answer was B.
OK, 77%. So we can see a few reds around, but not too many.
You can put your phones down for now. Commiserations to the red ones.
We're going to go again with the second face, please, Rob.
So a different face now. Three angles again for those who remain.
There's that face from all three angles. Ten seconds.
Was that person A, B or C?
But for those who remain, hopefully you made your choice
because time is up.
The correct - yeah, well done.
The correct answer this time was A.
And after that, 66% of you remain. So only two-thirds of you now.
People who are still in, memorise these six faces.
But now the line-up is going to be more difficult to choose from.
No conferring!
Which of these three was in that line-up of six?
Horribly cloudy night - A, B or C?
Only one of them. They all look the same to me from down here.
If you're still in, you're better than I am.
And I hope you've done it quick because the time is up.
And the final one was...
B, ha-ha!
How many are we left with?
6%! Wonderful.
Right, those 6% of you, where are you, where are my 6%?
Yeah, good, good, good.
And what we'll do now is we're going to go back
through all of those rounds. Rob, you're going to select the person
who was fastest at getting it right through all of them,
That is your ultimate super recogniser in the room.
And a round of applause for that person, who is...
Artemis! So where are you, Artemis? All the way at the back there.
Well done to you.
APPLAUSE
Is this something you're surprised by?
Do you think you have those superpowers?
No. Well, maybe we've just taught you something about yourself
that you didn't know, maybe there's a future career there for you,
do you think? Maybe. Maybe?
So when we pulled individual four out in the line-up,
was it four that you had chosen?
Yeah. I wonder if the room feels more confident in the selection
of number four that our very own Royal Institution super recogniser
also pulled out number four? Well done, congratulations.
Now you will know that the police use CCTV imagery like that sourced
by the super recogniser team all the time,
and an average Londoner is captured 70 - seven zero -
times a day on a CCTV camera.
And this dense network of cameras means that we can use CCTV to track
most movements of city dwellers.
So have a look at this.
This is a photograph, oh, a train station!
I wonder who that might be walking through the train station?
Oh, there you are again, heading along the walkway.
Gosh, I look really tired, don't I?
That's what happens when you do rehearsals
for the Royal Institution. Standing on the train platform.
And I had no idea this was being done.
Absolutely none.
All I did was to say what times I was at different places
within that journey to the rehearsals.
So that CCTV footage is incredibly important.
And to analyse that kind of footage,
I want you to welcome a forensic image analyst and an academic
who's provided expert witness testimony
in courtrooms across the world.
Please welcome Ray Evans.
APPLAUSE
Ray, as a CCTV image analyst, will you talk us through
the heist video and tell us what you see through your eyes?
Yes, indeed, so we can see it's not great footage.
There's a lot of noise in there, the detail is lacking.
I think it's important for me to say at this point
that unlike the experts that you've already seen,
they specialise in recognition.
Well, what we deal with is identification.
All the work we do is geared to looking at the differences
between sets of images.
You could almost say the task is like a glorified
spot the difference.
Now we have a suspect chosen by everybody in the room here.
And it's a man who is identified from the line-up
that we saw earlier.
And you have some images of that individual
and you're going to take us through a comparison.
Yes, I'll take it through very quickly.
So we see the person come in, slow him down a little bit there.
So this is the suspect that we took out of the line, this is Ben.
OK, can we see any differences between those two people?
The perpetrator is sucking his lips in.
So let's move forward a little bit further.
So you can have differences, but as long as you have an explanation
for that differences? Precisely, precisely.
So we'll move that through there.
So on this, I've highlighted the most glaring aspect,
which is the ear.
So we can have a look at that ear and we can say, well,
what are the differences between these two sets of ears?
Well, apart from the poor quality, I don't see too many things.
We can see the outline of the helix there, which is the outside
of the ear.
It's quite rolled.
We can see the lower parts of the lobe.
It's semi attached there.
So they would go into the similarity box.
But remember, similarities does not mean that it is the same person.
Even though we've got CCTV footage,
we've got a suspect within the first hour or so,
it's the quality of the image that's the problem, isn't it?
That's right, that's right.
Thank you, Ray.
Call Ray Evans.
Now, then, sir, despite some pretty heavy prompting
from Professor Black, you can't be in any way confident
that you are looking at the perpetrator, can you?
Well, I have a level of confidence.
Should the members of the jury understand that in the work you do,
you can either exclude or include? That's correct, yes.
And to exclude somebody is perhaps easier because there may be
quite a distinctive facial difference, that sort of thing?
To exclude somebody, it is easier because you've got something
that separates those two faces.
To include somebody, that is harder?
Yes, it is harder, but people can share similar features.
And if those features are similar enough, it might be difficult
to distinguish between one person and another.
So what the members of the jury have here
is that there are some differences?
Correct.
There are also some areas where there appears
to be a clear difference?
Relatively clear, I wouldn't say they're absolutely clear.
And in other areas, there are some similarities?
Yes, yes, that's correct.
Just in a term or a phrase...
..describe your level of confidence in this case.
I would probably use the term limited support.
Limited... Maybe as much as moderate support,
but certainly limited support.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
Ray Evans, you may step down.
Thank you very much, Ray, very much appreciated, thank you.
APPLAUSE
This is the bit you've been waiting for -
I need a volunteer, please.
Would you come forward, please?
There we go, thank you.
And your name?
Carly. Carly.
So Carly, I'm going to ask you to head off here with Isla.
We're going to pop a little something on you.
Nothing horrible, I do promise you.
And what we're going to do is for identification purposes,
we're going to look at gait.
Now, I don't mean that thing at the end of a fence that you open
and close, because when we saw our suspect running away,
that is their gait.
The gait is the way that people carry their body or move their legs
and their arms as they walk.
Now it's up to the court to decide what kind of evidence
is admissible into the courtroom,
and not all evidence gets into the courtroom.
And by and large, judges are generally
not scientifically trained.
So we do have to make sure that the science
that goes into them is robust.
And it's important that the expert witnesses can inform the courtroom
whether an evidence type is strong or weak.
Just as we heard from Ray Evans,
that strength of conviction is important.
Now, you come and join us over here.
Just step further back a little bit there and we're going to...
That's perfect, all I'm going to ask you to do...
Hand by your side, if you wouldn't mind?
You can see that we've got some lights on your head
and down the side here.
We're going to turn the lights off in here.
And the camera, if you watch, is going to track how you walk.
So I'm going to ask you to walk just over to that cushion there,
very slowly.
Are you ready? Lights are going down.
Off you go, and when you get there, I want you to stop.
So you walk across, there you go, you can see the leg movement.
You can see the arm movement.
So that's gait.
Now, if you stop and if you walk backwards,
I'll stop you, don't worry.
Look what happens with backward.
The leg moves, bit of arm movement as well.
Can I ask you to do something silly now?
Would you, on your left leg, stand and hop over to the other side?
Oh, look, it's a completely different pattern, isn't it?
Carly, thank you very much indeed, well done, well done.
Thank you.
Now, as you might expect, there's been a tremendous amount of research
has gone into how our skeletons move.
And it's really important in terms of high-performance sport,
but also in medicine, so for orthopaedic intervention.
So we know a lot about gait, but when you don't know the person,
identifying gait of that individual is really quite difficult.
And sometimes there are some judges who are quite uncomfortable
about allowing gait analysis into the courtroom,
and all that tells us is that there's more research to do.
Mr Findlay, could I ask you whether gait analysis
is something that has appeared in any of the cases
where you've been involved and whether it's an evidence type
you'd be comfortable with?
I've never had to deal with gait analysis in any trial
I've ever been involved in.
We have expert evidence in a large number of areas,
but it is important to have two things.
Firstly, there must be an identifiable area of science.
You know, you can't just take a hobby and call yourself an expert
and then you become an expert witness.
So we need to understand what the science is.
And then the person who is the expert must have devoted
a good deal of time to study, to research,
to the practical application.
If there isn't a lot of information supporting gait
going into the courtroom, there's a tremendous amount
of evidence in terms of DNA.
And we've been able to retrieve some DNA samples from the glass cabinet.
You know that when you're looking at the television programmes,
the minute they say the DNA evidence, everyone goes,
"The case is over", because surely if there's DNA evidence,
it must be absolutely spot on, we've got the right individual.
But even DNA evidence isn't free from doubt.
So to present the DNA evidence and how it's used in the court,
please welcome the Professor of Genetics at the University
of Leicester, Professor Turi King.
APPLAUSE
Lovely to see you.
So, Turi, we're talking about DNA and DNA always being the thing
that we think solves everything. That's right.
But we want to talk about transfer? We do. And persistence maybe,
but transfer certainly? Yeah. So what do we mean by transfer?
Can we show what we mean by DNA transfer?
Yes, and for that, we need six volunteers.
You do two...
You come down.
You come down, and you in the pink jumper.
Come down. And over this side...
Let's take you and...you.
Come on down.
Come and stand here.
Now, I'm going to send you two out where you're going to get
looked after by our team.
Right, now then, the rest of you, what I need you to do
is I need you to wear some, sadly, especially from your outfit,
non-Christmassy jumpers, I'm afraid
So you need to put those on.
Can I welcome back our two lovely volunteers
who are going to come in?
You look amazing!
And you are covered in DNA balls.
Now, what I want you to do is I want the six of you
to form a tight circle here, and I don't want the two of you
to stand next to each other, so if you can form a circle,
form a circle facing in and, oop, that's right.
Perfect, now I'm going to go over here.
So what I want you to do is, I want you to take your left hand,
put it into the middle, and grab the hand of somebody...
Not right next to you.
OK, now you're going to take your right hand and you're going
to do the same thing, try not to grab the hand of somebody
who you've already got the hand of, if that makes sense?
Great, OK, now, what I want you to do
is I want you to untangle yourselves.
You can pivot, you can step over arms if you want.
So, three, two, one... go!
Excellent, keep holding hands, but try and untangle.
Oh, it's tricky, isn't it?
Oh, one in the middle.
Now, because you can turn around and go backwards...
OK, do we, I don't know, do we give up?
I think maybe what we do is we get you in a line,
so let's get you in a line.
So when we started, we had the two of you with the lovely hats on,
had got DNA bobbles on you, but now, do you want to turn around?
Oh, my goodness, check that out.
OK, so what this is showing, though, is that there is DNA transfer.
So DNA has transferred from these two onto everybody else.
So you've got blue going here, that's primary transfer.
But then if I got this from this person, that's secondary transfer.
Now that is happening all of the time.
All you need to do is shake somebody's hand
and then go and touch a door handle,
and you've put somebody else's DNA onto the door handle.
Thank you very much, everybody.
That was fantastic. If you guys want to go out.
APPLAUSE
Call Professor Turi King.
Tell me, Professor, if you will, please.
DNA comes from various body fluids,
skin cells and so on.
Yes.
And when it is analysed, you can connect that to an individual
to odds which are pretty well astronomical?
Yes. You never say absolutely, but as near absolutely as we can?
Yes.
What can the presence of DNA on an object tell you, firstly,
about how that DNA came to be on that object?
We cannot answer that question.
Or how long has it been on that object?
We can't answer that question either.
If, for example, we've seen a video of a case,
if I was to take my watch off and place it in the case
and come back in two years' time,
would it still have my DNA on the watch?
The DNA will have degraded, but it's possible.
So we don't know when, we don't know how, we don't know for how long,
and we know that it may be by direct contact,
and we've seen that in your demonstration,
but also by secondary transfer?
Yes. Or tertiary transfer?
Yes. And I can't remember the one for four, but it could be
four down the road? It is.
I mean, the amount of DNA that will be transferred
will decrease each time.
And it depends on a number of different factors.
How do you measure the amount of DNA?
A standard unit of measurement for DNA
is known as a nanogram.
What's a nanogram?
What's in a nanogram?
It's a billionth of a gram.
So a tiny amount?
Even the tiniest amount of DNA could involve somebody
potentially in a crime.
Yes.
The tiniest amount of DNA could involve this young man...
..the light of innocence shining from his eyes.
LAUGHTER
Might it be important to know why somebody's DNA
might be in a particular place, Professor?
Indeed. We simply present the evidence... Oh.
..but we cannot say how or when.
I suppose if somebody worked in a place like this,
that might be very important.
Definitely.
Tell them where you work.
Royal Institution of Great Britain. Here!
Your DNA's all over the place.
Good lad. Thank you, Professor.
APPLAUSE
Professor King, you may step down.
An extra piece of evidence has come in.
What we hadn't realised was that there was a camera
in the cabinet above where the ring was stolen.
And you can see the camera in place there.
You can see the hand come in and steal the ring.
So we've seen identification from faces -
can we tell anything from hands?
Now we're quite used to the front of our hands
with our fingerprints being identifiable.
But this is the back of a hand.
So we have a research team based both at the University of Lancaster
and at the University of Dundee, who are looking at identification
from the back of the hand.
So could you please welcome Ricky Boswell-Challand, please?
APPLAUSE
So we had an image up here that showed in the robbery
just the back of a hand.
What is it that you can see and tell from the back of a hand?
OK, so the back of the hand's really interesting because there
are a number of features that show variation between individuals.
So I'd like to invite you all to take a look at the back
of your own hand.
There's always that phrase, isn't it, you know it like
the back of your own hand?
Yeah, I forget mine all the time.
So if you take a look at the back of your hand, you'll see,
and I'll look at mine, you'll see a number of features.
We've all got creases in our knuckles.
We've got various skin pigmentation, freckles...
Birthmarks? Birthmarks, scars.
So we've got a number of different features like that.
We see, we find more if we go under the skin.
As we go under the skin, we've got a model to show here.
Well, that's a big hand.
OK, so here we've got the internal structure of the hand.
Obviously, we've got the skeleton,
you can see the bones of the fingers.
We've got tendons, we've got ligaments, we've got the musculature
of the hand here, shown in red.
They give the overall form and definition of the hand.
And then we've got something really important.
We've got the veins, and veins show a great deal
of variability between individuals.
So if you were to look at the back of your right hand
and your left hand, would you expect them to be different?
I would expect... In the same individual? Very, very different.
We'd expect to see different patterns between
identical twins, even.
So is there anything about this vein pattern that's genetic?
Because you've said that identical twins, it would be different.
But if you were looking at a family, you know, mum, dad, brothers,
sisters, is there anything in there? We'd still expect differences.
To the best of our knowledge,
we do not think there is a genetic influence on the vein patterns.
And there's a database associated with the images
that I know you're looking at. Have you been able to yet find
the same pattern of superficial veins in any two individuals?
Never in two hands that we have studied.
And what's your database size?
We're currently nearing 5,000 individuals,
two hands for most of those individuals.
So within that 10,000, we've seen no duplication.
Brilliant, thank you, Ricky.
And I have to say it, but you have to give him a big hand.
GROANING AND APPLAUSE
One of the reasons that DNA has been so successful
in identification is because of the very large databases
that we can interrogate.
And to be able to interrogate large data sets of images,
we can't do it individually, we need to involve a computer.
So we start to use artificial intelligence to look at every image
and say, can we extract the anatomical information
out of those images?
Now, several teams have already presented this work
in the courtroom, so it has been deemed admissible evidence.
So that's, I think, important to know.
So what I'd like to do now is
I'd like to welcome in a computer expert, and he will talk us through
what is happening in the next stage of research
in this hand identification.
So please welcome, from Lancaster University, Dr Brian Williams.
APPLAUSE
Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Brian.
So we've just been looking, we've got an image of the hand
of the person involved in the crime.
And of course, we have a hand of our suspect.
What would you do in terms of a comparison?
What sort of information are we looking for
and how are we using computers to help with that?
So in terms of the hand images, what we're looking for is reliable
anatomical information that we can find in both the suspect
and the offender images.
So what we do is we take thousands of examples of images
that have already been marked up by experts, such as Sue,
in order to show the vein patterns, the knuckle creases,
some detail in the fingernails.
And then we feed these into computer algorithms that we develop
so that later on, when we come with case images like this,
we can use the trained models to extract this data again.
So you have images of hands and you've trained the computer,
I just need to get this right, you've trained a computer to say,
"Find the veins and show me the pattern,"
and then you're able to compare the two patterns
of suspect and offender?
But how confident might you be that they could be the same individual?
Well, that depends on the level of information
that we've got available.
So one of the important things when we're developing a system
for something like this is it should be a system that can evaluate itself
so it can evaluate how good is the quality in this image
and how important, how relevant is the information
that we can extract?
So in this case, we had excellent quality in the finger knuckles
and in the dorsal side of the hand.
So are you quite content that you just might have
the same individual?
I am confident in the extraction of the data, and in the evidence image,
we have very clear images of the knuckle creases.
So I am pretty confident.
And there we can see that again, so here is the image.
So what we see here is we see some very clear images, especially
of the index finger, the major knuckle on the index finger
and the major knuckle of the middle finger.
And we can see both of these clearly in this hand as well.
We can also see the dorsal side of the hand where we can extract
visible vein patterns from that.
Thank you, Brian.
Call Dr Brian Williams.
I didn't quite understand this, no doubt members of the jury do,
but who carried out this exercise?
You, or a box of electronic gadgetry?
It was both of us.
Well, given the box of electronic gadgetry
couldn't put the information into itself,
who put the information into the box in the first place?
The evidence images were entered by me.
And the background software that you use is entered by?
The background software is developed by my team of computer scientists
and mathematicians and anthropologists.
And to be fair, you are, of course, a doctor.
I am, yes. Of medicine?
No... Not of medicine? I'm a doctor of mathematics.
Ah. Who is actually carrying this out -
you or the machine?
It's a combination.
But it's a combination of a machine that can only run on the basis
of the information that's put in by somebody who is not
a doctor of medicine.
I'm afraid, Doctor, I'm going to have to suggest that
you are not an expert in this area.
And for your information, I will be inviting this jury
to reject your evidence totally.
Dr Williams, you may step down.
Thank you, Brian.
APPLAUSE
Calling Professor Sue Black.
Oh, my, OK.
Tell me...
So in this case you are looking to make, I assume, and the jury
would hope, a fair comparison between two parts
of somebody's body.
Yes. Well, how many areas did you compare between the suspect's hand
and the other hand that was taken from the video of the robbery?
So I compared initially knuckle crease patterns.
And I also looked for vein patterns, but I was not able to identify veins
because veins are not always visible in all individuals.
So there was one basis, knuckle crease patterns across all fingers.
One characteristic? Across all fingers.
I think we have that, don't you?
And of course, there has to be a reasonable representation.
The two hands, they were clearly in the same position?
No, they were not.
They were quite distinctive in their positioning?
They were. So that would have to be taken into account, wouldn't it?
Absolutely. So we have the poor quality of imaging. Yep.
We have the fact that you did a very, very limited comparison...
I did what was possible on the comparison.
..only on creases in the fingers... Across all fingers.
..and on hands that were not in the same position.
Have I got all of that?
Some of it, yes. Yes.
LAUGHTER
It's been a pleasure, as always.
As always, thank you. Thank you very much.
Professor Black, you may step down.
I had no idea where that was going.
And that's really important.
The courtroom is an alien place for a scientist.
We don't know what somebody is going to ask us.
We may have the burning thing that we want to say,
but if the advocates don't ask us the question we want,
we're not able to say it.
The courtroom is really where science and evidence can be tested.
Now, what the Crown will say to you,
I'm putting the Crown's words into my mouth, as it were.
The Crown will tell you that a crime was committed this evening,
that the crime was seen on CCTV footage.
That some eyewitnesses identified a suspect.
That that suspect has since, their hand has been compared
and the gait perhaps has been looked at, the DNA analysis
has been done, and we've looked at similarities
and differences across the faces.
The Crown's case would be that there is sufficient evidence
to find this man guilty of stealing the diamond ring
from the Royal Institution, a crime that you witnessed this evening.
But that would be the premise of the Crown's case.
Mr Findlay, the defence case.
It has been my privilege to represent this young man.
Decent lad, decent home.
Loving son, spends his time in this building,
earning a modest living to look after his old, grey-haired mother.
And yet the prosecution say he is guilty of the crime of robbery.
On what basis?
The evidence.
And that's what you have to consider.
We start off with a little exercise
where we do an EVOfit
and we discover that, yes,
there is a close vote between
two persons who may be the suspect.
But from the very start, there is a close vote
between two.
How many others?
How many others could we bring into this court
who would fit into one or other categories?
Then we have new technology, new science that is being developed.
And what does that show?
That produces a third potential suspect for this robbery.
So we now have three.
How many more do the Crown want?
And how many more do the Crown want you to ignore?
This young man,
to feed his family, works in this very building,
and in this very building
his DNA will be in every single corner of the building.
The fact that it is connected with the robbery is irrelevant.
It is neither here nor there.
And you now know, you now know,
when you get home tonight,
you will be contaminated with the DNA
of people you didn't even know existed before you came here.
And Ray Evans, who in a balanced and fair way
despite being pushed and prodded by the prosecution,
time and time again,
relentlessly, remorselessly driving him in their direction,
would not budge, would not budge.
And said really he couldn't say very much
other than it was a limited support.
Where is this Crown case?
There is no Crown case
until of course the prosecution advocate
joins in herself
to try and provide evidence
and talks about a hand
where there are creases on one hand.
And that is it.
A hand that's not in the same position as a comparison hand,
an image which is so poor
that you have seen the consequences in this court
of trying to identify somebody
from such poor quality produce.
Members of the jury,
if there was to be a crime committed,
it would be here tonight
in convicting this young man
of the charge of robbery.
Without hesitation, I ask you...
..I ask you...
to reject the Crown case,
and at this time of year,
to allow him to walk out...
..into Christmas...
GIGGLING
..to return home to his mother...
LAUGHTER
..and share a modest,
very small chicken sandwich
for Christmas dinner,
because it's the best he can do.
I invite you...
..to acquit.
Home and dry, boy, home and dry. Thank you very much.
Never knowingly overacted, Mr Findlay. Never.
OK, the moment has arrived
where you now have to make a decision.
And in all seriousness,
I know we've had a bit of fun with this,
but in all seriousness, you've had some evidence.
You have to make a decision.
I don't think there is a more difficult decision
than anybody could make
when they are a member of the jury.
Is there sufficient evidence to find Ben guilty?
Mr Findlay does not need to prove innocence.
He just needs reasonable doubt.
I'm going to ask you, first of all,
whether you find Ben guilty of...
GIGGLING
..of the theft of a diamond ring
from the Royal Institution.
Is Ben guilty of that crime?
Please raise your hand.
Please raise your hand if you believe
that there is reasonable doubt.
Isn't that interesting?
Do you know, there's one of the problems
we have in a courtroom,
which is if you have an even number of jurors,
then you can have a split decision.
How many jurors do we have in a Scottish court, Mr Findlay?
15. 15. Why do we do that in Scotland?
Because we can have a balance of probability
that says one side is going to have a higher number than the other.
You're not in Scotland,
but if you were, there's a third verdict
and that third verdict is not proven.
So we might be in London,
we might be in the Royal Institution,
but I would suggest that perhaps
Scotland's not proven verdict
is what you've come forward with this evening,
because based on the evidence that you've heard,
I'm not happy that he could be convicted,
given... I'm not finished yet.
LAUGHTER
..given the level of doubt that is in the room.
And I think we'd have to be much more confident than that.
I'm going to let him go
because I think that would be the right thing to do.
Did you do it? No.
No, of course you didn't.
Of course he didn't do it.
Ladies and gentlemen, you have made an incredibly difficult decision.
You have taken what is some science that you know you see on television
and television says to you it's never wrong.
Well, sometimes we have to ask questions,
the really difficult questions.
And some of my best research
has come out of the really difficult questions
that a defence advocate will ask,
because if we don't know the answer to it,
then we need to go find out.
So science never stands still, it moves forward.
It is at the core of the most important element
of our civilised society.
It is about justice,
it is about finding truth.
And you have done an exceptional job on that.
Mr Findlay, I thank you very much indeed for this evening.
And may we never, ever end up in court again.
Thank you very much indeed.
Thank you.
APPLAUSE
It's...it's a Royal Institution Christmas lecture.
And of course, right at the core of everything we had
was a diamond ring.
Diamonds, of course, being a girl's best friend.
And we've retrieved the diamond ring.
Don't ask us how, but we have.
But it would not be a Royal Institution Christmas lecture
if it didn't go out with a bang.
Three.
ALL: Two.
One.
AUDIENCE: Ooh!