The researchers used an artificial intelligence approach to find small differences in DNA sequences, called SNPs, associated with facial features such as cheekbone height. The team also searched for SNPs that correlated with factors including a person’s height, weight, age, vocal characteristics and skin colour.
The approach correctly identified an individual out of a group of ten people randomly selected from HLI’s database 74% of the time. Reviewers and even a co-author of the paper say that it overstates the ability to use a person’s genes to identify the individual, which could raise unnecessary fears about genetic privacy.
But other geneticists, having studied the paper, say that in their opinion, the claim is vastly overblown. Mark Shriver, an anthropologist at Pennsylvania State University said that in a randomly selected group of ten people — especially one chosen from a data set as small and diverse as HLI’s — knowing age, sex and race alone rules out most of the individuals.