Genetic mugshot recreates faces from nothing but DNA

It says right there that the purpose of a mug shot is also to identify a suspect. Even when the police gets a hold of someone and can take a photo there is no reason to think that identification is no longer necessary. Identification is probably what most criminal cases are about and being able to get to know someone’s name and to make a photo of them is not the actual relevant part of the identification for solving a crime.

Conceptually I would agree that this is more similar to facial composites (it’s a recreation of the suspect’s face not directly via a photograph but via some other means, either memory or, in this case, DNA) but comparing it to mug shots is not absurd or even weird. There is even a good argument one could make that this is conceptually more similar to mug shots than facial composites: both photos and DNA don’t rely on someone else via memory but directly on the suspect.

Since mug shots are well known making the comparison for the sake of a headline makes perfect sense. The term facial composite is much less well known. The conceptual similarity is there either way.

I think the comparison very clearly communicates why this new way of creating mug shots is very useful and as such there is nothing wrong with it.

That was the joke :)

What does "the impulse towards genetic determinism" mean here? Comparisons of identical twins raised apart show that physical appearance is highly heritable, so it would seem that "the impulse towards genetic determinism" is in this case correct.

I agree that diet and other environmental factors definitely contribute to appearance. For example, even though many Americans are largely European stock, there are certain developmental tendencies in some areas that I feel like it's possible to, with a better than chance guess and based on a little observation, tell if somebody is American or European - it can be something in the food, or differences in popular sports, or social body language, but all leading to developmental differences.

Of course I'm generalizing a bit, but I'm almost as good as my native South Korean wife at guessing where a person from East Asia is from. It's a combination of factors, height, facial features, but often as not it's fashion (which includes hair, eyebrows, facial hair, glasses style) etc.

An interesting test is found here http://alllooksame.com/

I can guess it pretty above average.

But it's a pretty big jump from guessing what stock a person is from to predicting what they look like based on their stock.

The problem with the examples in the article of course is that the example really looks very little like the actual woman. In fact, it's a pretty terrible likeness, especially in the eyes. About the only part that's debatable is the nose. I wouldn't rely on it for a police sketch.

Another challenge will be in populations with large groups of "mixed" children. Americans are a reasonable example, even though we're largely Europeans at this point in history, that's changing quickly, and even in the Caucasian population, there are very few who don't have ancestors from all over the place. What about my children? Will they have red hair or dark hair, epicanthic folds or not? Will they be barrel chested like my father's side, or have a physique more like my wife's? Even dominant genes can be suppressed in the right hormonal and developmental environment.

This sounds very sci-fi, but it's as long away off as those novelty "what will your children look like" facial morphers that were so popular in the 90s.

I want this in my next MMO character design system.