Forensic experts have learned to determine the sex of criminals by the smell of their hands

The gender of the person who left the scent of their hands at the crime scene can be determined with 97% accuracy. American chemists came to this conclusion in an article published in PLOS ONE magazine.

Detective dogs have long been used successfully to track criminals by scent. In many crimes, such as robbery, assault, and rape, criminals often use their hands, which leave an odor on victims’ objects and clothing. However, until recently, few studies have been conducted to help investigate the composition of odors left in the laboratory.

Scientists led by Kenneth Furton of Florida International University conducted a study showing that the smell of a person’s hands can be used to determine their sex with high probability.

The experiment involved 18 volunteers (half male, half female) – African American, White, Hispanic. Smell samples were taken from the palms of each volunteer, after which, using mass spectrometry, scientists analyzed the content of several dozen volatile organic substances in each of the samples.

Then, using linear discriminant analysis (LDA), they tried to determine the probability that a given set of volatiles indicates gender.

“Cross-validation of the LDA model showed a detection accuracy of 96.67% for both males and females,” the scientists concluded. They showed that the resulting technique helps to determine the sex of a person with great certainty by the smell of hands left at the scene of the crime, while existing technologies allow to indicate with great precision not only the sex , but also race and ethnicity. of somebody. “This approach to the analysis of volatile compounds in hand odor can be applied when other evidence, such as DNA, is not available, and allows the determination of parameters such as gender, race and age,” the authors explain.

Distribution of volatile compounds in the smell of men and women (F – female, M – male, A – African American, C – White, H – Hispanic)

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