But the epilogue about how being an electronics engineer gave them a bit of a unique edge feels like a self-serving stretch. The techniques in the story seem accessible to any reasonably well-learned individual if they’re motivated enough to sleuth. All the advanced work was done by other people. And there’s a tinge of the classic, “the established discipline is living in the past but us engineers can do it better…”
> What’s interesting about solving such a case is how it relies on concepts that may seem counterintuitive to forensic biologists but are quite straightforward to an electronics engineer.
They're only claiming it's "counterintuitive" to biologists trained in other methods.
Imagine a forensinc lab using imputation to identify some samples and arresting someone based on them. It takes only a slighly interested lawyer to destroy that evidence at trial, saying that imputation is, literally, making up a good amount of data. In fact, defendant lawyers put a lot of effort in invalidating evidence, and imputation is quite easy to attack.
This case is a good sample to build upon it, to try to introduce imputation as a victim identification. But forensics move slowly.
It's a classic for a reason :)