Ok this is not really the kind of science news we usually report on, but seeing as how i’m a sucker for trashy day-time television, such as Maury’s talkshow where he routinely has episodes doing paternity tests on multiple guys, i thought i’d mention this. Apparently some would-be baby-daddy’s have been trying to cheat the system by a not-so-novel and fairly gross approach. It’s a variant of the good old “clean urine” technique utilized by athletes for decades, with a little twist.

When DNA tests are taken, they usually obtain a sample from the subject by using mouth-swab, and a DNA analysis is done on that sample and compared to another. In this particular case it’s a paternity test so it’s compared to some kids DNA where they can see the similarities if the kid has the guys genes. So the guy mentioned in this specific press release, got results back from the scientists that were pretty much impossible unless there were two different DNA’s in the sample they collected. When confronted with this he confessed, and it turns out he was carrying an extra bottle of saliva from one of his friends, and put that in his mouth right before the mouth-swab.

Science prevailed though and saw through it fairly easily, and although this has lead to a new procedure in paternity testing in hopes of avoiding similar situations, it would be almost impossible to sneak one past the laboratory using this method. They will of course keep trying to find new and innovative methods of cheating the tests (after all, murder trials hang on these things as well), and scientists will try to keep up and out-smart them. They go to quite some lengths to try and cheat it though, as you can also read about in the press-release, they’ve had similar problems before with DNA tests from blood-samples, where the subjects tried to get a blood transfusion shortly before their test in hopes of beating it.