Bruce Weir | |
---|---|
Born | Bruce Spencer Weir 31 December 1943 |
Education | University of Canterbury (BSc (Hons), 1965) North Carolina State University (PhD, 1968) |
Spouse | Beth Weir |
Children | Claudia Beth Henry Bruce |
Awards | Guggenheim Fellowship (1983) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Biostatistics Statistical genetics |
Institutions | University of Washington |
Thesis | The Two Locus Inbreeding Function (1968) |
Doctoral advisor | C. Clark Cockerham |
Doctoral students | Rebecca Doerge |
Other notable students | Brandon Gaut |
Bruce Spencer Weir (born 31 December 1943) [1] is a New Zealand biostatistician and statistical geneticist. He is Professor of Biostatistics and Professor of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington. He was previously the William Neal Reynolds Professor of statistics and genetics and director of the Bioinformatics Research Center at North Carolina State University. He is known within academia for his research in statistical and forensic genetics, and outside academia for testifying in the O.J. Simpson murder trial in 1995. [2]
Weir was born in Christchurch, New Zealand, the oldest child of Gordon and Peg Weir. [3] He was a foundation pupil of Shirley Boys' High School. [4] He went to the University of Canterbury and was the first in his family to go to university. He gained his PhD in statistics at the North Carolina State University. [4]
During his testimony in the O. J. Simpson murder case, Weir was pressed by lawyer Peter Neufeld on his failure to include a certain genetic marker in his calculations of some of the DNA frequencies he had analyzed. In response, Weir acknowledged that he had in fact made a calculation error in failing to include this marker in all of his analyses of DNA samples in the case. Lawyers for the defense used this admission to attempt to undermine Weir's credibility, despite the fact that the error had little effect on the validity of the DNA evidence that had been presented. [5] Weir subsequently recalculated his statistics and described his new findings in a subsequent day of testimony. Weir stated that after redoing his calculations, the odds that a blood mixture sample taken from the steering wheel of Simpson's Ford Bronco came from two unknown people increased from 1 in 59 to 1 in 26. Similarly, the equivalent odds for a blood mixture found on a glove outside Simpson's home were revised upward from 1 in 3,900 to 1 in 1,600. In his redirect examination that day, Weir asserted that the difference between his new and original results was not very statistically significant. [6]
Weir was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1983. He was named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1998 and of the American Statistical Association in 1999. [7] He received the O. Max Gardner Award from the University of North Carolina system in 2003. [2] In 2019, he received the Elizabeth W. Jones Award for Excellence in Education from the Genetics Society of America. [8] In 2021 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. [9] [4]
Weir is married to Beth Weir, an academic with interests in reading education. They have two children: Claudia Beth and Henry Bruce. [3]
Anthony William Fairbank Edwards, FRS is a British statistician, geneticist and evolutionary biologist. Edwards is regarded as one of Britain's most distinguished geneticists, and as one of the most influential mathematical geneticists in the history. He is the son of the surgeon Harold C. Edwards, and brother of medical geneticist John H. Edwards. Edwards has sometimes been called "Fisher's Edwards" to distinguish him from his brother, because he was mentored by Ronald Fisher. He has always had a high regard for Fisher's scientific contributions and has written extensively on them. To mark the Fisher centenary in 1990, Edwards proposed a commemorative Sir Ronald Fisher window be installed in the Dining Hall of Gonville & Caius College. When the window was removed in 2020, he vigorously opposed the move.
Sir Peter James Donnelly is an Australian-British mathematician and Professor of Statistical Science at the University of Oxford, and the CEO of Genomics PLC. He is a specialist in applied probability and has made contributions to coalescent theory. His research group at Oxford has an international reputation for the development of statistical methodology to analyze genetic data.
Barry Charles Scheck is an American attorney and legal scholar. He received national media attention while serving on O. J. Simpson's defense team, collectively dubbed the "Dream Team", helping to win an acquittal in the highly publicized murder case. Scheck is the director of the Innocence Project and a professor at Yeshiva University's Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City.
John Brookfield,, is a British population geneticist. He is Professor of Evolutionary Genetics at the University of Nottingham, in the School of Biology.
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Trudy Frances Charlene Mackay is the director of Clemson University's Center for Human Genetics located on the campus of the Greenwood Genetic Center. She is recognized as one of the world's leading authorities on the genetics of complex traits. Mackay is also the Self Family Chair in Human Genetics and Professor of Genetics and Biochemistry at Clemson University.
Joachim Wilhelm "Jo" Messing was a German-American biologist who was a professor of molecular biology and the fourth director of the Waksman Institute of Microbiology at Rutgers University.
Ziheng Yang FRS is a Chinese biologist. He holds the R.A. Fisher Chair of Statistical Genetics at University College London, and is the Director of R.A. Fisher Centre for Computational Biology at UCL. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2006.
Douglas Leon Wahlsten is a Canadian neuroscientist, psychologist, and behavior geneticist. He is a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Alberta. As of 2011, he was also a visiting professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in North Carolina, United States. He is known for his laboratory research on the behavior of mice, and for his theoretical writings on a wide range of other topics. His laboratory research has included studies of the effects of different laboratory environments and experimenter characteristics on the results of mouse studies. He and his colleagues have also developed an altered form of the rotarod performance test involving wrapping sandpaper around the rod, to reduce the ability of mice to grip the rod and ride around on it. He has criticized some of his fellow behavior geneticists for trying to separate the effects of genes and the environment on human intelligence, an endeavor he considers futile. He also met and became friends with Leilani Muir, later helping to edit her autobiography, A Whisper Past. He was the president of the International Behavioural and Neural Genetics Society from 2000 to 2001.
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Ken-Ichi Kojima was a Japanese-American population geneticist.
Columbus Clark Cockerham was an American statistical geneticist known for his work in quantitative genetics.
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On Tuesday, October 3, 1995, the verdict in the O. J. Simpson murder case was announced and Simpson was acquitted on both counts of murder. Although the nation observed the same evidence presented at trial, a division along racial lines emerged in observers' opinion of the verdict, which the media dubbed the "racial gap". Immediately following the trial, polling showed that most African Americans believed Simpson was innocent and justice had been served, while most White Americans felt he was guilty and the verdict was a racially motivated jury nullification by a mostly African-American jury. Current polling shows the gap has narrowed since the trial, with the majority of black respondents in 2016 stating they believed Simpson was guilty.
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