Researchers say the findings may also someday help police investigators conjure up the faces of suspects from their DNA samples. But that potential application wades into murky ethical territory
There it is
this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2026
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Yeah I'm sure it will never make a mistake or be relied upon as the gospel of jesus like you see with, oh idk every single piece of technology used by police provided it aligns with their existing bias at the moment
PBS did a recent video on how DNA evidence is not nearly as infallible as copoganda make it out to be.
Find a dozen people who look like suspect. Do DNA analysis on dozen "doppelgangers". Take DNA from "doppelganger" that is the closest match, present to court using "expert" witness.
Strange, almost like phenotype is dependent on genotype?
You're telling me people whose genetics make them look similar have similar genetics???
Not proven until now.
These “duh” comments are always here in these situations.
We're just joking around here my friend :) of course it's important to confirm, still funny every time
I hope so, that’s good to hear. Some people seem so pissed off when making such comments about “useless” studies. 😔
People in text always sound more pissed off than they were. That mostly has to do with your expectations though ;)
You think this sounds angry???
Can you stop yelling?
sorry. I thought I was being friendly. Perhaps you'd prefer periods as my punctuation. I hope you're happy.
I too have autism.
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It seems this includes genes that don't play a direct role in the formation of facial features.
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Bad news for people that look like famous serial killers.
So that's why I want to make people lamp shades so bad? /s
If different people with similar visual characteristics have similar behavioral characteristics, doesn't that imply that perhaps we can judge a book by its cover?
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This kinda feels like a "duh." Or a "Well, makes sense"
Genetics, I can understand. But lifestyles? How?
Certain genetic mutations or chains of DNA can produce traits or characteristics a person exhibits, and can be hereditary.
Like diabetes, addiction, the way you and your dad have the same humor, natural abilities or inclination towards a subject, food allergies,
These traits could dictate a lifestyle, somewhat loosely defined .
DNA has a limited number of genes. Considering the enormous amount of functions they need to encode, the number of genes for each function becomes relatively small. 8 billion people and thousands of generations, we’re bound to have duplicates.
I would say it's even smaller in number. Because some combinations would not work and might kill you.
Yes, but the article says that certain combinations occur more often that if it was random. People with similar faces tend to have similar genes that are nor related to facial features.
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I've wondered this about people who act the same. They also tend to have some of the same facial expressions and mannerisms.
Maybe like our brains have certain tempaltes of personalities that we alter along the way. A starter personality of sorts.
I mean there's this town in rural [state my family had a farm in but now we don't hallelujah farm work is hard] that everyone looks like me because, well, go back far enough and all 500 of them and me are related. First time I went to the old farm it was frightening. Like walking into a clone factory.
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...We all look like 98% similar.
How similar is DNA from convergent evolution animals?
I mean, my uncle (who spent very little time with his bio father) has all the same mannerisms as him. As do I and my mother and one of my brothers. Some of it is that we inherited similar skeletal structure so our posture is similar. Some of it, I dunno.
well, at some point, everything is a crab.
so I would assume pretty similar.
great question though.
Or maybe we're living in a simulation and whatever is generating it only has a finite number of characters. 😲
@RegularJoe I'm curious about how this might work across ethnicities. I can't point to a photo, but several times, I've noticed people from other continents who could easily be someone I know here, except they're African, or Asian, when the person I know is white, just for example. Under the expected differences in hair, eyes, etc, the basic facial structure is the same. A DNA match seems less likely in these cases.
I don't have a great answer other than of the 32 studied, these were their stratification:
Related to population stratification, among the 16 look-alike pairs, 13 were of European ancestry, 1 Hispanic, 1 East Asian, and 1 Central-South Asian.
Source: https://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(22)01075-0
But whether people who look close enough to perform as another, such as the "Chinese Obama" (Xiao Jiguo) I can't say.
Then there's Indonesia's former president, Joko Widodo:
https://nextshark.com/people-love-indonesias-president-looks-like-barack-obama
It would be interesting to get the researchers to analyze their DNA.
@RegularJoe thank you! This is quite interesting. I'd forgotten about the celebrity look-alikes you mentioned. I'm not surprised the studies aren't there.
I don't think it's about a DNA match. Those people you mention could share more DNA than the rest of us, which could account for their similarities, but their DNA will never "match" anyone else's.
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I always wondered about this in terms of I have known some types of folks that look similar and actually often have similar social traits and this includes me to.
Nice to see research shared like this, thanks. I've always been fascinated by facial similarities. The other thing I often look at, especially when pronounced, is the difference in the two hemispheres of the face.
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