4 Annoying Debates That Were Solved Using DNA Testing
by Ian Fortey
DNA technology is amazing, allowing us to solve cold cases or use it for data storage in futuristic computing. We don't always utilize this highly scientific tool for noble causes, though — sometimes we just want to know who's not cleaning up their dog's massive dumps. And while that may sound trivial and stupid, rest assured, it can get stupider.
The Spit Take
If you've ever had the suspicion that your server at a restaurant was doing something unsavory to your meal, the reason could be that you're a dick, because people who are nice to the wait-staff don't worry about such things. It's a pretty common trope in movies and TV, though, and sadly, there are plenty of hidden camera videos on YouTube confirming this sort of thing actually happens.
But what if there's no video? How would you prove it? Let's go to Chili’s!
Back in 2015, Ken Yerdon did have dinner at Chili’s, which was apparently a weekly thing for him. He and his wife told their server, Gregory Lamica, that the broccoli in the meal was undercooked and that they hadn’t received any chips. Lamica, annoyed that he was asked to do his job, decided to add a little something extra to the mix when they asked for refills of their drinks to go.
Pixabay
“I made it special, just for you!”
According to Yerdon, on the drive home the lid popped off his styrofoam cup. He saw what looked like spit on top of the drink and, in his words, not just spit, but a loogie. When he went back to Chili's, they wouldn't actually admit any responsibility, but they refunded his meal and gave him some coupons.
But because Chili's wouldn't fire the waiter, Yerdon contacted the police, who then went and got a DNA swab from Lamica and compared it to the floating throat slug. Three months later, results came in proving Lamica had, in fact, horked one up in the drink. He lost his job and received a $125 fine for his infraction, and Yerdon went on to sue Chili’s and settled out of court in what feels like the least dramatic handing down of justice ever.
Waiter, My Food Has A Something Else In It
Everyone, at some point, has probably wondered exactly how much possum armpit is in their XTREME Crunch Wrap BLITZED, but presumably there are real people who watch over that sort of thing. Make no mistake, people will buy 250,000-year-old mammoth meat when given the opportunity (foreshadowing!), and that's OK, but we've collectively agreed that you need to be up front about it.
And if we don't believe you, we'll just run DNA tests.
You probably heard about the famous “KFC served me a rat” photo from back in 2015. Well, in an effort to clear their name, the fast food chain ponied up for their own DNA test to prove that the supposed bringer of plagues was, in fact, chicken. And they were probably pretty motivated to do so given, you know, it did kind of look like it had a tail.
Subway had to deal with Canadian news organization CBC, when a series of fast foods were tested for the show Marketplace and they came up with the curious result that a large portion of Subway’s chicken is actually soy, as opposed to chicken.
Of course, Subway immediately rejected the claims, and even went so far as to sue the CBC, who stood by their story and testing methods. The lawsuit was eventually thrown out with both sides producing evidence to show that the chicken was what they said it was. The judge in the case noted that there may have been some problems with the lab, while CBC admitted that the chicken part of the chicken was still chicken.
Pixabay
Unless science simply has yet to discover the subspecies gallus gallus madeofsoyus.
So that's ... a compromise? Wait, is that what they were supposed to be doing?
Now it's happening even more, like in this study from 2017 where seafood samples were taken from six different restaurants in Washington D.C., and they found that 33% of the fish they tested probably weren't what the menu said they were. And even that's just the tip of the did-you-test-it-to-make-sure-it's-an iceberg, given that “seafood fraud” has been kind of a major thing for a long time.
It seems pretty crazy that we live in a world where we have to prove what food actually is using DNA testing. Then again, given that whole horse meat scandal in Europe, it probably makes sense for companies to be a little proactive with it. At least we can be thankful that nobody’s trying to straight-up sell us some nasty old meat they found in a cave.
The Mammoth Meal
Back in 1904, an organization called the Explorers Club began in New York whose purpose was (and still is!) to promote science. In the 1950s, what this meant was throwing a dinner party where they told the guests they were serving 250,000-year-old mammoth meat.
According to Commander Wendell Phillips Dodge, who organized the event at the Roosevelt Hotel, aside from dishes like turtle soup and bison meat, there were to be some prehistoric items on the menu as well, including a giant sloth and the aforementioned mammoth. Supposedly, the mammoth sample had been found in “Woolly Cove” on Akutan Island, one of those ancient frozen relics of a bygone era just waiting to be snacked on by New York’s most adventurous and antacid-equipped scientists.
But one member of the society was not able to attend the dinner, so he requested that he be sent a sample, lest he miss out on a meal no one had enjoyed since basically before time began. And they did, but it was never consumed, and that single morsel remained in museums, preserved and uneaten, until 2014 when some students were curious about the nature of the sample and, with funding from the actual Explorers Club, tested the meat.
Pixabay
“Not like that, Steve.”
While the story was awesome and surely some excellent PR for the Explorers Club back in the '50s, that DNA ended up definitively proving the entire thing was BS — it was just green sea turtle. And really, isn't it kind of weird that nobody from an organization that was supposed to be promoting science questioned the grilling and seasoning of such a find as opposed to, say, attempting to reanimate it?
Look in the Loch
The Loch Ness Monster has existed, at least in imaginations, since waaaaay back in the 1870s. That's when tales of a mysterious creature in the lake first appeared in print. You're looking at about a solid 150 years of history for an animal that no one has been able to confirm is real, and that would probably be super dead by now even if it had been. But, you know, let's keep looking.
DNA technology has allowed the search for Nessie to expand beyond amateur internet research or sitting in a lawn chair on the beach and hoping that a monster shows up. In 2019, researchers from New Zealand attempted to categorize all life that existed in the loch through the use of DNA sampling.
Turns out, if you want to know what lives in a given body of water, you don't need to actually find the creature itself — you just need to skim the top. Errant bits of DNA float all over the place in water, so all they had to do was test some of it and see what was swimming around in there.
Pixabay
Sometimes you really don’t want to know what’s in there.
In what probably resulted in the least exciting call to Ripley's Believe It or Not!, they ended up finding no dinosaur DNA in the water sample. There was also no evidence of sturgeon DNA, catfish DNA, or Greenland shark DNA, all of which have been proposed as alternative identities for the mythical creature. So if there's no giant fish or dinosaurs or whatever over there in Scotland, what is there?
The testing did discover the DNA of European eels in the lake. Lots of eels, in fact. Everywhere they sampled had eel DNA present. European conger eels are among the largest in the world, and one was caught in 2015 that was 20 feet long.
While they can't prove definitively that there are actual giant eels in Loch Ness, it's the only thing we could link DNA to that could possibly be long enough to qualify as a serpentine lake monster. So it at least seems like the best candidate. Regardless, it feels like something we should put to rest, but it's pretty much a statistical certainty that whatever entertainment becomes hundreds of years from now, somebody will be documenting their for real this time you guys search for Nessie on it.
