Earlier this month, the police department up in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada released a sketch of a suspect.

Just another day in police town, except...

No one knows what this suspect looks like.

The sketch was based purely on DNA.

Edmonton police are turning towards an emerging technology with hopes of identifying this suspect in a sexual assault case that has gone cold.

The emerging technology is known as DNA phenotyping. Using nothing more than DNA found in investigation to try and figure out what a suspect may have looked like.

And within days of adopting this technology, the Edmonton police had reversed course.

They took their DNA police sketch down and apologized to the public.

Why? Coming up? Until they explained.

It's a case of bad science and poor ethics.

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Today explained Sean Ramos from a heads up that the show that's ahead of us will feature some discussion of sexual assault.

But that's not really what it's about.

We're here to find out why the whole world seemed to notice a decision made by the Edmonton police in Canada this month.

It's because the police used something called DNA phenotyping to try and advance a stalled sexual assault investigation.

They created a massive backlash that was centered on questions of racism but also raised a lot of questions about forensic science and the limitations of DNA.

...