Microscopical discrimination of twins' head hair

Twin populations are ideal for studying human variation; a study of twin's hair, therefore, provided a better understanding of the value of hair comparisons. Duplicate head hair samples from 17 pairs of twins and one set of identical triplets were compared in a verified blind study. In addition to the direct comparison of all twins, random samples of two or three hairs were compared with randomly selected groups of known samples in a second blind study, to better simulate an ordinary forensic science case. Features commonly used by forensic hair examiners were adequate to distinguish hair samples from each twin from all other samples, illustrating the power of microscopical comparison when numerous questioned hairs are available in evidence. When two or three hairs were compared with randomly selected known samples, several were indistinguishable from hair samples other than the true source, proving once again that a human hair can never be associated with one person to the exclusion of all others.