Professor Sir Alec Jeffrey discovered DNA 'fingerprinting' 25 years ago, to the great benefit of the police and the prosecuting authorities who don't seem to rely on anything else very much these days in the search for convictions. And DNA evidence has been mis-used in a number of cases just as enthusiastically as more traditional means of detection. But Jeffrey makes two points today; one is that the national DNA database is an abuse of his findings, containing the details of millions of people who have never been convicted or, in many cases, even charged. "Innocent people do not belong on that database," he says unequivocally. It would be nice if the police and ever-flexible justice secretary Jack Straw were paying attention. The other point he made is that he made his finding while pursuing research that interested him, not research as part of a tighter academic regime in which scientists only worked on things which are supposed, by the governing party of the day, to be good for the economy. Yet this is precisely what scientists, including him presumably, are supposed to do today. Our masters should pay a bit more attention to this very useful scientist. But they won't, of course.