Criticism for Craig Venter’s “Face-Prediction” Software

The tool cannot predict a person’s face from DNA, say researchers—including some listed as coauthors on the publication.

Written byCatherine Offord

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Update (September 12): Venter and his colleagues have published a response to Yaniv Erlich’s criticism of the paper. On bioRxiv, the authors refute Erlich’s claim that the paper contains “major flaws,” and call his approach to the data “misleading.” They also emphasize that their software can predict not only faces from DNA, but other phenotypic and demographic variables such as height and biological age.

A paper from Craig Venter and colleagues at his genetics company Human Longevity made waves after publication in PNAS last week (September 5) with its claim to be able to reconstruct a person’s face from his or her genome. Now, it’s attracting a tidal wave of criticism from researchers—including some who are listed as coauthors—with suggestions that the article is more ...

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Meet the Author

Catherine Offord
After undergraduate research with spiders at the University of Oxford and graduate research with ants at Princeton University, Catherine left arthropods and academia to become a science journalist. She has worked in various guises at The Scientist since 2016. As Senior Editor, she wrote articles for the online and print publications, and edited the magazine’s Notebook, Careers, and Bio Business sections. She reports on subjects ranging from cellular and molecular biology to research misconduct and science policy. Find more of her work at her website.
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