Determination of chemical links from methylamphetamine profiling data sets

ABSTRACT

A combination of drug profiling analysis, statistical filtering of selected data, database prioritization and comparative evaluation of potentially linked impurity profiles is utilized in order to positively confirm a set of chemical links from a large amount of data whilst maintaining the greatest significance to our stakeholders.

KEYWORDS:

• Forensic intelligence
• chemical profiling
• Pearson correlation
• comparative evaluation
• chemical link

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge Kaye Ballantyne for construction of the Excel interface with SPSS, Catherine Quinn, Joanne Gerstner-Stevens, Ben Archer and Jim Pearson for proof-reading of the manuscript. The method for sample preparation/analysis of samples by impurity profiling has been adapted from a method originally supplied by the National Measurement Institute (NMI).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The Victorian Government provided financial support for the conduct of our research and preparation of the article, through funding from the Ice Action Plan. This funding source had no involvement in the study design; collection, analysis and interpretation of data; writing of the report; or decision to submit the paper for publication.