Textual Analysis to indicate authorship.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17639-writing-style-fingerprint-tool-easily-fooled.html

Many case-followers have suggested that the purpose of using text in the note that is taken from a variety of movie scripts is to conceal the author's own writing style through the intentional adoption of the text of other authors. This ofcourse would mean the ransome note's author had a belief that his own natural writing style might be recognizable to the Ramseys or to the police.

I've often felt undecided on this issue. It seems to me that a person can adopt the expression "make my day" for reasons other than concealing his own identity from later analysis of writing style. The use of very popular expressions can be for a variety of purposes unrelated to concealment of actual identity.

Irrespective of the author's intentions, any later analysis and determination of authorship would usually be based on far more data than that which is contained in the ransom note. It is important to bear in mind that peer review, while it may not be the great panacea that everyone imagines it to be, still does serve a vital function of establishing general acceptance amongst the scientific community. Whenever a tool is so easily fooled by rather simple techniques, it is unlikely the process will be well received in the scientific community.