Pedant, which was developed in collaboration with Dan Haydon, is a program for estimating maximum likelihood allelic dropout and false allele error rates from duplicate microsatellite genotypes in the absence of reference genotypes. The code is written in Delphi 7.0 (which is based on Turbo Pascal).
The main function of Pedant is to estimate error rates with confidence intervals from real genotypic data. In addition, Pedant can perform simulations, allowing you to decide how many samples you need to replicate to give a desired level of accuracy to your error rate estimates. If you want to know why it's useful to estimate dropout and false alleles separately, read Box A of the poster.
If you download Pedant, please let me know by email at paulj@stats.gla.ac.uk so that I can keep you informed of bug fixes and updates. Also let me know any comments, suggestions, bugs, etc.
The method is described here:
Johnson PCD, Haydon DT (2007). Maximum likelihood estimation of allelic dropout and false allele error rates from microsatellite genotypes in the absence of reference data. Genetics 175 (2), 827-842.
And here's an article describing the software:
Johnson PCD, Haydon DT (2007). Software for quantifying and simulating microsatellite genotyping error. Bioinformatics and Biology Insights 1, 71-75.
For a brief explanation read this poster.
Pedant (pedant.exe) works on all versions of Windows going back at least as far as Windows 98. It may also work on older versions.