Governing anticipatory technology practices. Forensic DNA phenotyping and the forensic genetics community in Europe

Forensic geneticists have attempted to make the case for continued investment in forensic genetics research, despite its seemingly consolidated evidentiary role in criminal justice, by shifting the focus to technologies that can provide intelligence. Forensic DNA phenotyping (FDP) is one such emerging set of techniques, promising to infer external appearance and ancestry of an unknown person. On this example, I consider the repertoire of anticipatory practices deployed by scientists, expanding the concept to not only focus on promissory but also include epistemic and operational aspects of anticipatory work in science. I explore these practices further as part of anticipatory self-governance efforts, attending to the European forensic genetics community and its construction of FDP as a reliable and legitimate technology field for use in delivering public goods around security and justice. In this context, I consider three types of ordering devices that translate anticipatory practices into anticipatory self-governance.     

Karl Popper,Forensic Science,and Nested Codes

This paper utilizes the framework of Karl Popper’s 3-world ontology to make the case that forensic science is a specialized coding system that establishes meaningful connections between the world of biology (world 1) and the world of human society (world 3). Forensic science is a cross-disciplinary endeavor that uses scientific methods to determine what transpired in a crime so the legal system can determine how to prosecute the offender(s). On a Popperian analysis of forensic science, world 1 consists of evidence gathered at the crime scene, which enables investigators to develop a detailed reconstruction of the incident for consideration under the legal and ethical codes of society, which are products of world 3. Understanding forensic science in this way serves two purposes: first, it extends Marcello Barbieri’s code biology into the realm of philosophical considerations in science, law and ethics; and second, it situates forensic science within the larger context of debates in contemporary philosophy of science.     

Making space for criminalistics: Hans Gross and fin-de-siècle CSI

This article explores the articulation of a novel forensic object—the ‘crime scene’—and its corresponding expert—the investigating officer. Through a detailed engagement with the work of the late nineteenth-century Austrian jurist and criminalist Hans Gross, it analyses the dynamic and reflexive nature of this model of ‘CSI’, emphasising the material, physical, psychological and instrumental means through which the crime scene as a delineated space, and its investigator as a disciplined agent operating within it, jointly came into being. It has a further, historiographic, aim: to move away from the commonplace emphasis in histories of forensics on fin-de-siècle criminology and toward its comparatively under-explored contemporary, criminalistics. In so doing, it opens up new ways of thinking about the crime scene as a defining feature of our present-day forensic culture that recognise its historical contingency and the complex processes at work in its creation and development.     

ETHICAL ISSUES IN FORENSIC PSYCHIATRIC RESEARCH ON MENTALLY DISORDERED OFFENDERS

This paper analyses ethical issues in forensic psychiatric research on mentally disordered offenders, especially those detained in the psychiatric treatment system. The idea of a 'dual role' dilemma afflicting forensic psychiatry is more complicated than acknowledged. Our suggestion acknowledges the good of criminal law and crime prevention as a part that should be balanced against familiar research ethical considerations. Research aiming at improvements of criminal justice and treatment is a societal priority, and the total benefit of studies has to be balanced against the risks for research subjects inferred by almost all systematic studies. Direct substantial risks must be balanced by health benefits, and normal informed consent requirements apply. When direct risks are slight, as in register-based epidemiology, lack of consent may be counter-balanced by special measures to protect integrity and the general benefit of better understanding of susceptibility, treatment and prevention. Special requirements on consent procedures in the forensic psychiatric context are suggested, and the issue of the relation between decision competence and legal accountability is found to be in need of further study. The major ethical hazard in forensic psychiatric research connects to the role of researchers as assessors and consultants in a society entertaining strong prejudices against mentally disordered offenders.     

Forensic DNA and bioinformatics

The field of forensic science is increasingly based on biomolecular data and many European countries are establishing forensic databases to store DNA profiles of crime scenes of known offenders and apply DNA testing. The field is boosted by statistical and technological advances such as DNA microarray sequencing, TFT biosensors, machine learning algorithms, in particular Bayesian networks, which provide an effective way of evidence organization and inference. The aim of this article is to discuss the state of art potentialities of bioinformatics in forensic DNA science. We also discuss how bioinformatics will address issues related to privacy rights such as those raised from large scale integration of crime, public health and population genetic susceptibility-to-diseases databases.     

Labs and slabs: Television crime drama and the quest for forensic realism

This essay examines how crime dramas produced during, and since, the 1990s became marked by the quest for ‘forensic realism’. In particular, the essay traces a landmark shift in the development of forensic realism in the form of the ground-breaking British police drama Prime Suspect in 1991. It is argued that this television series not only represents a turning point in television history, but that it also constitutes a key text in the broader cultural turn towards forensic fascination. Prime Suspect vividly revealed and displayed corpses, crime scenes and post-mortem photos in an unprecedented fashion for television. This essay shows how in the process it established new standards and expectations regarding the aesthetics and thematic content of the perceived ‘realism’ of the crime genre. Through an analysis of the reception and impact of Prime Suspect the essay also demonstrates how crime drama’s increasing fascination with forensic realism has driven debate over just what kinds of stories and images constitute acceptable or appropriate subject matter for popular entertainment, and for the medium of television itself.     

Renegotiating forensic cultures: Between law,science and criminal justice

This article challenges stereotypical conceptions of Law and Science as cultural opposites, arguing that English criminal trial practice is fundamentally congruent with modern science’s basic epistemological assumptions, values and methods of inquiry. Although practical tensions undeniably exist, they are explicable—and may be neutralised—by paying closer attention to criminal adjudication’s normative ideals and their institutional expression in familiar aspects of common law trial procedure, including evidentiary rules of admissibility, trial by jury, adversarial fact-finding, cross-examination and the ethical duties of expert witnesses. Effective partnerships between lawyers and forensic scientists are indispensable for integrating scientific evidence into criminal proceedings, and must be renegotiated between individual practitioners on an on-going basis. Fruitful interdisciplinary collaboration between scholars with a shared interest in forensic science should dispense with reductive cultural stereotypes of Science and Law.     

HOW TO CONNECT BIOETHICS AND ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS: HEALTH, SUSTAINABILITY, AND JUSTICE

In this paper, I explore one way to bring bioethics and environmental ethics closer together. I focus on a question at the interface of health, sustainability, and justice: How well does a society promote health with the use of no more than a just share of environmental capacity? To address this question, I propose and discuss a mode of assessment that combines a measurement of population health, an estimate of environmental sustainability, and an assumption about what constitutes a fair or just share. This mode of assessment provides an estimate of the just and sustainable life expectancy of a population. It could be used to monitor how well a particular society promotes health within just environmental limits. It could also serve as a source of information that stakeholders use when they deliberate about programs, policies, and technologies. The purpose of this work is to focus attention on an ethical task: the need to fashion institutions and forms of life that promote health in ways that recognize the claims of sustainability and justice.     

Forensic culture as epistemic culture: The sociology of forensic science

This paper explores whether we can interpret the notion of ‘forensic culture’ as something akin to what Knorr-Cetina called an ‘epistemic culture’. Can we speak of a ‘forensic culture’, and, if so, how is it similar to, or different from, other epistemic cultures that exist in what is conventionally called ‘science’? This question has important policy implications given the National Academy Science’s (NAS) recent identification of ‘culture’ as one of the problems at the root of what it identified as ‘serious deficiencies’ in U.S. forensic science and ‘scientific culture’ as an antidote to those problems. Finding the NAS’s characterisation of ‘scientific culture’ overly general and naïve, this paper offers a preliminary exploration of what might be called a ‘forensic culture’. Specifically, the paper explores the way in which few of the empirical findings accumulated by sociologists of science about research science seem to apply to forensic science. Instead, forensic science seems to have developed a distinct culture for which a sociological analysis will require new explanatory tools. Faithful sociological analysis of ‘forensic culture’ will be a necessary prerequisite for the kind of culture change prescribed by external reformist bodies like the NAS.     

Microbial Degradation of Forensic Samples of Biological Origin: Potential Threat to Human DNA Typing

Forensic biology is a sub-discipline of biological science with an amalgam of other branches of science used in the criminal justice system. Any nucleated cell/tissue harbouring DNA, either live or dead, can be used as forensic exhibits, a source of investigation through DNA typing. These biological materials of human origin are rich source of proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, trace elements as well as water and, thus, provide a virtuous milieu for the growth of microbes. The obstinate microbial growth augments the degradation process and is amplified with the passage of time and improper storage of the biological materials. Degradation of these biological materials carriages a huge challenge in the downstream processes of forensic DNA typing technique, such as short tandem repeats (STR) DNA typing. Microbial degradation yields improper or no PCR amplification, heterozygous peak imbalance, DNA contamination from non-human sources, degradation of DNA by microbial by-products, etc. Consequently, the most precise STR DNA typing technique is nullified and definite opinion can be hardly given with degraded forensic exhibits. Thus, suitable precautionary measures should be taken for proper storage and processing of the biological exhibits to minimize their decaying process by micro-organisms.     

Forensic fictions: Science,television production,and modern storytelling

This essay uses interviews with television creators, writers, and producers to examine how media practitioners utilise, negotiate and transform forensic science in the production of televisual stories including the creation of unique visuals, character exploration, narrative progression, plot complication, thematic development, and adding a sense of authenticity. Television as a medium has its own structures and conventions, including adherence to a show’s franchise, which put constraints on how stories are told. I demonstrate how television writers find forensic science to be an ideal tool in navigating television’s narrative constraints by using forensics to create conflicts, new obstacles, potential solutions, and final solutions in their stories. I show how television writers utilise forensic science to provide the scientific certainty their characters require to catch the criminal, but also how uncertainty is introduced in a story through the interpretation of the forensics by the show’s characters. I also argue that televisual storytellers maintain a flexible notion of scientific realism based on the notion of possibility that puts them at odds with scientists who take a more demanding conception of scientific accuracy based on the concept of probability.     

An illustration of the advantages of efficient statistical methods for RFLP analysis in forensic science.

The debate about the statistics of DNA profiling in forensic science casework has been carried out mainly from the perspective which is generally known as "match/binning." This approach has an initial appeal because of its apparent conceptual simplicity. However, the simplicity is illusory because it encourages misconceptions which obscure the essential forensic issues. This is exemplified in a recent report of the National Research Council, which places great emphasis on the need for conservative estimation of relative frequencies while missing the point that the power of RFLP technology cannot be realized if the matching stage is inefficient. Our approach to the problem is a one-stage rather than a two-stage process, by means of one function--the likelihood ratio--which determines the evidential strength. This paper describes experiments which have been carried out to assess the power of the method in forensic science and compares it with match/binning methodology. Tests for gauging the effects of between-probe dependence are included, with the results complementing those of Risch and Devlin.     

Surviving as an underrepresented minority scientist in a majority environment

I believe the evidence will show that the science we conduct and discoveries we make are influenced by our cultural experience, whether they be positive, negative, or neutral. I grew up as a person of color in the United States of America, faced with challenges that many had as members of an underrepresented minority group. I write here about some of the lessons I have learned that have allowed me to survive as an underrepresented minority ­scientist in a majority environment.     

Chemical elemental distribution and soil DNA fingerprints provide the critical evidence in murder case investigation

Background

The scientific contribution to the solution of crime cases, or throughout the consequent forensic trials, is a crucial aspect of the justice system. The possibility to extract meaningful information from trace amounts of samples, and to match and validate evidences with robust and unambiguous statistical tests, are the key points of such process. The present report is the authorized disclosure of an investigation, carried out by Attorney General appointment, on a murder case in northern Italy, which yielded the critical supporting evidence for the judicial trial.

Methodology/Principal Findings

The proportional distribution of 54 chemical elements and the bacterial community DNA fingerprints were used as signature markers to prove the similarity of two soil samples. The first soil was collected on the crime scene, along a corn field, while the second was found in trace amounts on the carpet of a car impounded from the main suspect in a distant location. The matching similarity of the two soils was proven by crossing the results of two independent techniques: a) elemental analysis via inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) approaches, and b) amplified ribosomal DNA restriction analysis by gel electrophoresis (ARDRA).

Conclusions

Besides introducing the novel application of these methods to forensic disciplines, the highly accurate level of resolution observed, opens new possibilities also in the fields of soil typing and tracking, historical analyses, geochemical surveys and global land mapping.     

Potential significance of medicinal plants in forensic analysis: A review

Medicinal plants are a two-edged sword that might be exploited as a treatment specific dosage, and as deadly poisonous substances to commit murder or suicide when administered in high doses. Forensic experts can collect traces and residual materials from these toxic medicinal plants at a crime scene as forensic evidence. Further, more investigations need to be deeply implemented to in the future to understand the significance of medicinal plants in forensic investigations to detect these criminal offenses. Additionally, to provides a deep understanding of chemical substances that can impact human life positively or negatively with different doses as well as identifying the optimal or overdose concentrations for either treatments or poisonous effects using recent biotechnological approaches. This review aims to illustrate different contributions and the significance of medicinal plants in the field and further employment in the context of forensic science, especially in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.     

Microbial traces and their role in forensic science

Forensic microbiology, also known as the microbiology of death, is an emerging branch of science that is still underused in criminal investigations. Some of the cases might be difficult to solve with commonly used forensic methods, and then they become an operational field for microbiological and mycological analyses. The aim of our review is to present significant achievements of selected studies on the thanatomicrobiome (micro-organisms found in the body, organs and fluids after death) and epinecrotic community (micro-organisms found on decaying corpses) that can be used in forensic sciences. Research carried out as a part of the forensic microbiology deals with the thanatomicrobiome and the necrobiome—communities of micro-organisms that live inside and outside of a putrefying corpse. Change of species composition observed in each community is a valuable feature that gives a lot of information related to the crime. It is mainly used in the estimation of post-mortem interval (PMI). In some criminal investigations, such noticeable changes in the microbiome and mycobiome can determine the cause or the actual place of death. The microbial traces found at the crime scene can also provide clear evidence of guilt. Nowadays, identification of micro-organisms isolated from the body or environment is based on metagenome analysis and 16S rRNA gene amplicon-based sequencing for bacteria and ITS rRNA gene amplicon-based sequencing for fungi. Cultivation methods are still in use and seem to be more accurate; however, they require much more time to achieve a final result, which is an unwanted feature in any criminal investigation.     

Forensic social anthropology: an Australian perspective

If forensic physical anthropology is the science of biological processes and related medico-legal investigations, then forensic social anthropology is the science of cultural processes and related socio-legal investigations. This article lays out the terms, definitions, and application of forensic specialization in social anthropology as it is practised in Australia. The objective of this exercise is to equip both physical and social anthropologists with a consilient model for the joint engagement of their parent discipline in legal proceedings where cultural processes are deemed relevant by a court or other legally empowered body. As demonstrated in Australia, the potential applications of forensic social anthropology range across a variety of matters involving both civil and criminal investigation. Such matters include systematic land expropriation, child removal, forced population movement, modern-day slavery, unlawful detention, and other important social phenomena. The questionable legality of these kinds of phenomena is not isolated to Australia but is, rather, of international significance.     

土壤微生物在法庭科学领域中的应用研究进展

土壤物证在法庭科学领域的应用由来已久,主要是基于其外观、颜色、元素组成、矿物学等理化特性及土壤夹杂物等的比对检验。近年来,随着高通量测序技术的发展,法医土壤微生物检验不再完全依赖于传统培养技术,而是直接挖掘分析土壤中的全部微生物DNA信息,并将这些信息应用于法庭科学领域内的样本比对、土壤物证区域环境推断和溯源研究等,从而凸显出土壤微生物物证在案件侦查和法庭诉讼方面的巨大价值和应用潜力。本文通过综述国内外有关法医土壤微生物研究的最新进展,指出了土壤微生物多样性检验在法庭科学领域的应用潜力,分析了法医土壤微生物群落多样性的影响因素,最后探讨了法医土壤微生物研究中存在的问题和未来的发展方向。     

Distinguished lecture: Native title—Implications for Australian senses of place and belonging

Can native title, across remote, rural and urban settings, complement and overlap with current and future Australian senses of belonging? This is to explore a form of cultural coexistence that is potentially in tension with a sharp and mutually exclusive categorical distinction between those who embrace Indigenous identity and others. Can such cultural coexistence reinforce legal and economic achievements of land justice for the Indigenous minority yet also contribute to rich senses of place and belonging across the broader Australian society? While anthropology as a social science has a substantial and important practical research role in negotiations for, and outcomes of, particular native title claims, a further challenge is understanding the extent to which post‐claim coexisting identities and interests might enrich Australia's trajectory in resolving legacies of colonialism.