MetaFilter posts tagged with forensics

UK Asylum Seekers: Let The Right Ones In

filthy light thief — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 09:54:02 -0800

The Home Office, the UK government department responsible for immigration control, has initiated a program to test the DNA from of potential asylum seekers in an attempt to confirm their true nationalities. The initial program is a six-month pilot limited to claimants arriving from the Horn of Africa. The program, currently using forensic samples provided on a voluntary basis, could potentially expand to other nationalities if successful. The Home Office spokeswoman said ancestral DNA testing would not be used alone but would be combined with language analysis, investigative interviewing techniques and other recognized forensic disciplines, but many are decrying the "deeply flawed" program, from refugee support groups to scientists in the genetic forensics fields (via). Sandy Buchan, of Refugee Action:

Many of those who seek asylum are two or even three generations removed from the country of origin of their parents and grandparents, and are fleeing areas other than the nation of their birth. A Zimbabwean farmer fleeing persecution may possess the DNA of British relatives; would they be denied asylum on that basis?

Alec Jeffreys of the University of Leicester, who pioneered human DNA fingerprinting:

The Borders Agency is clearly making huge and unwarranted assumptions about population structure in Africa; the extensive research needed to determine population structure and the ability or otherwise of DNA to pinpoint ethnic origin in this region simply has not been done. Even if it did work (which I doubt), assigning a person to a population does not establish nationality - people move! The whole proposal is naive and scientifically flawed.

See also: Science Insider follow-up post and further reactions from experts in genetic forensic analysis.

Skull thought to be Hitler's is female

Plutor — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 05:13:57 -0800

Lending credence to conspiracy theorists everywhere, the skull fragment previously believed to have belonged to Adolf Hilter has been identified as female by DNA tests.

I gotta go, road dog. I love you Gabby.

desjardins — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 16:30:37 -0800

Expert tells Texas state-sanctioned review that they killed an innocent man. If the commission reaches the same conclusion, it could lead to the first-ever declaration by an official state body that an inmate was wrongly executed. Cameron Todd Willingham was accused of killing his three children in a house fire. There have been doubts about the case for years, thoroughly outlined in this 2004 Chicago Tribune article and this 2005 NPR interview (summarized in this Daily Kos diary). Title taken from his last statement.

CSI: The truth isn't nearly as entertaining.

Pragmatica — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 11:21:50 -0800

CSI Myths: The Shaky Science Behind Forensics Forensic science was not developed by scientists. It was mostly created by cops, who were guided by little more than common sense. And as hundreds of criminal cases begin to unravel, many established forensic practices are coming under fire.

It's not gross, it's science!

grapefruitmoon — Thu, 14 May 2009 16:18:21 -0800

No reaction allowed is the rule in Mr. Rubin's forensic science class at New Rochelle High School. Many high schools around the country are offering forensics science, including Eagle High, which will be starting next year. John F. Kennedy High School's forensic science class has their own blog.

"High-tech forensic perfection is a television fantasy, not a courtroom reality"

hayvac — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:04:09 -0800

The American National Academy of Sciences recently released a report that punched a few holes in the credibility of the forensic sciences: often seen (and portrayed) as infallible, in practice they're non-standardized, subjective (warning: pdf with gory image), accepted without rigorous testing (pdf), and lousy with dilettantes. A Canadian inquiry into the work of a pathologist whose testimony wrongly convicted a man of anally raping his four-year-niece to death says that forensic science is useful, but that we're doing it wrong. It's beginning to dawn that what we used to think of as a few bad apples may actually be symptoms of a deep rot in the field itself. As for the wrongfully convicted Canadian, after 12 years in prison for a crime that didn't exist, he forgave (.mov).

I sense you want to plead the 5th

Gyan — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 06:42:06 -0800

For the first time in the Indian state of Maharashtra, life sentences were meted out based on the findings of Brain Electrical Oscillation Signature(BEOS) profiling. "During BEOS profiling, an accused is asked not to give answers verbally; experiential knowledge is retrieved from his brain. ... The technique detects and differentiates whether the accused was actually involved in committing a crime or only learnt of it. It helps in the reconstruction of events." The developer of the technique appeared on the BBC Radio show All in the Mind a PubMed search turned up nothing

Sketchy Evidence

william_boot — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 14:11:52 -0800

One day while crossing an empty field, fifteen-year-old Tim Masters happened to see a dead body. Twenty years later, he remains in prison, serving time for a crime that he almost certainly did not commit. A haunting, bizarre tale of a murder investigation gone wrong.

Death in Miniature

grapefruitmoon — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 20:21:44 -0800

Frances Glessner Lee (previously discussed here) was a pioneer in forensic studies who built reproductions of crime scenes in dollhouses. Photographs of the dioramas, courtesy of Corinne May Botz.[More Inside] [viaATNY]

No rest for the dead...

Blazecock Pileon — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 01:51:31 -0800

My post-mortem to-do checklist, so far: 1. Study marine biology. 2. Accessorize my hot, wealthy widow. 3. Relay a few spooky telegrams to my spooky new friends. 4. Try to look as suspicious as possible. And that's even before rigor mortis sets in!

"My name is Mona Lisa"

nickyskye — Sat, 03 Jun 2006 21:00:00 -0800

Mona Lisa's voice finally heard. Even if you can't read Japanese, you can still click the buttons underneath each portrait to get playback. Works with Internet Explorer. Suzuki — a co-winner of the Ig Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for promoting harmony between species by inventing the Bow-Lingual, a dog-to-human interpretation device — undertook the project as part of activities promoting the Japan release of the movie "The Da Vinci Code."

A Look into the Dead

Gyan — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 17:13:26 -0800

Interactive Autopsy [Flash]

Skeletons in the closet

tommasz — Fri, 31 Oct 2003 14:06:16 -0800

Police find skeleton in Oddfellows lodge. Turns out, they'd already found it, 6 years before (your guess is as good as mine why no one did anything then). Even more interesting, it's not the only one that's been found and subsequently investigated by the police around the country. Makes you wonder about those Oddfellows.

The real CSI.

davehat — Thu, 07 Aug 2003 05:09:57 -0800

If Adam is to be identified, and his killers found, a whole, if short, life must be reconstructed from a tiny, bloodless torso.

Two years ago a small boy's torso was pulled out of the Thames. This fascinating article details how forensic science is driving the investigation in to his murder.

Tiny digital drives

banished — Thu, 29 May 2003 12:46:51 -0800

Child Pornographers Using Small Storage Drives. Small drives like this are giving the police quite a bit of trouble. One of the more interesting quotes from the story, "Even if the photos are encrypted, computer forensics specialists can break through most encryption schemes these days anyway."

greyscale — Tue, 01 May 2001 22:50:16 -0800

question your science professional MD, PhD, specialist. I've always thought you should seriously question their input on all their advise but most ppl don't.