It’s amazing the jobs that people have and the uses to which scientific techniques can be put.  Take forensic art investigation for example.  As a forensic pollen specialist, of all people I should know the value of cross-discipline application of forensic techniques, but I hadn’t ever really heard of forensic art.  Yet here is forensic art in action, re-assigning a piece of art to da Vinci – altering the value of the painting from NZ$42,000 to a staggering NZ$350 million: How do Experts Authenticate Art? They’ve used a combination of techniques to produce a convincing result: radiocarbon dating places the age at a time consistent with da Vinci, brush stroke analysis demonstrates probable left-handedness.  A faint fingerprint was found on the canvas, which matched one found on a canvas known to be a da Vinci that is hanging in Vatican City.

However, I can’t help but wonder whether this evidence meets the standard of proof required in criminal or civil cases.  How do we know that the fingerprint on the known da Vinci actually belonged to da Vinci?  A good lawyer would trash that in seconds: maybe da Vinci had an assistant who also handled his pictures.  What is the error on the radiocarbon date?  What is the risk of radiocarbon contamination?  Was da Vinci definitely left-handed?  What is the likelihood that the painter was left-handed?  Perhaps I am just a cynic who should allow art to be appreciated…

An interesting article appeared in the Washington Post in September entitled Shoddy Forensic Science: fact & fiction.  As part of the lectures and presentations I give, I always mention why Experts should be instructed and how to tell that you have a genuine Expert.  The example I put up to explain why lawyers should check Experts’ credentials (rather than just assume that they are as good as they tell you they are) is a man called Gene Morrison.

Gene Morrison was a bogus “forensic investigator” based in the northern area of England.  He cut and pasted many of his reports cut from the internet. He was charged with a variety of offences including obtaining a money transfer by deception, obtaining property by deception, perverting the course of justice and perjury.  Morrison bought his qualifications from a sham university because, as he told the court it “looked easier” than attending a real university.  He’d never formally trained as a forensic scientist and it seems that he thought it would be a good way to make money.

Morrison was found guilty of most of the charges and jailed for 5  years in 2005.  The biggest issue is that he left a legacy of approximately 700 cases, prepared over a period of 26 years.  All of these cases had to be re-assessed to ensure that there had not been any miscarriages of justice.  Imagine the cost to the tax payer.

New Zealand, of course, had their own example in the form of Dr Michael Bottrill who mis-read cervical screening results in the Gisborne region.  23,000 slides were re-read by an Australian lab, which found that he only diagnosed 15% of the high grade cancer slides.

Unfortunately, it generally takes the occurrence of negative events to prompt change.  I cannot emphasise enough how strongly I feel that lawyers must adequately check the credentials of Experts before the stage of instruction – and checking of credentials is critical in so many areas, as demonstrated in the cervical smear debacle.

I am very proud to have just been accepted as a contributor to Sciblogs, New Zealand’s largest science blog.  It’s a blog that provides scientists with a forum to present their news, views and research to a national and international audience.  Some of my posts will appear on both blog sites, some will only appear on this blog.

Whichever blog you choose to read, I will, as always, welcome comments and will answer questions.

Don’t forget – there’s always something new to learn in forensic science, regardless of what happens on CSI….

For reasons including the recession, many UK Police forces are having their budgets cut.  The Metropolitan Police in London have lost over GBP100 million.  The Police Service of Northern Ireland is required to cut GBP17 million from next year.

I hear rumblings that quality of service will suffer, which we can only assume will lead, sooner or later, to miscarriages of justice, which cost more in the long run to sort out.  Add that to the redundancies and laboratory closures at the Forensic Science Service and it’s all going a bit Pete Tong.

I know it’s a recession but surely there are other places to cut money before stripping it from the front line of the criminal justice system?

Well, I’ve done it again.  I got sucked into visiting Amazon and ended up buying two books.  I’m a sucker and my own worst enemy.  I recently attended a couple of meetings at a publishers and I decided that my dream job would be to be their Receptionist – she is surrounded by beautifully presented and interesting books of all kinds.  Mind you, I’d never answer the phone but I’d be very well-informed about the products if I ever did get to talk to anyone.

Only two books is pretty good though – left to my own devices when I was pregnant a few years ago I managed to heft fourteen lovely, lovely, lovely books to the check-out counter, only to have to put five of them back, partly for reasons of finance and partly because I couldn’t carry them back to the car from the Cambridge Park & Ride.

I consciously stay away from Amazon because I can’t resist books.  When I lived in England (twenty miles away from the Amazon warehouse) every now and again I found myself convincing enough to allow myself to go back and have a little look, just in case.  The problem was that when faced with a virtual basket of books I started to look for more so as to make the postage worthwhile.  Now that I have moved to a non-Amazon country I can’t fall foul of that because of having to pay separate postage costs for each book that is ordered – I’ve saved a bloody fortune.

The reason I went to Amazon on this most recent occasion though was because I read an article about a book that was cited in a US Supreme Court ruling called A Litigator’s Guide to DNA: From the Laboratory to the Courtroom byRon C. Michaelis.  It’s work-related so therefore can be bought justifiably and it looks utterly fascinating.  I didn’t end up buying it (yet) for no other reason than I got distracted by so many other books that I forgot to add it to my order and now it’s too late because I’ve checked out and the time to amend the order has expired.  So if anyone has read it, I’d like to know if it’s worth a read.

The books I did end up buying are Stiff, which is about what happens to human bodies that are donated to science, and a book about memoirs of a Home Office Pathologist – all jolly bedtime reading and I’ll write a review when I’ve read them.  As it is, it’ll take a week or so for them to arrive because they’re coming from England.  That’s the joy of Amazon, you can have a few beers, browse some books, buy some books and then get the shock of your sweet life when books start arriving ten days later….