IS TV SCIENCE GIVING RESEARCH A BAD NAME?

INADVERTENTLY RAISING THE POPULARITY OF SCIENCE

While directors and screenwriters might prefer that the plot line of a television show keep the audience watching, in many crime dramas it is the apparent wizardry of forensic science that continues to amaze viewers. The television franchise ‘CSI’ (Crime Scene Investigation) has expanded into multiple shows based in multiple US cities, and its high viewer ratings have ensured that increased science content has appeared in other crime dramas including revived Sherlock Holmes’ shows on both sides of the Atlantic.

THE PROBLEM WITH ‘ARTISTIC LICENSE’

Working within the confines of a sixty or ninety minute drama (not counting minutes deducted for commercials) requires that writers have to take some artistic license with elements of the drama in order to ensure that an appropriate conclusion is reached. Partial fingerprints are miraculously pulled from obscure sources and fed into databases that manage to pull the right perpetrator from millions of entries. Better still, DNA samples are taken from decades-old evidence that manage to prove the categorical innocence or guilt of the party in question, often pausing to underscore the benefits of modern science and technology in catching the guilty and protecting the innocent.

THE HARSHER REALITY OF FORENSIC SCIENCE

Media coverage of cases being overturned after decades of imprisonment based on “new DNA evidence,” is very popular. Unfair imprisonment and demands for restitution are volatile topics that are ideal for cable news debates, but there is a broader and much less popular implication from these stories – specifically that forensic science, even with its’ new modern box of tricks, is often wrong. Even with improved methods to gather data, that data still has to be interpreted by real forensic scientists, not the infallible technology portrayed on the television shows, and that human involvement opens up the issue of bias.

A 2009 National Academy of Sciences report found that: “The forensic science system, encompassing both research and practice, has serious problems that can only be addressed by a national commitment to overhaul the current structure.” The Washington Post concurred: “Far from infallible, expert comparisons of hair, handwriting, marks made by firearms on bullets, and patterns such as bite marks and shoe and tire prints are in some ways unscientific and subject to human bias.”

MANAGING CONFIRMATION BIAS

Human beings have a well-documented tendency to exhibit “confirmation biases” in decision making, which means that forensic scientists are at risk in gathering, interpreting, and creating evidence in biased ways to support what they already believe. This isn’t the same as direct fabrication, but it does directly influence conduct when dealing with evidence in the Crime Lab delivered by a police officer who believes that the right person is sitting in the interview room.

Taking this further, if the case goes to a jury trial, members of that jury are at equal risk of confirmation bias based on their belief in the infallibility of forensic evidence as portrayed on their favorite television show. It then becomes the prosecuting attorney’s problem to challenge the qualifications and experience of the expert witness hired by the defense, and to question the methods of the Crime Lab using a different expert witness hired by the prosecution.

Critics have argued that members of the police force should not oversee scientific research in a Crime Lab, nor should the training of the personnel in that lab be subject to the vagaries of civilian protection budgets. However, the issue of flawed forensic science is such a Pandora’s box for the legal community, with the inherent risk of having hundreds of cases either challenged or directly overturned, that any interest in raising the research standards of forensic labs remains well hidden.