Adult Sexual Assault Patients' Experience of the Physical Examination Component of the Medical Forensic Examination: A Scoping Review to Identify Gaps in the Research Literature.

We undertook a scoping review of published research literature that reported on adult sexual assault patients' experience of the physical examination component of the medical forensic examination (MFE). Eligible papers were those reporting data about the physical examination component of the MFE from the adult patient's perspective, published in the period January 2000 to March 2022 in peer reviewed journals and reports containing original research data published from a tertiary institution. Twelve papers were identified. The review identified a gap in the literature regarding the patient's experience of the physical examination component of the MFE. The existing literature is limited but suggests that some patients find the examination empowering and reassuring, restoring a sense of bodily control; however, for others it is an intrusive, violating experience that they endure. A more patient-centered sexual assault service appears to have a therapeutic value in itself, but more research is warranted as existing research is very limited and often from a proxy. In particular, more research on patients' self-reported experience of the MFE, including specific aspects of the examination and the experience of male and gender nonconforming victim-survivors, is needed. A better understanding, from the point of view of the patient, of the benefits of attending, may encourage victim-survivors to seek a health response and, possibly, report to police. It may also be time to assess the impacts of certain aspects of the forensic examination, rethink standard evidence collection processes, and consider enabling more acceptable options for victim-survivors including self-collection of intimate samples.

Investigating identification disparities in forensic anthropology casework.

Forensic anthropology is shifting to reflect on the impact of its practices within the criminal justice context in important ways. Here, we contribute to this essential work by examining how decedent demographics as well as estimations of biological profile components are related to identification trends in forensic anthropology cases. The study uses data from more than 1,200 identified and unidentified forensic anthropology cases from three agencies (together representing a nation-wide sample). We found the following: i) multivariate analyses indicated that decedent sex, age, and race and/or ethnicity are not related to case identification rates in the pooled United States sample, ii) when identification rate differences do occur, they appear to be smaller effects, more agency-specific, and/or related to the context of a particular agency, iii) for the agency-specific sample with available data, there was no consistent evidence for a discrepancy in the duration of an identification investigation based on a decedent's sex, age, or race and/or ethnicity, iv) forensic anthropological estimations of sex, age, and ancestry can improve the odds of identification for decedents, although these are small effects, and v) reporting an ancestry estimation does not appear to impact decedent race representation among resolved unidentified person cases. Although previous studies have identified demographic discrepancies in other areas of the criminal justice system, the results presented here suggest that decedent demographic estimation practices by forensic anthropologists in general do not appear to be related to discrepancies in identification trends, but more research is needed to examine whether these findings hold. Contextual factors and practices specific to each investigative agency likely contribute to identification trends.

Genetic sexing of subadult skeletal remains.

When subadult skeletons need to be identified, biological sex diagnosis is one of the first steps in the identification process. Sex assessment of subadults using morphological features is unreliable, and molecular genetic methods were applied in this study. Eighty-three ancient skeletons were used as models for poorly preserved DNA. Three sex-informative markers on the Y and X chromosome were used for sex identification: a qPCR test using the PowerQuant Y target included in PowerQuant System (Promega), the amelogenin test included in ESI 17 Fast STR kit (Promega), and a Y-STR amplification test using the PowerPlex Y-23 kit (Promega). Sex was successfully determined in all but five skeletons. Successful PowerQuant Y-target, Y-amelogenin, and Y-chromosomal STR amplifications proved the presence of male DNA in 35 skeletons, and in 43 subadults female sex was established. No match was found between the genetic profiles of subadult skeletons, and the elimination database and negative control samples produced no profiles, indicating no contamination issue. Our study shows that genetic sex identification is a very successful approach for biological sexing of subadult skeletons whose sex cannot be assessed by anthropological methods. The results of this study are applicable for badly preserved subadult skeletons from routine forensic casework.

Method development for forensic oil identification by direct analysis in real time time-of-flight mass spectrometry.

The current well-established chromatography and mass spectrometry based oil spill identification procedures, such as those outlined by the European Committee for Standardization, are highly reliable as methods, highly defensible in the court of law, and widely applicable to the majority of oil spill situations. Nevertheless, the methodology is time consuming and labour intensive, which may not be ideal when dealing with an emergency oil spill situation. In this study, direct analysis in real time time-of-flight mass spectrometry (DART/TOFMS) was used to successfully develop an efficient oil identification method. To confirm the accuracy of this method spilled oil samples were tested from five previous years of blind round robin testing organized by the oil spill identification network of experts (OSINET) under the Bonn Agreement. Heatmap inspection, principal component analysis and finally discriminant analysis of principal components were used to arrive at final predictions regarding the identities of the spilled oil samples. The results were compared with the results of previous gas chromatography flame ionization detection (GC/FID) and gas chromatography triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (GC/MS/MS) analyses of the same oils. While taking only about a tenth of the time, the DART/TOFMS analysis produced results similar to those of classical GC/FID and GC/MS/MS (EI+) procedures. The ability of DART/TOFMS to display this level of validity exemplifies its potential to be a new tool for supplementing classical analyses for oil spill forensics.

Forensic analysis of the Turkey 2023 presidential election reveals extreme vote swings in remote areas.

Concerns about the integrity of Turkey's elections have increased with the recent transition from a parliamentary democracy to an executive presidency under Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Election forensics tools are used to identify statistical traces of certain types of electoral fraud, providing important information about the integrity and validity of democratic elections. Such analyses of the 2017 and 2018 Turkish elections revealed that malpractices such as ballot stuffing or voter manipulation may indeed have played a significant role in determining the election results. Here, we apply election forensic statistical tests for ballot stuffing and voter manipulation to the results of the 2023 presidential election in Turkey. We find that both rounds of the 2023 presidential election exhibit similar statistical irregularities to those observed in the 2018 presidential election, however the magnitude of these distortions has decreased. We estimate that 2.4% (SD 1.9%) and 1.9% (SD 1.7%) of electoral units may have been affected by ballot stuffing practices in favour of Erdogan in the first and second rounds, respectively, compared to 8.5% (SD 3.9%) in 2018. Areas with smaller polling stations and fewer ballot boxes had significantly inflated votes and turnout, again, in favor of Erdogan. Furthermore, electoral districts with two or fewer ballot boxes were more likely to show large swings in vote shares in favour of Erdogan from the first to the second round. Based on a statistical model, it is estimated that these shifts account for 342,000 additional ballots (SD 4,900) or 0.64% for Erdogan, which is lower than the 4.36% margin by which Erdogan was victorious. Our results suggest that Turkish elections continue to be riddled with statistical irregularities, that may be indicative of electoral fraud.

DNA barcoding as new diagnostic tool to lethal plant poisoning in herbivorous mammals.

Reliable identification of plant species in the digestive tract of a deceased animal often represents the major key to diagnose a lethal intoxication with poisonous plants in veterinary pathology. In many cases, identification of the species is challenging or even impossible because the diagnostic morphological features have been degraded, and because the interpretation of such features requires a considerable expertise in plant anatomy and biodiversity. The use of DNA barcoding markers can support or even replace classical morphological assessment. While these markers have been widely used for plant taxonomy, their forensic application to clarify causes of animal poisoning is novel. In addition, we use specific single-nucleotide polymorphisms as fingerprints. This allows for a clear decision even in cases, where the conventionally used statistical e-values remain ambiguous. In the current work, we explore the feasibility of this strategy in a couple of exemplary cases, either in concert with anatomical diagnostics, or in cases where visual species identification is not possible, or where chemical toxin detection methods are not well established, complex, time consuming and expensive.

A model-independent redundancy measure for human versus ChatGPT authorship discrimination using a Bayesian probabilistic approach.

The academic and scientific world in general is increasingly concerned about their inability to determine and ascertain the identity of the writer of a text. More and more often the question arises as to whether a scientific article or work handed in by a student was actually produced by the alleged author of the questioned text. The role of artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly debated due to its dangers of undeclared use. A current example is undoubtedly the undeclared use of ChatGPT to write a scientific text. The article promotes an AI model-independent redundancy measure to support discrimination between hypotheses on authorship of various multilingual texts written by humans or produced by intelligence media such as ChatGPT. The syntax of texts written by humans tends to differ from that of texts produced by AIs. This difference can be grasped and quantified even with short texts (i.e. 1800 characters). This aspect of length is extremely important, because short texts imply a greater difficulty of analysis to characterize authorship. To meet the efficiency criteria required for the evaluation of forensic evidence, a probabilistic approach is implemented. In particular, to assess the value of the redundancy measure and to offer a consistent classification criterion, a metric called Bayes factor is implemented. The proposed Bayesian probabilistic method represents an original approach in stylometry. Analyses performed over multilingual texts (English and French) covering different scientific and human areas of interest (forensic science and socio-psycho-artistic topics) reveal the feasibility of a successful authorship discrimination with limited misclassification rates. Model performance is satisfactory even with small sample sizes.

Research Progress and Forensic Application of Human Vascular Finite Element Modeling and Biomechanics.

The finite element method (FEM) is a mathematical method for obtaining approximate solutions to a wide variety of engineering problems. With the development of computer technology, it is gradually applied to the study of biomechanics of human body. The application of the combination of FEM and biomechanics in exploring the relationship between vascular injury and disease, and pathological mechanisms will be a technological innovation for traditional forensic medicine. This paper reviews the construction and development of human vascular FEM modeling, and its research progress on the vascular biomechanics. This paper also looks to the application prospects of FEM modeling in forensic pathology.

Forensic analysis of biological fluid stains on substrates by spectroscopic approaches and chemometrics: A review.

BACKGROUND: Bodily fluid stains are one of the most relevant evidence that can be found at the crime scene as it provides a wealth of information to the investigators. They help to report on the individuals involved in the crime, to check alibis, or to determine the type of crime that has been committed. They appear as stains in different types of substrates, some of them porous, which can interfere in the analysis. The spectroscopy techniques combined with chemometrics are showing increasing potential for their use in the analysis of such samples due to them being fast, sensitive, and non-destructive. FINDINGS: This is a comprehensive review of the studies that used different spectroscopic techniques followed by chemometrics for analysing biological fluid stains on several surfaces, and under various conditions. It focuses on the bodily fluid stains and the most suitable spectroscopic techniques to study forensic scientific problems such as the substrate's characteristics, the influence of ambient conditions, the aging process of the bodily fluids, the presence of animal bodily fluids and non-biological fluids (interfering substances), and the bodily fluid mixtures. The most widely used techniques were Raman spectroscopy and attenuated total reflection Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR FTIR). Nonetheless, other non-destructive techniques have been also used, like near infrared hyperspectral imaging (HSI-NIR) or surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), among others. This work provides the criteria for the selection of the most promising non-destructive techniques for the effective in situ detection of biological fluid stains at crime scene investigations. SIGNIFICANCE AND NOVELTY: The use of the proper spectroscopic and chemometric approaches on the crime scene is expected to improve the support of forensic sciences to criminal investigations. Evidence may be analysed in a non-destructive manner and kept intact for further analysis. They will also speed up forensic investigations by allowing the selection of relevant samples from occupational ones.

Interpretable algorithmic forensics.

One of the most troubling trends in criminal investigations is the growing use of "black box" technology, in which law enforcement rely on artificial intelligence (AI) models or algorithms that are either too complex for people to understand or they simply conceal how it functions. In criminal cases, black box systems have proliferated in forensic areas such as DNA mixture interpretation, facial recognition, and recidivism risk assessments. The champions and critics of AI argue, mistakenly, that we face a catch 22: While black box AI is not understandable by people, they assume that it produces more accurate forensic evidence. In this Article, we question this assertion, which has so powerfully affected judges, policymakers, and academics. We describe a mature body of computer science research showing how "glass box" AI-designed to be interpretable-can be more accurate than black box alternatives. Indeed, black box AI performs predictably worse in settings like the criminal system. Debunking the black box performance myth has implications for forensic evidence, constitutional criminal procedure rights, and legislative policy. Absent some compelling-or even credible-government interest in keeping AI as a black box, and given the constitutional rights and public safety interests at stake, we argue that a substantial burden rests on the government to justify black box AI in criminal cases. We conclude by calling for judicial rulings and legislation to safeguard a right to interpretable forensic AI.

Shifting decision thresholds can undermine the probative value and legal utility of forensic pattern-matching evidence.

Forensic pattern analysis requires examiners to compare the patterns of items such as fingerprints or tool marks to assess whether they have a common source. This article uses signal detection theory to model examiners' reported conclusions (e.g., identification, inconclusive, or exclusion), focusing on the connection between the examiner's decision threshold and the probative value of the forensic evidence. It uses a Bayesian network model to explore how shifts in decision thresholds may affect rates and ratios of true and false convictions in a hypothetical legal system. It demonstrates that small shifts in decision thresholds, which may arise from contextual bias, can dramatically affect the value of forensic pattern-matching evidence and its utility in the legal system.

The scientific reinvention of forensic science.

Forensic science is undergoing an evolution in which a long-standing "trust the examiner" focus is being replaced by a "trust the scientific method" focus. This shift, which is in progress and still partial, is critical to ensure that the legal system uses forensic information in an accurate and valid way. In this Perspective, we discuss the ways in which the move to a more empirically grounded scientific culture for the forensic sciences impacts testing, error rate analyses, procedural safeguards, and the reporting of forensic results. However, we caution that the ultimate success of this scientific reinvention likely depends on whether the courts begin to engage with forensic science claims in a more rigorous way.

Science, evidence, law, and justice.

For nearly 25 y, the Committee on Science, Technology, and Law (CSTL), of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, has brought together distinguished members of the science and law communities to stimulate discussions that would lead to a better understanding of the role of science in legal decisions and government policies and to a better understanding of the legal and regulatory frameworks that govern the conduct of science. Under the leadership of recent CSTL co-chairs David Baltimore and David Tatel, and CSTL director Anne-Marie Mazza, the committee has overseen many interdisciplinary discussions and workshops, such as the international summits on human genome editing and the science of implicit bias, and has delivered advisory consensus reports focusing on topics of broad societal importance, such as dual use research in the life sciences, voting systems, and advances in neural science research using organoids and chimeras. One of the most influential CSTL activities concerns the use of forensic evidence by law enforcement and the courts, with emphasis on the scientific validity of forensic methods and the role of forensic testimony in bringing about justice. As coeditors of this Special Feature, CSTL alumni Tom Albright and Jennifer Mnookin have recruited articles at the intersection of science and law that reveal an emerging scientific revolution of forensic practice, which we hope will engage a broad community of scientists, legal scholars, and members of the public with interest in science-based legal policy and justice reform.

Scientific guidelines for evaluating the validity of forensic feature-comparison methods.

When it comes to questions of fact in a legal context-particularly questions about measurement, association, and causality-courts should employ ordinary standards of applied science. Applied sciences generally develop along a path that proceeds from a basic scientific discovery about some natural process to the formation of a theory of how the process works and what causes it to fail, to the development of an invention intended to assess, repair, or improve the process, to the specification of predictions of the instrument's actions and, finally, empirical validation to determine that the instrument achieves the intended effect. These elements are salient and deeply embedded in the cultures of the applied sciences of medicine and engineering, both of which primarily grew from basic sciences. However, the inventions that underlie most forensic science disciplines have few roots in basic science, and they do not have sound theories to justify their predicted actions or results of empirical tests to prove that they work as advertised. Inspired by the "Bradford Hill Guidelines"-the dominant framework for causal inference in epidemiology-we set forth four guidelines that can be used to establish the validity of forensic comparison methods generally. This framework is not intended as a checklist establishing a threshold of minimum validity, as no magic formula determines when particular disciplines or hypotheses have passed a necessary threshold. We illustrate how these guidelines can be applied by considering the discipline of firearm and tool mark examination.

The secret life of crime labs.

Houston TX experienced a widely known failure of its police forensic laboratory. This gave rise to the Houston Forensic Science Center (HFSC) as a separate entity to provide forensic services to the City of Houston. HFSC is a very large forensic laboratory and has made significant progress at remediating the past failures and improving public trust in forensic testing. HFSC has a large and robust blind testing program, which has provided many insights into the challenges forensic laboratories face. HFSC's journey from a notoriously failed lab to a model also gives perspective to the resource challenges faced by all labs in the country. Challenges for labs include the pervasive reality of poor-quality evidence. Also that forensic laboratories are necessarily part of a much wider system of interdependent functions in criminal justice making blind testing something in which all parts have a role. This interconnectedness also highlights the need for an array of oversight and regulatory frameworks to function properly. The major essential databases in forensics need to be a part of blind testing programs and work is needed to ensure that the results from these databases are indeed producing correct results and those results are being correctly used. Last, laboratory reports of "inconclusive" results are a significant challenge for laboratories and the system to better understand when these results are appropriate, necessary and most importantly correctly used by the rest of the system.