Are we scientists?

[Michele]

A comment was made on the ‘Cloak of Anonymity’ thread that indicated that, as scientists, forensic practitioners should be able to freely express their ideas. Open debate is usually encouraged in science.

This leads to another topic. Are we scientists and is this a scientific chat board?

I think there’s a difference between a scientist, a person that adheres to scientific methods, and a person who works in a scientific field.

Some questions I think we should ask ourselves are:

Do we possess the knowledge level of a scientist?
Are we impartial or are we attached to the conclusions of a case?
Do we try to limit feelings in favor of objective data?
Are we educated in scientific practices?
Do we apply these practices?
Do we use a scientific method?
Can we state what is required of a scientific method?
Do we conduct research?
In this research, do we require open information so others can thoroughly review the data?
Are we skeptical, continually questioning our own methods and results?
Do we look for other plausible conclusions besides the one we are attached to?
Do we openly acknowledge the limitations of our conclusions?
Do we perform what’s needed and desired or do we do as we are told (or use methods that others tell us are good)?
Do we present all the results of our analysis or do we only report what we think is relevant (and do we put a spin on how we report information so it’s seen the way we want it to be seen)?
Do we engage in open discussions or do we participate in “pissing contests”?
Do we treat each other as professionals or do we resort to name calling?
When we look up words, do we use the Webster’s dictionary or a scientific dictionary?

I guess each one of us has to answer this question for ourselves. Personally, I don’t consider myself a scientist. I’m wondering whether my peers consider themselves scientists or do we say this because we feel like it gives us more credibility?

[Pat A. Wertheim]

You are one to cut to the heart of a matter, Michele. Great questions to ponder!

In a workshop I recently presented in Toronto on science & fingerprints, one student asked, "Why do fingerprints have to be science?" What a great question that was! And I have to believe the answer comes from our group mindset, not from any absolute need to be "science" to present our evidence in court.

The same student went on to say that as a police officer, he works radar. In order to for there to be radar, there has to be science behind it. Does that mean that as a cop writing a ticket on the side of the road, he is a scientist?

Much to think about. Thanks, Michele!

[Bill Schade]

Pat

I think you are right. These are good questions we should all ponder.

Having been around a while, I look back and wonder "When did we become scientists?" I was a Police Officer who got assigned to the fingerprint section. And like the radar operator you mention, I was trained in how to do the job at hand.

Seems to me that ithe "We are scientists" mantra really caught on after the initial Daubert hearing. The approach taken in that "defense of fingerprints" (very successfully I might add) revolved around the "scientific process" of fingerprint identification.

Perhaps that approach, while successful in the short term, needs to re re-evaluated for the long term.

We are constantly refining our message to juries, (ex: 100% accuracy, "identified to the exclusion of all others in the universe", etc.) why not re examine the issue of "We are scientists"

[Boyd Baumgartner]

I'm bald and wear thick dark rimmed glasses, doesn't that automatically qualify me as a scientist?

I think we're technicians and I'll tell you why:

Although there can be nuanced overlapping, Scientific knowledge deals with "Know Why" and technical knowledge deal with "Know How". This is an historical distinction that dates back to Aristotle in terms of episteme versus techne, from which we derive the modern day words epistemic,epistemology, etc and technical, technology, etc. respectively.

Since everyone has access to the internet, we can bypass pasting the historical lineage of these two ideas of knowledge and give a few practical distinctions.

Whipple, Hale, Okajima, Babler were more concerned with theory and we as examiners are more concerned with practice. Additionally, the fact that fingerprints can be accurately sourced through the use of lights out AFIS systems (read: technology) leads me to believe that we are practioners or technicians moreso than scientists.

[Bill Schade]

I used to wear a pocket protector until my kids though it made me a geek

[Boyd Baumgartner]

I think this picture of me best illustrates the difference between a scientific examination versus a technical examination of fingerprints.

My baldness has been peer reviewed and verified, therefore it was a scientific statement!

sciencevstechnical.jpg

[atorres]

Boyd... choosing to be bald doens't make you a scientist!

So, yes in that case you might just have to stick with being a technician.

Anne

[Pat A. Wertheim]

I look back and wonder "When did we become scientists?" I was a Police Officer who got assigned to the fingerprint section. And like the radar operator you mention, I was trained in how to do the job at hand.

Seems to me that ithe "We are scientists" mantra really caught on after the initial Daubert hearing. The approach taken in that "defense of fingerprints" (very successfully I might add) revolved around the "scientific process" of fingerprint identification.

Excellent observations, Bill

I was in the room with the team preparing the first defense of fingerprints against a Daubert challenge, the Byron Mitchell case in Philadelphia, heard in July, 1999. The week before the hearing, the team assembled to finalize our case. During one session of our meeting, Prosecutor Paul Sarmosaukis came into the room and proposed that we sidestep the entire Daubert question. He explained the Kumho Tire decision under which the US Supreme Court ruled an accident reconstructionist's testimony admissible, even though accident reconstruction does not meet the tests of "science." The Supreme Court held in that case that a trained, experienced technician (accident reconstructionist) would be allowed to testify and present his conclusion because there was evidence that his analysis, supported by his training and experience, rendered his conclusion reliable.

The team had been devising a defense of fingerprints as science for five months, meeting first at SWGFAST, then at FBI Headquarters in Washington, DC, later in the spring, then finally in Philadelphia the week prior to the Daubert hearing. By that time we were so set in our position and mindset of defending fingerprints as science that, when Sarmosaukis sprang the Kumho Tire/Technician defense of fingerprints on us, we literally sprang up out of our chairs and physically backed him into a corner with our protests. Sarmosaukis retreated from the Kumho Tire defense of fingerprints and we went ahead with the head-on defense of fingerprints as science.

We won that case, of course, and virtually all such challenges since then.

We are constantly refining our message to juries, (ex: 100% accuracy, "identified to the exclusion of all others in the universe", etc.) why not re examine the issue of "We are scientists"

That is not a bad suggestion. In fact, I think it is excellent. But it will most likely be a hard fought battle.

[Gerald Clough]

Do we possess the knowledge level of a scientist?

I'm not sure how that would be judged. For example, John Hunter, the 18th century anatomist and surgeon who nearly single-handedly made the first real advances in anatomical knowledge and trained and motivated many of the great names in the next generation, entered with little education but with a natural curious nature that moved him to develop a huge (huge doesn't do it justice) body of knowledge from virtually zero. Was he a scientist when he began? Perhaps the mark of a scientist is the determination to know and to do whatever is required to do it and to follow the knowledge wherever it goes. In this field today, I would say acting as a scientist requires acquiring the research tools, which are beyond the core knowledge of the non-researching practitioner, which are largely mathematical.

Are we impartial or are we attached to the conclusions of a case?

I think that's where there's a very great difference in practice between scientific inquiry and an application to a practical critical question like criminal forensics. Scientists may well, as a part of the process, attach to a conclusion. Perhaps it's not the ideal, but it's human. In science, it's balanced by other theorists and critical reviews, usually with a large number of scientists involved. In science, erroneous speculations and theories (in science "theory" means a hypothesis that has been largely accepted) are allowed. They are often what stimulates refinement and learning. An erroneous conclusion in forensic analysis is not acceptable. Impartiality may be a poor thing to compare, because we do not have the luxury of being anything else, which is a position outside of the human activity of "science."

Do we try to limit feelings in favor of objective data?

We do. So do scientists. The difference, as above, is in consequences of failing to do so. There are, of course, real consequences of being wrong in science, but they mostly affect only the sponsor of the error, professionally and because it is often the failure of a lifetime of work.

Are we educated in scientific practices?

I would have to say we generally are not. We are trained in practices designed to make conclusions grow out of interpretations uncorrupted by improper influences. But the curriculum in focused examiner training does not routinely include methods of research design and statistical analysis that is a given in the sciences. We are trained to apply a process, not to construct a process. That's entirely appropriate, because, at present at least, we do not require those tools to get fully useful product from an examination.

Do we apply these practices?
Do we use a scientific method?
Can we state what is required of a scientific method?

As a community, we got a little crazy here. Strictly speaking, I would say it's not "scientific method" unless it is being operated in scientific inquiry, which investigates to acquire knowledge that explains phenomena in general. Certainly, the generic version of scientific method is a good model for all sorts of decision making. But using terms like "hypothesis," "experiment," and "prediction" doesn't make an examination a scientific inquiry.

Do we conduct research?

Some do, but a casework examination is not research. The goals are entirely different.


I'll skip the next few. I think they're mostly moot or rhetorical. But examiners wishing to be considered scientists doing science in their analyst role should consider that it's a very good thing for them that they are not. The criticisms of LPE conclusions are made exactly on the mistaken presumption that examiners are presenting scientific conclusion, and those conclusions are derived through methods that completely fail any test of scientific validity. Science requires a falsifiable theory of reality, unequivocal data, and the presumption that the resulting theory (conclusion) is subject to revision. If a latent print examination was presented as research to any legitimate scientific journal, it would be rejected out of hand, or certainly destroyed in scientific peer review. But we operate in a realm in which judgments must be made to satisfy the societal need for resolutions. It's a very good thing the courts recognize high value without scientific certainty and generally see beyond the bumbling efforts to counter scientific criticism. It offends the scientific mind that LPE conclusions sound like statements of scientific certainty to them and that there are examiners who really do mean to make such statements.

My view is that we should be prepared to clearly reject the notion that latent print results should not be allowed on account of not being "scientific" and maintain that our conclusions are well-founded beliefs of expert observers who can explain exactly what led to those beliefs and that they are solidly within the realm of legitimate expertise in law. We are not bound and should not let ourselves be drawn into defending them with a pretense to science and instead point out this. Science is science, and law is law. Law takes latent print examination to have great value. If a scientist holds that it should not have great value in law, he should be required to attack it in one of two ways.

One way would be to directly challenge the legal principles. Oops. Scientist trying to do law. If he criticizes that examiner for claiming to "do science," he should be ashamed of himself for pretending to law.

The other way would be to show, to the standard required for publication in a reputable scientific journal, that latent print examination conclusions are too frequently erroneous for use in law. Not too erroneous for his personal sense of what justice should be. Not because he thinks the law is poorly constructed (see above). But a positive result of well-designed and repeatable study that presents scientific proof that the law's use of fingerprints is erroneous. Only a scientist so strangely obsessive as to border on mental illness would demand that no decision in human affairs can be made without scientific certainty, for then, almost all criminals would go free, legions of medical patients would die because diagnosis wasn't scientifically certain to be correct, and no children should be born, because there's no scientific certainty of them being raised properly. Of course, no scientist who is not mixing social agenda with his science makes such a claim. It is we, the examiners, and our attorney sponsors who have largely instigated the involvement of science in critique of law by pretending to science. But I think I detect the courts running out of patience with science defenses of non-science, slowly, because they value the evidence.

This is not to say that there is not valid scientific research on fingerprint methods. None of it has resulted in validated knowledge the mandates fundamental changes in LPE process or how results are applied in law. But even a cursory review of examiner comments on much of the research reveals more than a few are not open to the notion that the research might discover something about their field that they don't want to deal with. Hardly scientific, but, again, that is not required. These same examiners consistently produce examination conclusions that are exactly as valuable as they can possibly be given the state of the art. As analysts, they haven't been tested on whether or not they would apply some extension of knowledge gained through rigorous and repeatable research, so we can't speak to that. As the field exists today, they are completely competent examiners whose results merit great weight.


Do we treat each other as professionals or do we resort to name calling?

I would like to think that one actually sets almost all of the latent print community apart from the scientists. The history of science is rife with the most vicious and persistent mutual and one-sided attacks.

[Bill Schade]

So Gerald

Are you "for" or "against" calling ourselves scientists.

I get the impression you feel the courts will lose patience and will require us to either "put up or shut up"

Do you agree that we should re-look at this issue and assess the path we have been traveling for 20 years?

[kevin]

Do we engage in open discussions or do we participate in “pissing contests”?

See the 'Lab Director Planting Evidence?' thread for the answer to that one....yikes

[Gerald Clough]

So Gerald

Are you "for" or "against" calling ourselves scientists.

I get the impression you feel the courts will lose patience and will require us to either "put up or shut up"

Do you agree that we should re-look at this issue and assess the path we have been traveling for 20 years?

I don't much care what we call ourselves, but I think we have to differentiate the purpose and goals between "doing science" and doing analysis of the sort we do. Research scientists can conduct analysis that is not "doing science," in the sense of conducting scientific inquiry to discover new knowledge and doing it in a way that will pass as producing scientifically certain conclusions. A great many scientists testify in legal matters to conclusions that are not pronouncements of scientific certainty but are statements of belief in what reality would be found to be, if only we could know it with certainty. Same thing we do. If I'm advocating anything, it's for all parties to recognize that the kind of validated inquiry and scientific certainty demanded in science, the kind that can pass peer review for publication in a science journal, is not and never has been the test of value in law. DNA, for instance, is very different. There is no "conclusion," other than the rather obvious and redundant statement of "cannot be excluded as the source." The data is presented, along with scientifically valid statistical data on the population. Not really a conclusion at all, in fact. "Conclusion almost always means expert belief from the data.

I just get the feel that courts are kind of cramped between wanting valuable evidence and hearing these things argued from science and having to read through that to get what they want. We saw the state court a while back that took it literally. Heard the scientific argument against and heard it countered with things that didn't stand up to a science test and simply said the science argument failed. Of course, then the federal court took of the case refiled and accepted the fingerprint evidence, but federal judges have some different attitudes from some state courts. I just see it as something avoidable by sticking to the plain value argument that suffices for most other expert evidence, a lot of it very far from science. (Of course, no one's out there shooting very seriously at those other fields from a science argument, partly because there is no other way to address the legal issues and partly because there's almost always opposing expertise to argue alternate interpretations) Of course, here I am, talking about how to argue it in court when I don't have decide how to do it. But as to "put up or shut up," a lot of research is under way or proposed, and while the focus of a lot of it is very narrow, one byproduct is going to be a lot of very convincing evidence gained under careful controls about consistency and reliability.

I don't think there's anything to reassess, not in the sense of fundamental change at this point. Research may direct otherwise one day, or not. I sure wouldn't call it "pending." The only reassessment I see is that we should consider the current scientific scrutiny and not claim something we can't back up. But courts are very pragmatic about these things. Examiners who testify just need to settle these issues in there own minds without relying on rote explanations that may not come off so well with the right opposing expertise. Still, it's going to take a lot to push judges and juries away from fingerprint evidence. Overt public opinion of doubts and misstated journalism doesn't reflect how people will use evidence when they're on the panel. And one of the things that plainly won't be argued in court is whether or not an examiner is a "scientist."

[Charles Parker]

Very Good Post Michele:

All I have to say is----I am not reading this right. Someone is playing a joke on me. I have been morphed into another universe.

The pendulum has paused and may be moving back.

[Pat A. Wertheim]

I remember debating this topic with Dave Grieve a number of years ago. Perhaps it was during the Daubert planning in 1999. I don't remember.

But I do remember Dave's response to my concern (apologies to Dave if I don't get the words exactly right). "Pat," he said, "you have to realize that science in the courtroom is not necessarily the same as science in the laboratory. In the courtroom, if the judge accepts it as science, then it is, by definition, science."

How close is my memory to correct on this one, Dave?

[Dr. Dror]

I think the discussion on this posting and Michele's questions are very good. However, I would say be careful not turn the discussion/debate 'are we scientists?' to parallel the discussion/debate 'is forensics a science?'

The important things are the 'meat' and real issues/questions (e.g., Michele's questions), not the 'label' of 'scientist'.
What we need to focus on is: how do we do the most objective and reliable work, with clear and tested procedures, validated and research based, using quantifiable measures, etc. These are the issues.

Do not think that when you score 'X' on the objectivity scale you get the title of 'scientist', because there is no scale, and even if there was one, then there is no 'X' score on it to qualify anyone as a scientist. And finally, no science, and no scientist, is 100% objective; it is something we all need to strive for, and find ways to make things as objective and scientifically based as possible.

The discussion/debate can be very fruitful and helpful if we focus on the 'meat' and not on the 'labels'.

Itiel