forensics

Autopsies, for all the useful information they provide, have significant downsides. They are often upsetting to the deceased's family, they prevent people from receiving certain kinds of religious burials, and they leave a bit of a mess. To correct for those problems and more, a team at the University of Bern, Switzerland, has developed a robot that can perform virtual autopsies.

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Researchers are now profiling the chemicals released from decaying bodies, in an effort to create a sensor that might be able to sniff out corpses in the rubble, or determine a dearly departed's precise time of death.

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CSI, the popular network television show solving crimes with science, has been on for nearly a decade. Popular Science has had the detective fever for over eighty years.

For longer than a television show can ever hope to remain on air, we've been examining the state of forensics and detailing the new technologies that solve "stranger than fiction" crimes, from the lie detector to DNA profiling.

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The legal profession has a term for the way juries regard forensic science--they call it the "CSI Effect." Juries expect to see nothing less than DNA matching for even the most minor infractions. If the forensic evidence isn't overwhelming, they will acquit, even in the face of reasonable doubt. Without question, the CSI and Law and Order franchises have reshaped the popular imagination by elevating science as the ultimate arbiter of truth. That, in and of itself, is good for science. What's dangerous about the proposition, however, are the standards and lengths to which the television shows hold the science they portray.

While it's undoubtedly important for people to know what's fact and what's fiction in crime scene investigation, here’s a look into just what the present day facts of forensics science entail (we’ll leave the fiction to the experts… in TV production, that is). In 2005, Congress tasked the National Academy of Sciences to survey the landscape of forensic science. The result, this past February, was a 255-page report. Here are a few of the surprising facts they found.

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High on the back wall of the New Jersey Poison Center in Newark, beyond a display case filled with bottles of ant killer, antifreeze and other ingredients of noteworthy cases, hangs an electronic map of the state. It displays dozens of glowing red dots. Each marks the origin of a call received over the previous 24 hours. Updates sweep down the map every 10 minutes, and the staff knows where to expect clusters based on population. “This is one way that computerization can help us pick up unexpected hotspots,” says medical director Steven Marcus.

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Like a cowboy loosely holding the reins, Larry Weatherman steers up Deer Creek Road with his left hand on the wheel, his right arm ready at his side. His upper body rocks with the motion of the pickup as he navigates the dirt road’s gauntlet of potholes and rocks. Since his retirement from the Missoula County Sheriff’s Department in 2000, Weatherman has adopted the bushy white mustache and Stetson of a gentleman rancher.

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