April 2009

In this time, after my vacation, we finally do not have much backlog, so more time to review articles, and preparing presentations and of course to make new projects. 

I also went to an interesting conference in the Netherlands, about problems in forensic expertise in Amsterdam, organized by the court of Amsterdam, where also lawyers could attend.  This conference also went in depth in to different aspects of forensic science, eyewitness testimonies, forensic psychiatry and how the court interprets the findings. There was also some discussion about the NAS-report , and also having a forensic entitity as meant in this report in the Netherlands. One of the examples that was given, was the Phantom of Heilbron , where 40 cases in Western Europe where linked based on DNA for no apparent reason also with a murder case. It finally appeared to be a contamination case, since the cotton swabs where contaminated by the producer of these swabs with DNA of one of the employees. It is good that this came out, since now other labs are also aware of this kind of contamination, and can look at there quality assurance system to prevent this.

Also the issue that forensic scientists can be biased based on the information they will receive around a case, and that this might influence there conclusion. Ton Broeders  presented a method to prevent this, by doing blind examination in comparison cases.