March 2011

This month I was busy since I had a knee surgery, which went well. So before this date I waited for the urgent issues and casework that had to be handled before deadlines. The recovery period of this knee operation is about two weeks, and it feels like being repaired now.

It appears I am on a list of , and there is a wide variety of blogs available on forensic science, such as Cyber Forensics Blog by DMS member Marcus Rogers
has a few recent posts. http://deforensics.blogspot.com/and the Windows Incident Response Blog by one of our newest DMS
members, Harlan Carvey, is at: http://windowsir.blogspot.com/. Always good to see some discussions on digital and multimedia sciences.

Currently we see more interest also in Nucleair forensics, which is important to handle in specialized labs as such and is important in analysing disasters as in Japan.

Also there is an interesting article in Spectrum of IEEE on the law of Moore, where the author claims the growth of speed of super computers will slow down. It is also nice to read that in 10 years the fastest super computer in 1997 has the same speed as a game console in 2006. However perhaps new architectures and other means will also keep us up with the Moores law.

With my knee surgery I now have some time to read and do some reviews. So I collected all tasks which can be done from home untill this date. Obviously I can not work on casework at home, however writing articles and reading the current state of the art in depth is important to keep up with developments.

February 2011 (2)

The AAFS conference in Chicago was very well organized with aproximately 3500 persons there. As member of the Board of Director some interesting meetings, as well as seeing good developments in the field. The use of Likelihood Ratios is more often presented, as well as all considerations in the NAS report. Also our workshop Forensic Multimedia was very well attended. As usual the networking during the conference was excellent, and it is good for discussion on the different topics of research.

February 2011

This month will be busy, since there are several deadlines, and of course the conference of the AAFS in Chicago, where I will organize the Forensic Multimedia workshop and give one paper. It is always an excellent event, with good networking and discussion with other forensic scientists.

Last month I received a question for making tweets on forensics, and some people thought I was discussing actual casework. I will never discuss on the blog or anyware in public on casework were I or any of my colleagues am working on, and which are still in the court, without prior permission. Only forensic meetings and events that are public will be discussed, and of course R&D which is open. The advantage of a blog compared to a tweet is that you can add more text to it, so this kind of misunderstanding are less likely to happen here.

On the forens-l list that I host there are some discussions on the NAS report, and it is good to see that many issues are handled there. Since I moderate the list, the posting improve. In the past I started hosting this unmoderated list, and then it appeared that some discussions did not go well. So I started some moderation, and it appears to work better.

January 2011

At the beginning of January I went to Tunesia for one week, since the Sahara climate works well against my astma, which is worst in winter. It was the first time that I experienced employees of the hotel striking and demonstrating for the hotel, against goverment. Later on when visiting the Medina in Sousse and Tunis, we saw some riots, so it appeared the start of the election of a new president and government appeared this week. I hope there will be peace again, and perhaps they can use parts of the Sahara for energy production with solar panels in the future, if possible of course.

Also the start of a new year, gives also new experiences. We had a kaizen meeting from lean six sigma for making our work more efficient. So first we are analysing the process. It appears to work well in forensic laboratories to have less backlog, of course in combination with a Service Level Agreement.

Of course also working on some cases, and it appeared I had a backlog in reviewing papers, so I had to do some work on this. Also new year celebrations of my work, and of course new planning and new ideas.

In February I will attend the American Academy of Forensic Science meeting in Chicago, and chair a workshop, give a presentation, and also be in meetings for the Forensic Science Foundation, and to meetings as Director of the Digital and Multimedia Sciences Section. So also some preparations for this event.

December 2010 (2)

At the end of December we heard of course the bad news of the Forensic Science Service that closes in 2012 due to losses. Since it is the biggest provider of England and Wales (60 percent) owned by the government it is a question what happens with the experience of the forensic scientists. Of course I also heard the bad news from many colleagues who work there, and since they were very active within the forensic communities, such as ENFSI, we will also see changes in these law enforcement forensic communities. Perhaps we learn from what happened there, however perhaps future will give them also new opportunities.

Also in the Netherlands it is investigated what happens if we are working in a market as a forensic service. This report is balanced, since it also provides insight in the issues that can arise in a market. An abstract in English is provided on the website, and describes three scenarios from the full government service to the free market solution for a crime lab with strict market control with a regulator.

An issue with forensic science in a crime lab is that there is not many jobs, and certainly not if budget cuts are in place. There are many students interested in forensic science as such, also due to the CSI effect, so we see a mismatch between the number of jobs and the available jobs. If we take England and Wales as and example, the Forensic Science Service has 1300 scientists and figures state that it is 60 percent of the market. The population of England and Wales is 53 million, so it means that aproximately 40 scientist per million of inhibitants. If we assume that forensic scientist stay on their job on avarage for 20 years, this means 2 vacancies per million inhibitants. Most European countries have less forensic scientists, so the number of vacancies for crime labs is limited, at least in crime labs.

December 2010

From the last posting on possible errors in forensic science, I received several reactions for methods to reduce errors caused by humans by software. Of course that is a good approach, however one should include it in the whole system.
One issue we also see is the way the conclusions and the report are interpreted by the readers such as judges, juries and prosecutors. Also the combination of conclusions from different sources of evidence is important. For this a Bayesian approach can also be used, which is logically correct. An issue remains that the readers not always read the same, and interpretation by the readers of the report can also give confusion. For that reason, it is important to have good education on statistics, and write clear reports. And there we have the paradox that by writing more logically reports it is less intuitive for the reader, especially in detailed technical reports.

Currently also working on my website http://forensic.to/forensic.html , since sometimes information has to be checked and rechecked again. It seems many persons also use older versions, and ask for updates of these. This week I had to stay at home due to an injury at my knee, so I had time to read articles, reviewing them, and also making phone calls. Working at the computer was less ergonomic. Next week I hope to start working again.

November 2010

November started with the organization of the Themadagen Digital Evidence for the Dutch Law Enforcement, were we had 270 participants. Furthermore as always a somewhat busy time, however this month some vacation time (since normally I work during the summer holidays). So going south to Cyprus, with nice weather.

Also thinking on forensic science for law enforcement and commercial services and issues like certification. In the Netherlands they are working on a register for certified forensic scientist, which is in the law.

There are several opinions on this development. An opinion is that forensic science for crime cases is not good as a commercial service, since it might cause issues with bias to the client who pays for the services. Others think this can be prevented within the law system by making judges, prosecutors and juries if applicable aware of this issue, and that it will also be solved within a market, as in the UK, with a forensic regulator by using appropiate scientific quality standards.
An issue which we see in England and Wales, is that the police will do more forensic work themselves, so there is no market anymore. In Germany and other countries it appears to work well with private experts.

However, with any system all people should be aware of objective forensic services, and for this reason all research for objectivation of forensic evidence is impportant, were now much effort is spend by the forensic community, in funding of research by the National Institute of Justice and of the FP7 of the European Union.