Contested Identities: Science, Law and Forensic Practice

Social Studies of Science

Volumn 28, Issue 6, 1998, Pages 675-686

  Lynch, Michael ^a   Jasanoff, Sheila ^b  

^a BRUNEL UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

^b HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84992813030     PISSN: 03063127     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/030631298028005001     Document Type: Article

References (25)

1. Like earlier tribunals that had been given intensive media coverage in the USA (the Senate and House hearings on the Watergate and Iran-Contra affairs; the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearing; the Rodney King police trial), the Simpson case represented an emergent form of political spectacle in which an official inquiry was witnessed by a massive audience. For a discussion of such spectacles, see Michael Lynch and David Bogen, The Spectacle of History: Speech, Text and Memory at the Iran-Contra Hearings (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996).
2. For a pertinent discussion of the Rodney King trial, see Charles Goodwin, ‘Professional Vision’, American Anthropologist, Vol. 96, No. 4 (September 1994), 606–633.
3. For a more extensive discussion of the deconstruction of scientific evidence in adversary legal settings, see Sheila Jasanoff, Science at the Bar: Law, Science, and Technology in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996). Note that ‘deconstruction’ in the courts differs from the literary-theoretical sense of deconstruction as an exposure and dissolution of deep conceptual oppositions that structure a text's composition. Instead, deconstruction in the courts has to do with a relentless sceptical effort to attack particular factual claims by exposing or implicating possible confounding factors, competing interpretations, erroneous procedures, omissions, vested interests and other sources of uncertainty. For the most part, such deconstruction operates within a general commitment to the possibility of adducing adequate evidence of a real event. For discussions of the authority of experts in the courts, and of the selective deconstruction of expert evidence, see
4. Roger Smith and Brian Wynne (eds), Expert Evidence: Interpreting Science in the Law (London: Routledge, 1989).
5. Alec J. Jeffreys, Victoria Wilson and Swee LayThein, ‘Individual-Specific “Fingerprints” of Human DNA’, Nature,Vol 316 (4 July 1985), 76–79.
6. In his paper in this Special Issue, Simon Cole discusses the early history of dermal fingerprinting: S. Cole, ‘Witnessing Identification: Latent Fingerprint Evidence and Expert Knowledge’, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 28, Nos 5–6 (October-December 1998), 678–712. The name ‘DNA fingerprinting’ is now discouraged in the professional forensics community, and the terms ‘DNA typing’ and ‘DNA profiling’ are preferred. Strictly speaking, the name ‘DNA fingerprinting’ is a designation for Jeffreys' patented invention, and many of the techniques currently used for DNA profiling are not covered by that particular patent. Moreover, identical twins have the same DNA profiles but different fingerprint patterns, and DNA profiles otherwise exhibit heritable patterns that dermal fingerprints do not. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the courts accept matching fingerprints as evidence of unique identity whereas they require probability estimates for matching DNA profiles.
7. Joseph Wambaugh, The Blooding (New York: Morrow, 1989).
8. PCR is discussed in Jordan and Lynch's paper in this Special Issue: Kathleen Jordan and Michael Lynch, ‘The Dissemination, Standardization and Routinization of a Molecular Biological Technique’, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 28, Nos 5–6 (October-December 1998), 773–800.
9. For an account of the development of PCR, see Paul Rabinow, Making PCR: A Story of Biotechnology (Chicago, IL:The University of Chicago Press, 1996).
10. Different applications of PCR are discussed in Kathleen Jordan and Michael Lynch, ‘The Mainstreaming of a Molecular Biological Tool: A Case Study of a New Technique’, in Graham Button (ed.), Technology in Working Order: Studies in Work, Interaction and Technology (London & New York: Routledge, 1993), 160–180.
11. For an account by a molecular biologist who testified for the defense, see Eric S. Lander, ‘DNA Fingerprinting on Trial’, Nature,Vol. 339 (15 June 1989), 501–505
12. and Lander, ‘DNA Fingerprinting: Science, Law, and the Ultimate Identifier’, in Daniel Kevles and Leroy Hood (eds), The Code of Codes: Scientific and Social Issues in the Human Genome Project (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 191–210.
13. Frye V. United States, 293 F. 1013, 1014 (D.C. Cir. 1923).
14. The best known critique of the population-genetic assumptions is Richard C. Lewontin and Daniel L. Hartl, ‘Population Genetics in Forensic DNA Typing’, Science,Vol. 254 (20 December 1991), 1745–50.
15. Lewontin is, of course, a well known critic of genetic reductionism: see, for example, Lewontin, Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA (New York: HarperCollins, 1993).
16. NRC, DNA Technology in Forensic Science (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1992)
17. NRC, The Evaluation of Forensic DNA Evidence (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1996).
18. Eric S. Lander and Bruce Budowle, ‘DNA Fingerprint Dispute Laid to Rest’, Nature, Vol. 371 (27 October 1994), 735–738.
19. Not surprisingly, the article itself became a subject of further controversy, as indicated by letters on ‘Forensic DNA Typing Dispute’, from R.C. Lewontin and Daniel L. Hartl, in Nature,Vol. 372 (1 December 1994), 398–399.
20. Linda Deutsch, Michael Fleeman, Norm Goldstein, Maura Lynch and Chuck Zoeller, Verdict: The Chronicle of the O.J. Simpson Trial (Kansas City, MO: Andrews & McMeel, 1995), 119, 121.
21. Edward J. Boyer and Elaine Woo, ‘Case Had Many Holes, Juror Says’, Los Angeles Times (4 October 1995),A1,A4.
22. Sheila Jasanoff, ‘The Eye of Everyman: Witnessing DNA in the Simpson Trial’, Social Studies of Science,Vol. 28, Nos 5–6 (October-December 1998), 713–740.
23. Saul Halfon, ‘Collecting, Testing and Convincing: Forensic DNA Experts in the Courts’, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 28, Nos 5–6 (October-December 1998), 801–828.
24. A similar argument about the erasure of judgements and negotiations is made by Linda Derksen, ‘Towards a Sociology of Measurement: Making Subjectivity Invisible and Negotiating Measurement in the Case of DNA Fingerprinting’ (unpublished paper, Department of Sociology and Science Studies Program, University of California, San Diego, June 1998).
25. Michael Lynch, ‘The Discursive Production of Uncertainty: The OJ Simpson “Dream Team” and the Sociology of Knowledge Machine’, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 28, Nos 5–6 (October-December 1998), 829–868.