Forensic Scientist Quotes

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Mine is a gruesome job, but for a scientist with a love for the mechanics of the human body, a great one.
Judy Melinek (Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner)
Not only may you not enter the state without certification: you are, in the eyes of the state, not dead until you are certified dead; and you can be certified dead only by an officer who himself (herself) holds state certification. The state pursues the certification of death with extraordinary thoroughness—witness the dispatch of a host of forensic scientists and bureaucrats to scrutinize and photograph and prod and poke the mountain of human corpses left behind by the great tsunami of December 2004 in order to establish their individual identities. No expense is spared to ensure that the census of subjects shall be complete and accurate. Whether the citizen lives or dies is not a concern of the state. What matters to the state and its records is whether the citizen is alive or dead.
J.M. Coetzee (Diary of a Bad Year)
And at that pivotal moment, the University of Tennessee came calling. So did forensic anthropology. My career as “Indian grave-robber number one” was over. My true vocation—as a forensic scientist—was about to begin.
William M. Bass (Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales)
Our greatest conflicts and barriers exist in our minds and in the way we deal with our fears. It is pointless even to try to control that which cannot be controlled. What we can manage is how we approach and respond to our uncertainties.
Sue Black (All That Remains: A Renowned Forensic Scientist on Death, Mortality, and Solving Crimes)
Humans belong to the group of conscious beings that are carbon-based, solar system-dependent, limited in knowledge, prone to error and mortal.’ It is strangely comforting to be granted tacit permission to make mistakes just because we are human.
Sue Black (All That Remains: A Renowned Forensic Scientist on Death, Mortality, and Solving Crimes)
The stark truth is, of course, that grief never dies. The American counsellor Lois Tonkin reminds us that loss isn’t something we ‘get over’, and it doesn’t necessarily lessen, either. It remains at the core of us and we just expand our lives around it, burying it deeper from the surface. So with time it may become more distant, more compartmentalised and therefore easier to manage, but it does not go away.
Sue Black (All That Remains: A Renowned Forensic Scientist on Death, Mortality, and Solving Crimes)
Some scientists thrive on the conceptual; their minds can envision particles that the most powerful microscopes can’t show us; processes that can’t be directly observed, but only inferred, guessed at, by interpreting a stew of complex biochemical by-products. I am not one of these scientists; I need bones and teeth, things I can see with my eyes and grasp with my hands. Jason Eshleman, on the other hand, can see with his mind’s eye, grasping the complex interactions of the most complex molecules in the body, DNA.
William M. Bass (Beyond the Body Farm: A Legendary Bone Detective Explores Murders, Mysteries, and the Revolution in Forensic Science)
Since most of us are products of a culture and era where nobody likes to discuss death in case it encourages her to visit,
Sue Black (All That Remains: A Renowned Forensic Scientist on Death, Mortality, and Solving Crimes)
Humans belong to the group of conscious beings that are carbon-based, solar system-dependent, limited in knowledge, prone to error and mortal.
Sue Black (All That Remains: A Renowned Forensic Scientist on Death, Mortality, and Solving Crimes)
The anthropologist who asserts absolute confidence in the sex, age, stature and ancestry of a skeleton is a dangerous and inexperienced scientist who doesn’t understand human variability.
Sue Black (All That Remains: A Renowned Forensic Scientist on Death, Mortality, and Solving Crimes)
It pains me to admit it, but I am somewhat less brilliant than TV supersleuths—and, with all due respect, so are many of my forensic colleagues. We’re not geniuses, and our gadgets can’t answer every question or pinpoint every perpetrator. But even though TV sometimes creates unrealistic expectations about the swiftness and certainty of murder investigations, some shows have done a great service by spotlighting the role forensic scientists—even ordinary, real-life ones—can play in bringing killers to justice. And these shows do get a lot dead right: Crime scene investigation is absolutely crucial to solving a crime. Surprisingly,
William M. Bass (Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales)
I can't give people back their loved ones. I can't restore their happiness or innocence, can't give back their lives the way they were. But I can give them the truth. Then they will be free to grieve for the dead, and then free to start living again. Truth like that can be a humbling and sacred gift for a scientist to give.
William M. Bass (Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales)
To deny the reported six million (approximately) Jews who died, or the 11 million people in total, is to ignore all the eyewitness accounts from Holocaust survivors, the non-Jewish witnesses of the millions who died the open-air massacres around Europe, the concentration camp guards, Nazi officers who admitted to gassings and other related crimes immediately after WW2, and the universal agreement of all mainstream historians who have studied this historical event inside out – not to mention every single scientist who has ever analyzed forensic evidence retrieved from the Nazi genocide. Not even the most corrupt courtroom on Earth could ignore this much evidence – for collectively these confirmations of the Holocaust equate to irrefutable proof that the reported death toll is indeed correct. It is possibly the most well-documented crime of the 20th Century, but remember for religious extremists, Nazi apologists or other anti-Semites it would never matter how much evidence you put in front of them. They would always deny the Holocaust because to admit the event occurred would be to stop believing the Jews are inferior to them. It would also require such bigots to admit the very uncomfortable truth to themselves: that their ‘own kind’ did these despicable things to the Jewish people.
James Morcan (Debunking Holocaust Denial Theories)
So we could, in theory, look at the remains of an individual and, from the isotopic signatures in the otic capsule and first molar, discover where in the world their mother was living when she was pregnant with them and the nature of her diet. We could then analyse the remainder of the adult teeth to establish where the deceased person had grown up, and then the rest of their bones to determine where they had lived for the past fifteen years or so. Finally, we could use their hair and nails to locate where they spent the last years or months of their life.
Sue Black (All That Remains: A Renowned Forensic Scientist on Death, Mortality, and Solving Crimes)
For almost twenty years, one of the Brocks’ two new bacteria, Thermophilus aquaticus, remained a laboratory curiosity until a scientist in California named Kary B. Mullis realized that heat-resistant enzymes within it could be used to create a bit of chemical wizardry known as a polymerase chain reaction, which allows scientists to generate lots of DNA from very small amounts—as little as a single molecule in ideal conditions. It’s a kind of genetic photocopying, and it became the basis for all subsequent genetic science, from academic studies to police forensic work. It won Mullis the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1993.
Bill Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything)
SCIENTISTS HAD KNOWN since the late nineteenth century that tobacco smoke contains carbon monoxide. Victorian scientists had even been able to calculate the amount of gas in the smoke: up to 4 percent in cigarette smoke, and in Gettler’s own choice of tobacco, the cigar, between 6 and 8 percent. Gettler’s latest work theorized that chain smokers might suffer from low-level carbon monoxide poisoning. He speculated in a 1933 report that “headaches experienced by heavy smokers are due in part to the inhalation of carbon monoxide.” But his real interest lay less in their symptoms than in how much of the poison had accumulated in their blood, and how that might affect his calculations on cause of death. He approached that problem in his usual, single-minded way. To get a better sense of carbon monoxide contamination from smoking tobacco, Gettler selected three groups of people to compare: persons confined to a state institution in the relatively clean air of the country; street cleaners who worked in a daily, dusty cloud of car exhaust; and heavy smokers. As expected, carboxyhemoglobin blood levels for country dwellers averaged less than 1 percent saturation. The levels for Manhattan street cleaners were triple that amount, a solid 3 percent. But smokers came in the highest, higher than he’d expected, well above the nineteenth-century calculations. Americans were inhaling a lot more tobacco smoke than they had once done, and their saturation levels ranged from 8 to 19 percent. (The latter was from a Bronx cab driver who admitted to smoking six cigarettes on his way to Gettler’s laboratory, lighting one with the stub of another as he went.) It was safe to assume, Gettler wrote with his usual careful precision, that “tobacco smoking appreciably increases the carbon monoxide in the blood and cannot be ignored in the interpretation of laboratory results.”     THE OTHER NOTABLE poison in tobacco smoke was nicotine.
Deborah Blum (The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York)
According to Harris, Dawkins and other prominent neoatheists (Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett round out the self-styled “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”), science education is a natural antidote to sacred terror. But independent studies by Oxford sociologist Diego Gambetta, forensic psychiatrist Marc Sageman, and journalist and political scientist Peter Bergen indicate that a majority of al-Qaeda members and associates went to college, that the college education was mostly science oriented, and that engineer and medical doctor are the professions most represented in al-Qaeda. Much the same has been true for Hamas.
Benny Morris (The National Interest (March/April 2011 Book 112))
joking that the creaking gate always hangs the longest.
Sue Black (All That Remains: A Renowned Forensic Scientist on Death, Mortality, and Solving Crimes)
While life expectancy may be variable, death expectancy remains unchanged.
Sue Black (All That Remains: A Renowned Forensic Scientist on Death, Mortality, and Solving Crimes)
cannula,
Sue Black (All That Remains: A Renowned Forensic Scientist on Death, Mortality, and Solving Crimes)
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Sue Black (All That Remains: A Renowned Forensic Scientist on Death, Mortality, and Solving Crimes)
Forensic DNA Expert Anil Gupta offer a variety of DNA forensic testing systems including STR, Y-STR, and mitochondrial DNA. The DNA Sample in Forensic Analysis can be collected from blood, saliva, perspiration, hair, teeth, mucus, finger nails, semon and these can be found almost anywhere at crime scence. Anil Gupta is here to help make sense of this complex scientific issue and to testify before the court on these issues when necessary. Initial Consultation is FREE – If you send us the report we will lend you our expertise to help you understand your situation. Written Reports and Affidavits Discovery Documents – free by request, all you need to obtain the entire laboratory case file Mike is a leading forensic DNA expert with considerable experience in forensic biology. He is a clear and balanced expert opinion highly qualified provider to help lawyers, attorneys and lawyers support their clients and the criminal justice system. He is a very experienced scientist, whose career has focused on developing the ability to DNA analysis, defining standards, interpreting results, explaining evidence and providing advice to help both the defense and Processing equipment. Mike has a great depth of technical knowledge. As the chief DNA scientist (head of discipline) with the former Forensic Science Service (FSS), he established technical standards for DNA analytical processes, staff competencies and training. He was head of the Specialist Unit at FSS DNA and led the creation of the first dedicated facility of ultra-clean low template DNA. He has led the validation and implementation of several important new DNA processes. Through audit and process review, it can provide an effective and risk-based quality assurance, as it has for many years to the FSS, to the National DNA Database and to the courts.
Anil Gupta
donated skeletal collection; one more skull was just a final drop in the bucket. Megan and Todd Malone, a CT technician in the Radiology Department at UT Medical Center, ran skull 05-01 through the scanner, faceup, in a box that was packed with foam peanuts to hold it steady. Megan FedExed the scans to Quantico, where Diana and Phil Williams ran them through the experimental software. It was with high hopes, shortly after the scan, that I studied the computer screen showing the features ReFace had overlaid, with mathematical precision, atop the CT scan of Maybe-Leoma’s skull. Surely this image, I thought—the fruit of several years of collaboration by computer scientists, forensic artists, and anthropologists—would clearly settle the question of 05-01’s identity: Was she Leoma or was she Not-Leoma? Instead, the image merely amplified the question. The flesh-toned image on the screen—eyes closed, the features impassive—could have been a department-store mannequin, or a sphinx. There was nothing in the image, no matter how I rotated it in three dimensions, that said, “I am Leoma.” Nor was there anything that said, “I am not Leoma.” To borrow Winston Churchill’s famous description of Russia, the masklike face on the screen was “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Between the scan, the software, and the tissue-depth data that the software merged with the
Jefferson Bass (Identity Crisis: The Murder, the Mystery, and the Missing DNA (Kindle Single))
is Chandra Bahadur Dangi from Nepal, at 1ft 9½ins (54.6cm), a primordial dwarf who enjoyed a long life for those with his condition – he died in 2015 at the age of seventy-five. As is demonstrated by these examples, genetics is not the only influence on our adult stature.
Sue Black (All That Remains: A Renowned Forensic Scientist on Death, Mortality, and Solving Crimes)
Genomics has transformed the biological sciences. From epidemiology and medicine to evolution and forensics, the ability to determine an organism’s complete genetic makeup has changed the way science is done and the questions that can be asked of it. Far and away the most celebrated achievement of genomics is the Human Genome Project, a technologically challenging endeavour that took thousands of scientists around the world thirteen years and ~US$3 billion to complete. In 2000, American President William Clinton referred to the resulting genome sequence as ‘the most important, most wondrous map ever produced by humankind.’ Important though it was, this ‘map’ was a low-resolution first pass—a beginning not an endpoint. As of this writing, thousands of human genomes have been sequenced, the primary goals being to better understand our biology in health and disease, and to ‘personalize’ medicine. Sequencing a human genome now takes only a few days and costs as little as US$1,000. The genomes of simple bacteria and viruses can be sequenced in a matter of hours on a device that fits in the palm of your hand. The information is being used in ways unimaginable only a few years ago.
John M. Archibald (Genomics: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions))
The American counsellor Lois Tonkin reminds us that loss isn’t something we ‘get over’, and it doesn’t necessarily lessen, either. It remains at the core of us and we just expand our lives around it, burying it deeper from the surface. So with time it may become more distant, more compartmentalised and therefore easier to manage, but it does not go away.
Sue Black (All That Remains: A Renowned Forensic Scientist on Death, Mortality, and Solving Crimes)
In August 2018 a drug I’d never heard of was discovered, having killed a person who overdosed near Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The drug was called isotonitazene—an opioid first synthesized in the 1950s that hits the same brain receptors as fentanyl. Iso—as it’s now known on the streets—then was found in dozens of corpses in Chicago and Milwaukee, and from there it spread to Michigan, Indiana, Tennessee, killing at least 230 people in all. Researchers believe it may be marketed by Chinese chemical labs as a replacement for fentanyl, which the Chinese government banned in 2019. In April 2020 isotonitazene seemed to fade, only to be replaced by another synthetic opioid, brorphine. Brorphine showed up in the corpses of 130 people in many of the same states. At least seventeen new synthetic drugs were identified in 2020 alone. The day I turned in my manuscript, another opioid was found on the rise, metonitazene. “It’s almost as though they’re market testing,” said Barry Logan, chief forensic scientist at NMS Labs, which does bodily fluid tests for coroners nationwide. Underground chemists seemed to be searching the chemistry literature for drugs that might be molecularly modified to be more potent. Then, like Paul Janssen did when he invented fentanyl, “they’re experimenting,” Logan said. “They’re changing the molecule’s [structure], which changes how rapidly it’s taken up into the brain. Then they put it out there on the market.
Sam Quinones (The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth)
A yellow oilskin jumped from a scooter, and walked purposefully towards him, notebook in hand. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen, his face spotted adolescent red. ‘You can’t park there.’ There was righteous indignation in his voice. ​Bill flashed his ID. ‘Get lost or I’ll book you!’ ​The red blotches met one another in embarrassment. ​‘Sorry officer.’ ​He retreated to his scooter.
Lin Anderson (Dark Flight (Forensic Scientist Dr Rhona MacLeod #4))
insisting
Jeff Benedict (No Bone Unturned: Inside the World of a Top Forensic Scientist and His Work on America's Most Notorious Crimes and Disasters)
The mother of all fake news. You may have seen fake news before, but nothing like what I’m on the verge of perfecting. Soon, I’ll be able to make videos showing sweet little Paigey here kicking puppies to death. Or screwing a roomful of tattooed bikers. Or praising Hitler. And the videos will look so real—so perfect—a forensic scientist will vouch for their authenticity. And seeing is believing. The potency of this tool will be astonishing.
Douglas E. Richards (Veracity)
In both domestic and international law, as Christopher Joyce and Eric Stover dryly remarked in their book on forensic anthropology, ‘lawyers tend to recruit scientists for courtroom appearances much like the way the police shop for attack-dogs – they look for signs of good breeding coupled with a willingness to take a bite out of an adversary.’20
Eyal Weizman (The Least of All Possible Evils: Humanitarian Violence from Arendt to Gaza)
The focus of the work was on bite mark analysis, but it just as easily could have been shaken baby syndrome, arson investigation, hair microscopy, bullet lead analysis, polygraphs, voice spectrometry, handwriting, bloodstain pattern analysis—the list of discredited forensic techniques is considerable. The question becomes, Why? Why has junk science been accepted by courts, unanimously, for the past fifty years? How does a dentist like Levine become a world-renowned forensic scientist in a field with no basis in science? How many more Keith Harwards are there?
M. Chris Fabricant (Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System)