Phys.org has a short summary of research into patterns of fiber transfer across clothing during different types of assaults. The club members wore specially dyed uniforms and then enacted various styles of assault and defense to allow researchers to observe how clothing fibers transferred as a result.
Researchers from Northumbria University and King's College London have published findings outlining the extent that textile fibers transfer during controlled assault scenarios.
Their work, recently published in the academic journal Science & Justice, is the first time the number of fibers transferred between garments during physical assaults has been assessed by simulating the act with real people through Northumbria University's Jiu Jitsu club.
[...] "The importance of this research is that many experimental studies in forensic science are often a far cry from real-life situations, and we wanted to address that in this study," [lead study author Dr. Kelly] Sheridan said. "We wanted to investigate the extent of fiber transfer during different types of physical assaults using real people for the first time and Dr. David Chalton, who leads the Jiu Jitsu club, made it possible."
Apparently thousands of fibers were cross-transferred between the participants' garments each time, varying per attack/defense scenario.
Journal Reference:
Sheridan, Kelly J., Ray Palmer, et. al, A quantitative assessment of the extent and distribution of textile fibre transfer to persons involved in physical assault, Science & Justice (DOI: 10.1016/j.scijus.2023.05.001)
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In 2009, a National Academy of Sciences committee embarked on a long-overdue quest to study typical forensics analyses with an appropriate level of scientific scrutiny--and the results were deeply chilling. Aside from DNA analysis, not a single forensic practice held up to rigorous inspection.
Far from an infallible science, forensics is a decades-long experiment in which undertrained lab workers jettison the scientific method in favor of speedy results that fit prosecutors' hunches. No one knows exactly how many people have been wrongly imprisoned--or executed--due to flawed forensics. But the number, most experts agree, is horrifyingly high. A complete overhaul of our evidence analysis is desperately needed.
The Atlantic has a lengthy, but informative, article on the problems with DNA testing, often seen as infallible by juries:
"Ironically, you have a technology that was meant to help eliminate subjectivity in forensics," Erin Murphy, a law professor at NYU, told me recently. "But when you start to drill down deeper into the way crime laboratories operate today, you see that the subjectivity is still there: Standards vary, training levels vary, quality varies."
Last year, Murphy published a book called Inside the Cell: The Dark Side of Forensic DNA, which recounts dozens of cases of DNA typing gone terribly wrong. Some veer close to farce, such as the 15-year hunt for the Phantom of Heilbronn, whose DNA had been found at more than 40 crime scenes in Europe in the 1990s and early 2000s. The DNA in question turned out to belong not to a serial killer, but to an Austrian factory worker who made testing swabs used by police throughout the region.
The article also notes the increasing reliance on computer processing and the desire of the firms responsible to keep the details of the processing hidden, highlighting the example of DNA-testing firm Cybergenetics and their TrueAllele software:
William Thompson [attorney and a criminology professor at the University of California at Irvine] points out that Perlin [Cybergenetics CEO] has declined to make public the algorithm that drives the program. "You do have a black-box situation happening here," Thompson told me. "The data go in, and out comes the solution, and we're not fully informed of what happened in between."
Last year, at a murder trial in Pennsylvania where TrueAllele evidence had been introduced, defense attorneys demanded that Perlin turn over the source code for his software, noting that "without it, [the defendant] will be unable to determine if TrueAllele does what Dr. Perlin claims it does." The judge denied the request.
...
When I interviewed Perlin at Cybergenetics headquarters, I raised the matter of transparency. He was visibly annoyed. He noted that he'd published detailed papers on the theory behind TrueAllele, and filed patent applications, too: "We have disclosed not the trade secrets of the source code or the engineering details, but the basic math."
Originally seen at Bruce Schneier's Blog.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 12 2023, @09:28PM (7 children)
If the cop's case rests on the fibers from a shirt or jeans left behind, they don't really have a case. So, they've narrowed those fibers down as coming from a Hane's T-shirt, and they've established that the T-shirt was almost certainly sold at Wal-Mart. There are three such shirts in my home, one is mine, one belongs to each of two sons.* One T-shirt out of tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, sold by Wal-Mart. Sorry guys, you'll need something a little more convincing, since I was in Mexico when your guy was killed in Toledo, Ohio. Show me the DNA, please.
*Not really, I haven't worn Hanes in decades.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2, Touché) by Gaaark on Monday June 12 2023, @10:12PM (6 children)
Education is the number one killer of grammar. ;)
All the children the abortion bans are making; will the Republican party guarantee they will be cared for and raised in a proper environment? That'll take a tonny ton of money money.
And will they enact gun controls? Guns kill children as well. I mean, if they REALLY care, they will do all they can, won't they... no children left behind with gun-shot wounds.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1, Troll) by Mojibake Tengu on Monday June 12 2023, @10:32PM (3 children)
Every human is someone's child. If abortions of children are legal, murders should be legal too, for every murder of an adult is technically just a deferred abortion.
In this context, gun control is completely irrelevant and needless.
Rust programming language offends both my Intelligence and my Spirit.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Gaaark on Monday June 12 2023, @10:42PM
And yet, someone forcing something onto another should be willing to be responsible for their actions: Republicans forcing someone to birth an unwanted child (and yes, some people seem to be not educated enough/not smart enough to use bloody birth control) means the Republicans are responsible for the raising of that child in a good, warm, loving, responsible environment, without care for how much it costs.
Even if that child grows up to be gay, lesbian, trans, drag, etc etc etc. Every child born of Republican force.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday June 12 2023, @11:29PM
So if a cop performs an abortion ... they'll have qualified immunity! Found the loophole!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 13 2023, @04:33PM
A fetus is not a human being any more than an egg is a chicken.
Just to be clear, you want women desperate, sick, and dying. You're one of those fuckers who grant more rights to a corpse than a live woman.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday June 13 2023, @12:53AM (1 child)
A better way to put it is that if a mother's right to her own body is second to a fetus right to live, then the people's right to their properties is second to the people's right to live so the goverment should be providing food, housing, protection and medical care to everyone until the day the die from old age.
compiling...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Gaaark on Tuesday June 13 2023, @01:00AM
If the government is forcing this, then yes.
It's weird: the Republicans are all "I got muh rights" and "Don't tread on me", and yet they're trampling on peoples rights. Strange people.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday June 12 2023, @10:29PM (3 children)
No evidence!
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2023, @10:41PM (1 child)
Lack of imagination?
Can't you think of better things to do with nudists than assault them?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday June 13 2023, @07:21AM
Have you ever been to a nudist camp?
There's a reason why nobody walks around with a hard-on in those places: there's nothing more unappetizing and less exciting than a bunch of totally ordinary middle-aged people's totally average and unremarkable genitalia everywhere you look.
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Tuesday June 13 2023, @06:53AM
And a lot easier than knights in shining armor.