Testing Reliability of Animal Models in Research and Training Programs in Forensic Entomology, Part 2, Final Report

摘要

A national focus on scientific evidence, both in the popdar and scientific press, has resulted from the well-covered Simpson trial in California. With a number of challenges to scientific evidence in this famous California case, the reliability of entomological evidence has similarly been challenged in separate cases, including the U.S. Federal District Court (Middle District of Tennessee), First Judicial Circwit Court (Escambia County, Fla.), and the York Regional Court (Newmarket, Ontario, Canada). Commm areas of objection to entomology-based studies is the untested assertion that historical and repeated use of the Anthropologicd Research Facility (ARF) in Knoxville, Tennessee, is 'saturated' with decomposer organisms, thus rendering ARF an atypical site for field research in forensic science. It has been widely recognized that the ARF offers a uniqueness in the use of freshly dead human remains for field studies in decomposition found at no other research facility in the world. The continued use of the facility has been possible only through specific state laws which prescribe that field research on decomposition of human remains be conducted at the ARF (following Tennessee statutes).