The Academy Standards Board (ASB) of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences is seeking comments by September 9 on a Technical Report 194, First Edition, 2024, titled "Terminology for a Suspected Pattern of Dental Origin." Although only a "template" for organizing comments is listed on the ASB website, the draft standard can be found at https://www.aafs.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/194_TR_Ballot01.pdf.
The OSAC page on “Standards Open for Comment” (which you won't see by perusing the OSAC website unless you click on “How To Work With Us” in the navigation pane) says “NOTE: This is OSAC 2021-N-0030, Terminology for a Suspected Pattern of Dental Origin, currently on the OSAC Registry.” Does that mean the ASB committee believed that nothing in the OSAC product, which emerged with no review from an advisory scientific and technical panel of experts, needed improvement? It is good to go public as an SDO-approved standard for terminology unless someone objects and proposes something better?
Alas, it is not that good. Although a discussion of the choice of various terms to define and the definitions themselves could occupy pages, it is too tedious an undertaking for me to write or for many readers to plough through. Suffice it to say that some of the standard has a stream-of-consciousness feeling to it. Like "spurious observation anomaly not intrinsically present feature not related to the source."
The larger question is why try to promulgate a free-floating standard terminology rather than articulate standard procedures with appropriate terms? What might these standard practices be? Presumably, the proposed terminology is a precursor to performing "suspected pattern of dental origin analysis," which is defined as "forensic examination, analysis, and determination of the pattern for potential links to dental origins." This "potential links" study seems to be subdivided into (1) "bitemark assessment analysis," (2) "bitemark analysis," (3) "bitemark comparison analysis," and (4) "bitemark individualization analysis." Can any of these analyses produce results of "evidentiary value" (defined as "information of sufficient usefulness to serve as the basis for making an empirically significant scientific determination")?
The dentists are not prepared to say so. But neither are they willing to list in their bibliography any of the well-known articles and reports concluding that demonstrations of the scientific validity of these analyses are little more than wishful thinking. Rather than claim that these terms refer to procedures that have "evidentiary value" or opine that they lack such value, they merely note that their definitions are "not an endorsement of [the] scientific validity" of the processes they are supposed to describe. Apparently, the drafters from OSAC are agnostics rather than atheists. Or maybe they have their doubts about "bitemark individualization analysis." That phrase is marked "deprecated." Yet, the process of "visual comparison" is not deprecated as unvalidated or invalid, and a note suggests that other "individualization method[s]" for bitemarks could be just dandy.
So the best comment might be a recommendation to jettison this standard. Researchers can use their own clearly defined terms in devising and validating procedures that can be used in criminal investigations that involve what might be toothmarks, bitemarks, or wounds from other sources and mechanisms. When demonstrably valid procedures become available, the time will be ripe for a standard with uniform terminology.
Meanwhile, promulgating these terms and definitions, even with the agnostic disclaimers, risks encouraging the acceptance of dubious forensic "science." The very existence of an expert standard with these terms and definitions might suggest that the words describe something meaningful and encourage testimony that the field has a standardized system of some kind. I can imagine testimony that
The terms I am using in the analysis of what I have determined to be bitemarks are generally accepted in forensic odontology, medicine, and forensic science. I am following the ASB technical report on the subject. The report was produced with funding from the National Institute of Standards and Technology and is included and recommended for adoption by the government-supported Organization of Scientific Area Committees for Forensic Science.
Is this what forensic science and the law needs?
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