In a different era, anyone who casually wanted to avoid science could do so. This is not that era. It took more than a casual effort to avoid discussions of DNA fingerprinting and the effects of EDTA on blood clotting during a widely publicized California murder trial a few years ago. Even artists who avoided college science courses as if they were emerging diseases cannot easily escape the discipline. Science permeates print, air, and cyberspace. And anyone seeking escape from bench work in the pages of modern crime novels will find that science plays an important role in many of their plots. Patricia Cornwell, for example, has made a highly lucrative career by making the science of forensic pathology a key ingredient in her crime fiction.

Forensic science fascinates many nonscientists who read police procedural stories. For scientists who occasionally enjoy escapist crime fiction, the desire for scientific accuracy and detail may be stronger than among other readers. Any curiosity these readers may feel about true-life aspects of forensic science can be satisfied easily by a brief Web surfing session.

Biologists might be particularly interested in the fields of forensic anthropology, odontology, medicine, and toxicology. A good site to visit first is Zeno's Forensic Page. It provides links and information about forensic science, forensic medicine, and forensic psychology/psychiatry. Zeno's Forensic Forum offers a place to ask and answer questions about forensic science or medicine. Zeno also offers resources for the retrieval of forensic literature, and for finding general forensic information sources.

If one isn't satisfied with this overview of the field, it is easy to concentrate on some of the discipline's specialties. Consulting entomologist Stephen W. Bullington's site Forensic Entomology, for instance, well describes information on topics such as how "bugs on bodies" can determine the postmortem interval, how to collect insects at a corpse, and how to send forensic insects through the mail.

These tips, of course, are meant for homicide investigators and police officers who have the job of collecting insects at a murder site. Information about the species of insects found on bodies, their stage of development, the temperature, season, and other variables can combine to produce a useful estimate of the postmortem interval (PMI) - the time between a body's death and its discovery. Here's an excerpt one is not likely to find on a typical college aptitude test: "The entomologist knows that this particular fly usually arrives at a corpse within an hour of death, and that the eggs take an average of 500 hours (490 to 510) to become pupae at the temperature of the corpse. He can then say the PMI was probably 501 hours, and certainly no lower than 491 hours or no greater than 511 hours." (That assumes a constant corpse temperature, of course, but one gets the idea.)

Jason H. Byrd of the Department of Entomology and Nematology at the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences provides another forensic entomology site with similar information. He also illustrates the life cycle of some forensically important insects, and discusses the diverse applications of the field.

When one has had enough bugs, try drugs. The Web page sponsored by the Society of Forensic Toxicologists discusses drugs, as well as toxic chemicals and volatile substances that figure into both fictional and factual homicide investigations. According to the site's introduction, What Is a Forensic Toxicologist?, professionals in this field are "frequently found in academic departments of pathology, pharmacology, or chemistry, where they perform teaching, research, and analytical service work for private or public agencies on a contractual basis." This situation is contrasted with the toxicologist's early status as the "coroner's chemist," according to the first edition (1975) of Toxicology: The Basic Science of Poisons. If one is considering going into business for oneself, consult the forensic toxicology laboratory guidelines page on the same site.

Toxicology lab procedures and recipes are available on the National Fish & Wildlife Forensics Laboratory: Forensic Protocol page. Here one can find out how to use a high pressure liquid chromatography machine to qualitatively determine strychnine in a sample. Other instructions range from procedures for conducting gross necropsies to analyzing proteins and DNA.

Another subdiscipline of forensic medicine is forensic odontology. One of several guides or introductions to this field is produced by the British Association for Forensic Odontology. According to information provided by its site, experts in this field identify unknown bodies through dental records, and also identify bite marks on the victims and match them to suspects. Experts can estimate the age of skeletal remains, and help develop an idea of the daily life and diet of those who once inhabited archeological sites.

Forensic odontologists often work in close coordination with forensic anthropologists, whose job it is to apply "the science of physical anthropology to the legal process," according to the American Board of Forensic Anthropology. Forensic anthropologists, such as the well-known Clyde Snow, identify the skeletal and decomposing remains left behind after crimes committed by individuals or governments. The analytical procedures forensic anthropologists employ often enable them to determine or estimate age, sex, height, ancestry, and sometimes even the cause of death, all from a set of bones.

Physical anthropologists still get far too much work these days. Government thugs in South America, and more recently in eastern Europe, have provided hundreds of hours of work for them by filling mass graves with victims of political murder and genocide. Snow (who helped identify the remains of Nazi "doctor" Josef Mengele) and other specialists have been working for years to identify the remains of such victims and the manners of their deaths. One of the greatest benefits of this discipline lies in its service as a scientific "conscience" for nations. Two sites that discuss this aspect of forensic science are Stefan Schmitt's Human Rights and Forensic Anthropology Home Page and the site of the E.A.A.F. Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team.

Endlinks

Investigating with Insects - in this issue, HMS Beagle's full review of the Forensic Entomology Pages, International.

American Academy of Forensic Sciences - "represents scientists, physicians, criminalists, and other professionals in 50 nations dedicated to applying science to serve law." The site includes a short list of related links.

Journal of Forensic Sciences - the Academy's peer-reviewed publication. Only the journal's tables of contents are online. One must find a print copy to read articles such as "Mitochondrial DNA Sequencing of Shed Hairs and Saliva on Robbery Caps: Sensitivity and Matching Probabilities," "DNA Typing of Human Dandruff," and "Detection of Cocaine on Various Denominations of United States Currency."

Tainting Evidence: Inside the Scandals at the FBI Crime Lab - a brief synopsis of this book by John F. Kelly and Phillip K. Wearne. The first chapter is online.

Forensic Science Links - Zeno's Forensic Page offers one of the most complete list of links.

Forensic WebLinks Search - at the aforementioned Jason H. Byrd site.

Web sites mentioned in this column: