Ezegbogu Mark O
Department of Forensic Science, School of Physical Sciences, University of Kent, CT2 7NZ, UK.
Sci Justice. 2021 May;61(3):205-213. doi: 10.1016/j.scijus.2020.12.002. Epub 2021 Jan 7.
The forensic analysis of pollen involves the comparison of crime scene and reference pollen samples. Successful matches are frequently used to solve time- or location-related crimes. Despite its prospects in criminal investigation, forensic palynology is still underused in casework due to inherent shortcomings such as its limited evidential weighting, scarcity of skilled palynologists dedicated to forensic casework and the laborious nature of analytical procedures. To address these challenges, the current state-of-the-art in forensic palynology is transiting from the traditional light microscopic methods that dominated the early days of palynology to more contemporary approaches like Raman spectroscopy, stable isotope analysis and DNA metabarcoding. The major challenges of these methods, however, include a lack of optimisation to forensic expectations and the unavailability of robust databases to permit accurate data interpretation, and quests to resolve these problems constitute the theme of current research. While reiterating the usefulness of pollen analysis in criminal investigation, this report recommends orthogonal testing as a way of improving the evidential weighting of forensic palynology.
花粉的法医分析涉及对犯罪现场花粉样本和参考花粉样本进行比对。成功的匹配结果常常被用于侦破与时间或地点相关的犯罪案件。尽管法医孢粉学在刑事调查中前景广阔，但由于其存在固有缺陷，如证据权重有限、专注于法医案件工作的熟练孢粉学家稀缺以及分析程序繁琐，在实际案件工作中仍未得到充分利用。为应对这些挑战，法医孢粉学的当前技术水平正在从孢粉学早期占主导地位的传统光学显微镜方法，向拉曼光谱、稳定同位素分析和DNA宏条形码等更现代的方法转变。然而，这些方法的主要挑战包括缺乏针对法医预期的优化、缺乏强大的数据库以进行准确的数据解释，而解决这些问题正是当前研究的主题。在重申花粉分析在刑事调查中的有用性的同时，本报告建议采用正交测试作为提高法医孢粉学证据权重的一种方法。
