Ecole des Sciences Criminelles, Université de Lausanne, Switzerland.
Leverhulme Research Center for Forensic Science, University of Dundee, UK.
Forensic Sci Int. 2023 Jul;348:111592. doi: 10.1016/j.forsciint.2023.111592. Epub 2023 Feb 3.
Many different issues have been identified in forensic science for more than 10 years. While quality management has often been suggested as a path forward, research is generally considered as an essential part of the solution. Through an overview of current forensic science research, this paper aims at evaluating if and how research answer the challenges forensic science is currently facing. While forensic related publications have massively increased over the years, approximately half of the publications were published in non-forensic sources, indicating that forensic science research tends to be led by other disciplines. Over the years, forensic science research has remained largely oriented towards methodological and technological development rather than relevance to the forensic science discipline and practice. Practical implementation of the techniques is rarely discussed from a forensic perspective, and thus research rarely move from the "proof-of-concept" stage to its utilisation in case investigation. The digital transformation also generated a massive increase of data, making it challenging to find the relevant pieces of information in the mass of "forensic" publications available on-line. Thus, we propose to refocus forensic science research on forensic fundamental and practical questions to strengthen the discipline and its impact on crime investigation and security issues. Our propositions represent an incentive to further discuss forensic science research and knowledge transmission through the definition of a common culture within the community, focusing on common fundamental knowledge such as a better understanding of the concept of trace and its case-based information content.
十多年来，法庭科学领域已经确定了许多不同的问题。虽然质量管理经常被提议作为前进的道路，但研究通常被认为是解决方案的重要组成部分。本文通过对当前法庭科学研究的概述，旨在评估研究是否以及如何应对法庭科学目前面临的挑战。虽然与法庭科学相关的出版物多年来大幅增加，但约有一半的出版物发表在非法庭科学来源，这表明法庭科学研究往往由其他学科主导。多年来，法庭科学研究主要集中在方法和技术的发展上，而不是与法庭科学学科和实践的相关性。从法庭角度很少讨论技术的实际实施情况，因此研究很少从“概念验证”阶段推进到在案件调查中实际应用。数字转型也产生了大量的数据，使得在网上提供的大量“法庭”出版物中找到相关信息变得具有挑战性。因此，我们建议将法庭科学研究重新集中在法庭基本问题和实际问题上，以加强该学科及其对犯罪调查和安全问题的影响。我们的建议代表了通过在该领域内定义共同文化来进一步讨论法庭科学研究和知识传播的激励，重点是共同的基础知识，例如更好地理解痕量的概念及其基于案例的信息内容。
