Scottish Police Authority Forensic Services, Glasgow G69 8AE, UK.
Forensic Medicine and Science, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK.
J Anal Toxicol. 2023 Sep 15;47(7):563-573. doi: 10.1093/jat/bkad055.
Over the past decades, the calls to improve the robustness of interpretation in forensic science have increased in magnitude. Forensic toxicology has seen limited progress in this regard. In this work, we propose a transparent interpretive pathway for use in postmortem forensic toxicology cases. This process allows the selection of the interpretive methodology based on the amount of previous information that is available for the drug(s) in question. One approach is an assessment of various pharmacological and circumstantial considerations resulting in a toxicological significance score (TSS), which is particularly useful in situations where limited information about a drug is available. When there is a robust amount of case data available, then a probabilistic approach, through the evaluation of likelihood ratios by the forensic toxicologist and of prior probabilities by the fact finder, is utilized. This methodology provides a transparent means of making an interpretive decision on the role of a drug in the cause of death. This will allow the field of forensic toxicology to take a step forward in using best practice in evaluative reporting, a tool already used by many other forensic science disciplines.
在过去的几十年中，人们越来越呼吁提高法医学解释的稳健性。法医毒理学在这方面进展有限。在这项工作中，我们提出了一种透明的解释途径，用于死后法医毒理学案例。该过程允许根据可用的药物相关信息的数量选择解释方法。一种方法是评估各种药理学和环境因素，得出毒理学重要性评分（TSS），这在有关药物的信息有限的情况下特别有用。当有大量的案例数据可用时，则可以通过法医毒理学家评估似然比和事实发现者评估先验概率，采用概率方法。该方法为解释药物在死因中的作用提供了一种透明的决策方法。这将使法医毒理学领域能够在评估报告中采用最佳实践向前迈进一步，这一工具已经被许多其他法医学科所使用。
