Best Evidence: NIST's John M. Butler on Advances in Forensics

摘要

Given the parade of such reliably sensational spectacles as the trial of O.J. Simpson in 1995 or the recent proceedings involving the murder conviction of American student Amanda Knox in Italy, not to mention the current abundance of television shows centered around crime-scene investigation, laypersons have by now become familiar with the role of forensic DNA testing-DNA fingerprinting, as it's popularly known-in criminal cases and the identification of remains. The methods of using DNA to establish, in effect, "who done it?" or "who is it?" were originally developed by British researchers in the 1980s. Since then, the technology of DNA fingerprinting has been enhanced and accelerated to the point that analyses that used to take weeks are now routinely done in a single working day, while individuals can be identified by ever-smaller fragments of remains-a single hair, a piece of bone.