On Friday, November 20, David Sheets, PhD, of the Physics Department, will host a colloquium on “Justice and the Forensics of Bitemarks: Evidence from the Computational Sciences of the Dangers of the Misinterpretation of Forensic Bitemark Evidence.” The event will be held at 4:00 p.m. in Science Hall, Room 1028. This talk will discuss the general setting of forensic bitemark analysis, and the computational science research that lead to the conclusion that bitemarks are not in general unique to individuals.
Interdisciplinary scientific work by Dr. Sheets, in collaboration with Mary Bush, PhD, and Peter Bush of the Dental School at UB, has shown that the bitemarks left by humans in violent assault cases are not unique identifiers. Unrelated people can leave bitemarks that cannot be distinguished from one another. Consequently, there is a substantial risk of false convictions or of misdirection of police investigation with a subsequent failure to find the true assailant. There is currently a substantial national discussion of the validity of bitemark evidence, based on this work and other trends in forensics.
Submitted by: H. David Sheets, PhD, department of physics
