Time of death: Another myth of contemporary forensic science? New York times article "The Living Dead" by reporter Peter Andrey Smithjan: "Schmidt keeps a copy of a statistical opus on post-mortem intervals, in which Claus Henssge and his co-authors warn against extrapolating much beyond 48 hours, but he takes an even more pessimistic view. “Post-mortem interval is one of the most pseudoscientific bits of information out there that, and I hate to use this, will never die.” Must, Must Read. HL);

STORY: "The living Dead," by reporter  Peter Andrey Smithjan, published by the New York Times on January 18, 2016.

SUB-HEADING:  By studying the microscopic bacteria that bloom on our bodies after we die, scientists hope to unlock surprising mysteries of the departed.

GIST: "No problem in forensic science has been investigated more, and understood less, than the post-mortem interval. Medical investigators calculate the interval between death and the discovery of a body using three cardinal measurements: temperature (algor mortis), stiffness (rigor mortis) and the settling of blood (livor mortis). These factors vary depending on a person’s distribution of visceral fat, as well as their clothing, the ambient air temperature and other factors. After two days or so, though, these observations are no longer trustworthy. Schmidt keeps a copy of a statistical opus on post-mortem intervals, in which Claus Henssge and his co-authors warn against extrapolating much beyond 48 hours, but he takes an even more pessimistic view. “Post-mortem interval is one of the most pseudoscientific bits of information out there that, and I hate to use this, will never die.”

Medical examiners can often deduce cause of death based on an autopsy, but the exact time of death is hard to determine. At best, this evidence comes from an attending physician or, lacking that, an eyewitness. “But let’s say that a body was dumped in an alley or one of Detroit’s many empty lots,” Schmidt said. “And that’s all you know about the case. Let’s say it’s August and it’s 90 degrees. And the body is flaccid and lividity is fixed. So, has that body been there for less than 24 hours or more than 24 hours? The answer is: Who knows?”  Which was why Schmidt had teamed up with a group of scientists — Heather Jordan, a microbiologist in Mississippi; and Eric Benbow and Jennifer Pechal, two entomologists in Michigan — to systematically swab bodies during routine death investigations. They hoped to gather testimony from an unusual set of witnesses: the microbes that live after we die. The swabbing in Detroit, which began in 2014 and quickly won a grant of nearly $850,000 from the National Institute of Justice, is the largest sustained effort to sample microbes from human cadavers. Informally known as the Human Postmortem Microbiome project, it arose out of a national crisis in forensic science, one that legal advocates and researchers have pieced together over the past decade. In 2004, Michael Saks and Jonathan Koehler, legal scholars at Arizona State University and Northwestern University, respectively, reviewed 86 cases in which DNA evidence exonerated the wrongfully convicted and found that forensic error across many types of analyses — fingerprinting, microscopic hair comparison, blood-spatter — was second only to faulty eyewitness accounts in obtaining convictions that were later overturned. In a 2013 research paper, legal scholars reviewed capital rape-and-murder cases from the 1980s and extrapolated that the justice system produced at least 33,000 false felony convictions annually. The crisis came to the fore in 2009, with a widely cited report from the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, that found nearly all aspects of forensic science wanting. Crime labs often used tools invented by law enforcement, including ballistic and bite-mark analyses. Some techniques had never been scientifically validated and lacked enforceable standards. Judicial review, the report said, could not cure the infirmities of forensic science. “That’s why the N.A.S. report called for the creation of a national institute of forensic science,” Saks told me. “Because it had no faith in the institution of forensic science, it had no faith in academic institutions, it had no faith in the courts.”"

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: 
 
Dear Reader. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog. We are following this case.

I have added a search box for content in this blog which now encompasses several thousand posts. The search box is located  near the bottom of the screen just above the list of links. I am confident that this powerful search tool provided by "Blogger" will help our readers and myself get more out of the site.
 
The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:
 
http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith
 
Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
 
http://smithforensic.blogspot.ca/2013/12/the-charles-smith-award-presented-to_28.html

Harold Levy: Publisher;

The entire story can be found at: 

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