Colombian forensic genetics as a form of public science: The role of race, nation and common sense in the stabilization of DNA populations.

Ernesto Schwartz-Marín,Arely Cruz-Santiago,Peter Wade,Roosbelinda Cárdenas

doi:10.1177/0306312715574158

Ernesto Schwartz-Marín, Arely Cruz-Santiago + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312715574158

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Abstract

This article examines the role that vernacular notions of racialized-regional difference play in the constitution and stabilization of DNA populations in Colombian forensic science, in what we frame as a process of public science. In public science, the imaginations of the scientific world and common-sense public knowledge are integral to the production and circulation of science itself. We explore the origins and circulation of a scientific object – ‘La Tabla’, published in Paredes et al. and used in genetic forensic identification procedures – among genetic research institutes, forensic genetics laboratories and courtrooms in Bogotá. We unveil the double life of this central object of forensic genetics. On the one hand, La Tabla enjoys an indisputable public place in the processing of forensic genetic evidence in Colombia (paternity cases, identification of bodies, etc.). On the other hand, the relations it establishes between ‘race’, geography and genetics are questioned among population geneticists in Colombia. Although forensic technicians are aware of the disputes among population geneticists, they use and endorse the relations established between genetics, ‘race’ and geography because these fit with common-sense notions of visible bodily difference and the regionalization of race in the Colombian nation.

Highlights

Technologies that use DNA to identify human remains or link a suspect and a crime work by drawing mathematical associations between an individual person, a DNA sample, and the DNA profile of a relatively fixed ‘reference population’
Despite their objections to the idea of race and their commitment to using what they see as ‘bioethical markers’ and despite their recognition that the regional–racial populations of La Tabla made no statistical difference in producing likelihood ratio (LR), La Tabla and its categories continued to work smoothly in the context of the peritos’ laboratories and work protocols. This is because regions were a common-sense reality for these practitioners and because La Tabla could still be used to produce valid results for legal purposes. This is an example of public science, as we use the term in this article, in two senses: (a) insofar as public imaginations of Colombia as a country with distinctive racialized regions facilitated the routine use and normalization of La Tabla and (b) insofar as the peritos’ concern with being seen to endorse ideas of race and to potentially be involved in distinctions that smacked of racism – both morally inimical to the peritos’ imagination of the Colombian public sphere – pushed them to avoid explicit mention of race and accept the fact that, in practice, La Tabla’s four populations produced very similar LRs
When we interviewed the judge of a sexual assault case, in which two DNA samples taken from the suspect had given contradictory results – for reasons unknown – he continued to insist on the irrefutable ability of DNA tests to reveal the identity of criminals and victims; this was despite the fact he was unfamiliar with most of the technicalities of forensic genetics such as the existence of reference populations or the existence of the database in which genetic profiles were stored

Summary

Introduction

Technologies that use DNA to identify human remains or link a suspect and a crime work by drawing mathematical associations between an individual person, a DNA sample, and the DNA profile of a relatively fixed ‘reference population’.

Results

Conclusion