Forensic DNA phenotyping and its politics of legitimation and contestation: views of forensic geneticists in Europe

Abstract

Forensic DNA Phenotyping (FDP) is a set of techniques that aim to infer externally visible characteristics in humans – such as eye, hair and skin color – and biogeographical ancestry of an unknown person, based on biological material. FDP has been applied in various jurisdictions in a limited number of high-profile cases to provide intelligence for criminal investigations. There are on-going controversies about the reliability and validity of FDP, which come together with debates about the ethical challenges emerging from the use of this technology in the criminal justice system. Our study explores how, in the context of complex politics of legitimation of and contestation over the use of FDP, forensic geneticists in Europe perceive this technology’s potential applications, utility and risks. Forensic geneticists perform several forms of discursive boundary work, making distinctions between science and the criminal justice system, experts and non-experts, and good and bad science. Such forms of boundary work reconstruct the complex positioning vis-à-vis legal and scientific realities. In particular, while mobilizing interest in FDP, forensic geneticists simultaneously carve out notions of risk, accountability and scientific conduct that perform distance from FDP’ implications in the criminal justice system.This work has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement N.º [648608]), within the project “EXCHANGE –Forensic geneticists and the transnational exchange of DNA data in the EU: Engaging science with social control, citizenship and democracy”led by Helena Machado and hosted at the Communication and Society Research Centre, Institute for Social Sciences of University of Minho(Portugal