Forensic science is in crisis and at a cross-roads. Movies and
television dramas depict forensic heroes with high-tech tools and
dazzling intellects who-inside an hour, notwithstanding
commercials-piece together past-event puzzles from crime scenes and
autopsies. Likewise, Sherlock Holmes-the iconic fictional
detective, and the invention of forensic doctor Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle-is held up as a paragon of forensic and scientific
inspiration-does not "reason forward" as most people do, but
"reasons backwards." Put more plainly, rather than learning the
train of events and seeing whether the resultant clues match those
events, Holmes determines what happened in the past by looking at
the clues. Impressive and infallible as this technique appears to
be-it must be recognized that infallibility lies only in works of
fiction. Reasoning backward does not work in real life: reality is
far less tidy. In courtrooms everywhere, innocent people pay the
price of life imitating art, of science following detective
fiction. In particular, this book looks at the long and disastrous
shadow cast by that icon of deductive reasoning, Sherlock Holmes.
In The Sherlock Effect, author Dr. Thomas W. Young shows why this
Sherlock-Holmes-style reasoning does not work and, furthermore, how
it can-and has led-to wrongful convictions. Dr. Alan Moritz, one of
the early pioneers of forensic pathology in the United States,
warned his colleagues in the 1950's about making the Sherlock
Holmes error. Little did Moritz realize how widespread the problem
would eventually become, involving physicians in all other
specialties of medicine and not just forensic pathologists. Dr.
Young traces back how this situation evolved, looking back over the
history of forensic medicine, revealing the chilling degree to
which forensic experts fail us every day. While Dr. Young did not
want to be the one to write this book, he has felt compelled in the
interest of science and truth. This book is measured,
well-reasoned, accessible, insightful, and-above all-compelling. As
such, it is a must-read treatise for forensic doctors, forensic
practitioners and students, judges, lawyers adjudicating cases in
court, and anyone with an interest in forensic science.
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