This paper discusses materials from a legal case, People v. Hyatt (2001).
This was a criminal case in which one of the authors (Simon Cole) agreed to appear
as an expert witness for the defense. Cole’s expertise derived from his
research in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), and so his appearance
in the case exemplified STS research engaging in a public controversy about a
contested form of ‘scientific’ knowledge. Cole’s STS
work and his testimony proved useful to defendants seeking to restrict the
admissibility of forensic fingerprint evidence in court, but before he could testify
in the Hyatt trial, his own expertise was subjected to an
admissibility hearing. During his testimony, Cole faced a number of dilemmas as he
attempted to accommodate his own conception of science and STS with the terms and
procedures recognized by the court. The hearing was transcribed, and the coauthors
of this paper discussed the details of the transcript. Their discussion itself was
recorded and transcribed, and portions of the two transcripts are juxtaposed in this
paper. The paper discusses Cole’s difficulties and the dilemmas they
exemplify, as a situated demonstration of some of the difficulties STS scholars face
in their attempts to engage the ‘public sphere’.
Aronson, Jay (2003) The Introduction, Contestation and Regulation of
Forensic DNA Analysis in the American Legal System, 1984-1994 (unpublished
PhD Thesis, History of Science and Technology, University of Minnesota).
2.
Ashmore, Malcolm
(1989) The Reflexive Thesis: Wrighting the Sociology of
Scientific Knowledge (
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press
).
3.
Ashmore, Malcolm & Evelleen Richards (eds) (1996)
‘The Politics of SSK: Neutrality, Commitment and Beyond’
, Social Studies of Science26(2):
219-468
.
4.
Atkinson, J. Maxwell
&
Paul Drew
(1979) Order in Court: The Organization of Verbal Interaction
in Judicial Settings (
London: Macmillan
).
5.
Barnes, S.B.
&
R.G.A. Dolby
(1970)
‘The Scientific Ethos: A Deviant Viewpoint’
, Archives European Journal of Sociology11(1):
3-25
.
6.
Bijker, Wiebe
(2003)
‘The Need for Public Intellectuals: A Space for STS’
, Science, Technology, and Human Values28(4):
443-450
.
7.
Bloor, David
(1976) Knowledge and Social Imagery (
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
).
8.
Blume, Stuart
(2000)
‘Land of Hope and Glory: Exploring Cochlear Implantation in the Netherlands’
, Science, Technology, and Human Values25(2):
139-166
.
9.
Brannigan, Augustine
&
Michael Lynch
(1987)
‘On Bearing False Witness: Perjury and Credibility as
Interactional Accomplishments’
, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography16:
115-146
.
10.
Burke, Kenneth
(1969 [1950]) A Rhetoric of Motives (
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press
).
11.
Caudill, David
&
Richard Redding
(2000)
‘Junk Philosophy of Science? The Paradox of Expertise and
Interdisciplinarity in Federal Courts’
, Washington and Lee Law Review57:
685-766
.
12.
Champod, Christophe
&
Ian Evett
(2001)
‘A Probabilistic Approach to Fingerprint Evidence’
, Fingerprint Whorld27 (105, July):
95-107
.
13.
Cole, Simon
(1998)
‘Witnessing Identification: Latent Fingerprint Evidence and
Expert Knowledge’
, Social Studies of Science28(5/6):
687-712
.
14.
Cole, Simon
(2000)
‘The Myth of Fingerprints: A Forensic Science Stands Trial’
, Lingua Franca (November):
54-62
.
15.
Cole, Simon
(2001) Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and
Criminal Identification (
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
).
16.
Cole, Simon
(2003)
‘Fingerprinting: The First Junk Science?’
, Oklahoma City University Law Review28(1):
73-92
.
17.
Cole, Simon
(2004)
‘Grandfathering Evidence: Fingerprint Admissibility Ruling from
Jennings to Llera Plaza and Back Again’
, American Criminal Law Review41(3):
1189-1276
.
18.
Collins, H.M.
(1985) Changing Order: Replication and Induction in
Scientific Practice (
London & Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE Publications
).
19.
Collins, H.M.
&
Robert Evans
(2002)
‘The Third Wave of Science Studies: Studies of Expertise and Experience’
, Social Studies of Science32(2):
235-296
.
20.
Collins, H.M.
&
Robert Evans
(2003)
‘King Canute Meets the Beach Boys: Responses to the Third Wave’
, Social Studies of Science33(3):
435-452
.
21.
Collins, H.M.
&
Trevor Pinch
(1982) Frames of Meaning: The Social Construction of
Extraordinary Science (
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
).
22.
Denbeaux, Mark
&
D. Michael Risinger
(2003)
‘Kumho Tire and Expert Reliability: How the Question You Ask
Gives the Answer You Get’
, Seton Hall Law Review34:
15-70
.
23.
Derksen, Linda
(2000)
‘Towards a Sociology of Measurement: Making Subjectivity
Invisible and Negotiating Measurement in the Case of DNA Fingerprinting’
, Social Studies of Science30(6):
803-845
.
24.
Dodes, John E.
(2001)
‘Junk Science and the Law’
, Skeptical Inquirer25(4):
31-34
.
25.
Edge, David
(2003)
‘Celebration and Strategy: the 4S after 25 years, and STS after 9-11’
, Social Studies of Science33(2):
159-167
.
26.
Edmond, Gary
(1998)
‘The Next Step in Moonwalking? Expert Evidence, the Public
Understanding of Science and the Case against Imwinkelried’s
Didactic Trial Procedures’
, International Journal of Evidence and Proof2:
13-31
.
27.
Edmond, Gary
(2002a)
‘Legal Engineering: Contested Representations of Law, Science
(and Non-Science) and Society’
, Social Studies of Science32(3):
371-412
.
28.
Edmond, Gary
(2002b)
‘The Law-Set: The Legal-Scientific Production of Medical Propriety’
, Science, Technology, and Human Values26(2):
191-226
.
29.
Edmond, Gary
&
David Mercer
(1998)
‘Representing the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge and Law’
, Science Communication19(4):
307-327
.
30.
Edmond, Gary
&
David Mercer
(2000)
‘Litigation Life: Law-Science Knowledge Construction in
(Bendectin) Mass Toxic Tort Litigation’
, Social Studies of Science30(2):
265-316
.
31.
Edmond, Gary
&
David Mercer
(2002)
‘Conjectures and Exhumations: Citations of History, Philosophy
and Sociology of Science in US Federal Courts’
, Law and Literature14(2):
309-366
.
32.
Evett, I.W.
&
R.L. Williams
(1996)
‘A Review of the Sixteen Points Fingerprint Standard in England
and Wales’
, Journal of Forensic Identification46(1):
49-73
.
33.
Faigman, David
(2002)
‘Is Science Different for Lawyers?’
, Science297 (19 July):
339-340
.
34.
Friedman, Michael
(2000) Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and
Heidegger (
Chicago, IL: Open Court
).
35.
Fuller, Steve
(1993) Philosophy, Rhetoric, and the End of Knowledge: The
Coming of Science and Technology Studies (
Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press
).
36.
Garfinkel, Harold
(1967) Studies in Ethnomethodology (
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall
).
37.
Garfinkel, Harold
(2002) Ethnomethodology’s Program: Working Out
Durkheim’s Aphorism (
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield
).
38.
Garfinkel, Harold
&
D. Lawrence Wieder
(1992) ‘Two Incommensurable, Asymmetrically
Alternate Technologies of Social Analysis’, in
G. Watson
&
R.M. Seiler
(eds), Text in Context: Contributions to Ethnomethodology (
London: SAGE Publications
): 175-206.
39.
Gieryn, Thomas F.
(1983)
‘Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of Science from Non-Science’
, American Sociological Review48:
781-795
.
40.
Gieryn, Thomas F.
(1999) Cultural Boundaries of Science: Credibility on the
Line (
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press
).
41.
Grint, Keith
&
Steve Woolgar
(1996)
‘On Some Failures of Nerve in Constructivist and Feminist
Analyses of Technology’
, Science, Technology, and Human Values20(3):
286-310
.
42.
Hacking, Ian
(1992)
‘Multiple Personality Disorder and its Hosts’
, History of the Human Sciences5:
3-31
.
43.
Haraway, Donna
(1988)
‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism as a Site
of Discourse on the Privilege of Partial Perspective’
, Feminist Studies14:
575-599
.
44.
Hoeffel, Janet C.
(2002)
‘The Sixth Amendment’s Lost Cause: Unearthing
Compulsory Process’
, Wisconsin Law Review2002:
1275-1361
.
45.
Huber, Peter
(1991) Galileo’s Revenge: Junk Science in the
Courtroom (
New York: Basic Books
).
46.
Imwinkelried, Edward J.
(2002)
‘A Defense of the Right to Present Defense Expert Testimony: The
Flaws in the Plurality Opinion in United States v. Scheffer’
, Tennessee Law Review69:
539-562
.
47.
Jasanoff, Sheila
(1990) The Fifth Branch: Science Advisers as
Policymakers (
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
).
48.
Jasanoff, Sheila
(1992)
‘What Judges Should Know about the Sociology of Science’
, Jurimetrics Journal32:
345-359
.
49.
Jasanoff, Sheila
(1995) Science at the Bar: Law, Science, and Technology in
America (
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
).
50.
Jasanoff, Sheila
(1996)
‘Beyond Epistemology: Relativism and Engagement in the Politics
of Science’
, Social Studies of Science26:
393-418
.
51.
Jasanoff, Sheila
(2003)
‘Breaking Waves in Science Studies: Comment on H.M. Collins and
Robert Evans, “The Third Wave of Science Studies”’
, Social Studies of Science33(3):
389-400
.
52.
Jofre, Shelley
(2001)
‘Falsely Fingered’
, The Guardian (9 July).
53.
Latour, Bruno
(1996) Aramis or The Love of Technology (
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
).
54.
Laudan, Larry
(1982)
‘Science at the Bar: Causes for Concern’
, Science, Technology, and Human Values7(41):
16-19
.
55.
Lynch, Michael
(1993) Scientific Practice and Ordinary Action:
Ethnomethodology and Social Studies of Science (
New York: Cambridge University Press
).
56.
Lynch, Michael
(1998)
‘The Discursive Production of Uncertainty: The O.J. Simpson
“Dream Team” and the Sociology of Knowledge Machine’
, Social Studies of Science28(5/6):
829-868
.
57.
Lynch, Michael
(2000)
‘Against Reflexivity as an Academic Virtue and Source of
Privileged Knowledge’
, Theory, Culture and Society17(3):
27-56
.
58.
Lynch, Michael
(2001) ‘Ethnomethodology and the Logic of
Practice’, in
T.R. Schatzki
,
K. Knorr-Cetina
&
E. von Savigny
(eds), The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory (
London: Routledge
): 131-148.
59.
Lynch, Michael
(2004) ‘“Science Above All
Else”: The Inversion of Credibility between Forensic DNA Profiling and
Fingerprint Evidence’, in
G. Edmond
&
D. Mercer
(eds), Expertise in Law and Regulation (
Aldershot, Hants.: Ashgate/Dartmouth
): 121-135.
60.
Lynch, Michael
&
David Bogen
(1996) The Spectacle of History: Speech, Text, and Memory at
the Iran-Contra Hearings (
Durham, NC: Duke University Press
).
61.
Lynch, Michael & Sheila Jasanoff (eds) (1998)
‘Contested Identities: Science, Law, and Forensic Practice’
, Social Studies of Science28(5/6):
675-868
.
62.
Maggi, Laura
(2000)
‘Bearing Witness for Tobacco’
, American Prospect11(10), (27 March - 10 April):
23
.
63.
Martin, Brian
(1996)
‘Sticking a Needle into Science: The Case of Polio Vaccines and
the Origin of AIDS’
, Social Studies of Science26(2):
245-276
.
64.
Merton, Robert K.
(1973) ‘The Normative Structure of
Science’, in R.K. Merton, The Sociology of Science (
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press
): 267-278.
65.
Merton, R.
(1976) ‘The Ambivalence of Scientists: A
Postscript’, in R.K. Merton, Sociological Ambivalence and
Other Essays (
New York: Free Press
): 56-64.
66.
Miller, Jonathan
(2002)
‘The Myth of Fingerprints’
, Cornell Alumni Magazine104(6):
26-27
.
67.
Mills, C. Wright
(1940)
‘Situated Actions and Vocabularies of Motive’
, American Sociological Review5:
904-913
.
68.
Mitroff, Ian
(1974) The Subjective Side of Science (
New York: Elsevier
).
69.
Mnookin, Jennifer
(2001)
‘Fingerprint Evidence in an Age of DNA Profiling’
, Brooklyn Law Review67(1):
13-70
.
70.
Mulkay, Michael
(1976)
‘Norms and Ideology of Science’
, Social Science Information15:
637-656
.
71.
Mulkay, Michael
(1985) The Word and the World: Explorations in the Form of
Sociological Analysis (
London: Allen and Unwin
).
72.
Nowicki, Stephen
(2002)
Letter to the Editor
, Cornell Alumni Magazine105(1) (July/August):
6-8
.
73.
Oteri, J.S.
,
M.G. Weinberg
&
M.S. Pinales
(1982) ‘Cross-Examination in Drug
Cases’, in
B. Barnes
&
D. Edge
(eds), Science in Context: Readings in the Sociology of Science (
Milton Keynes, Bucks.: Open University Press
, 1982): 250-259.
74.
Pels, Dick
(1996)
‘The Politics of Symmetry’
, Social Studies of Science26(2):
277-304
.
75.
Pinch, Trevor
&
Trevor Pinch
(1988) ‘Reservations and Reflexivity and New
Literary Forms: Or Why Let the Devil Have All the Good
Tunes’, in
S. Woolgar
(ed.), Knowledge and Reflexivity (
London & Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE Publications
): 178-197.
76.
Popper, Karl
(1959) The Logic of Scientific Discovery (
New York: Harper and Row
).
77.
Porter, Theodore
(1995) Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in
Science and Public Life (
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
).
78.
Quinn, Philip
(1984) ‘The Philosopher of Science as Expert
Witness’, in
James T. Cushing
,
C.F. Delaney
&
Gary M. Gutting
(eds), Science and Reality: Recent Work in the Philosophy of
Science (
Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press
): 32-53.
79.
Rip, Arie
(2003)
‘Constructing Expertise - in a Third Wave of Science Studies?’
, Social Studies of Science33(3):
419-434
.
80.
Risinger, Michael
(2000)
‘Preliminary Thoughts on a Functional Taxonomy of Expertise for a
Post-Kumho World’
, Seton Hall Law Review31:
508-537
.
81.
Ruse, Michael
(1982)
‘Response to the Commentary: Pro Judice’
, Science, Technology, and Human Values7(41):
19-23
.
82.
Ruse, Michael
(1986)
‘Commentary: The Academic as Expert Witness’
, Science, Technology, and Human Values11(2):
68-73
.
83.
Sacks, Harvey
(1992) ‘The Inference Making
Machine’, in
G. Jefferson
(ed.), Harvey Sacks, Lectures on Conversation, Vol. 1 (
Oxford: Basil Blackwell
): 113-125.
84.
Saks, Michael
(1998)
‘Merlin and Solomon: Lessons from the Law’s Formative
Encounters with Forensic Identification Science’
, Hastings Law Journal49:
1069-1141
.
85.
Saks, Michael J.
(2000)
‘Banishing Ipse Dixit: The Impact of Kumho Tire on Forensic
Identification Science’
, Washington and Lee Law Review57:
879-900
.
86.
Scheck, Barry
,
Peter Neufeld
&
Jim Dwyer
(2000) Actual Innocence: Five Days to Execution, and Other
Dispatches from the Wrongly Convicted (
New York: Doubleday
).
87.
Schutz, Alfred
(1962) ‘Concept and Theory Formation in the
Social Sciences’, in Alfred Schutz, Collected
Papers, Vol. 1 (
The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff
): 48-66.
88.
Schwartz, Adina
(1997)
‘A “Dogma of Empiricism” Revisited: Daubert
v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and the Need to Resurrect the
Philosophical Insight of Frye v. United States’
, Harvard Journal of Law and Technology10(2):
149-237
.
89.
Scott, Joan Wallach
(1988) ‘The Sears Case’, in
Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (
New York: Columbia University Press
).
90.
Scott, Pam
,
Eveleen Richards
&
Brian Martin
(1990)
‘Captives of Controversy: The Myth of the Neutral Social
Researcher in Contemporary Scientific Controversies’
, Science, Technology, and Human Values15(4):
474-494
.
91.
Shapin, Steven
(1979) ‘The Politics of Observation: Cerebral
Anatomy and Social Interests in the Edinburgh Phrenology
Disputes’, in
R. Wallis
(ed.), On the Margins of Science: The Sociology of Rejected
Knowledge (
Keele, Staffs.: Keele University Press
): 139-178.
92.
Shapin, Steven
(1989)
‘The Invisible Technician’
, American Scientist77:
554-563
.
93.
Shapin, Steven
(1995)
‘Cordelia’s Love: Credibility and the Social Studies of Science’
, Perspectives on Science3:
255-275
.
94.
Shapin, Steven
&
Simon Schaffer
(1985) Leviathan and the Air Pump (
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
).
95.
Sharrock, Wes
&
Bob Anderson
(1991) ‘Epistemology: Professional
Scepticism’, in
G. Button
(ed.), Ethnomethodology and the Human Sciences (
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
): 51-76.
96.
Signs Archives
(1986)
‘Women’s History Goes to Trial: EEOC v Sears, Roebuck
and Company’
, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society11:
751-779
.
97.
Solomon, Shana
&
Edward Hackett
(1996)
‘Setting Boundaries between Science and Law: Lessons from Daubert
v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc.’
, Science, Technology, and Human Values21(2):
131-156
.
98.
Specter, Michael
(2002)
‘Do Fingerprints Lie?’
, The New Yorker (27 May):
96-105
.
99.
Starrs, James E.
(1999)
‘Judicial Control over Scientific Supermen: Fingerprint Experts
and Others Who Exceed the Bounds’
, Criminal Law Bulletin35:
234-276
.
100.
Stoney, David
(1997) ‘Fingerprint Identification: Scientific
Status’, in
David L. Faigman
,
David H. Kaye
,
Michael J. Saks
&
Joseph Sanders
(eds), Modern Scientific Evidence: The Law and Science of Expert
Testimony, Vol. 2 (
St Pauls, MN: West
): 55-78.
101.
Sudnow, David
(1965)
‘Normal Crimes: Sociological Features of the Penal Code in a
Public Defender’s Office’
, Social Problems12:
255-276
.
102.
Thompson, William C.
(1997)
‘A Sociological Perspective on the Science of Forensic DNA Testing’
, U.C. Davis Law Review30(4):
1113-1136
.
103.
Winch, Peter
(1958) The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to
Philosophy (
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
).
104.
Woodhouse, Edward
,
David Hess
,
Steve Breyman
&
Brian Martin
(2002)
‘Science Studies and Activism: Possibilities and Problems for
Reconstructivist Agendas’
, Social Studies of Science32:
297-319
.
105.
Woolgar, Steve
(1983) ‘Irony in the Social Study of
Science’, in
K. Knorr-Cetina
&
M. Mulkay
(eds), Science Observed (
London: SAGE Publications
): 239-266.
106.
Woolgar, Steve
(1988) Knowledge and Refexivity: New Frontiers in the
Sociology of Knowledge (
London & Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE Publications
).
107.
Wynne, Brian
(2003)
‘Seasick on the Third Wave? Subverting the Hegemony of
Propositionalism: Response to Collins and Evans (2002)’
, Social Studies of Science33(3):
401-418
.
