Montessori Forensics Blog

Establishing a Forensics Standard

2007-12-07T06:17:00.000-08:00

Forensics Independent Project: Timing is everything

Read: 'Timely Death', by D. P. Lyle, M. D
(you received a copy of this in class on 12/7/07)

Goal: Design an experiment to demonstrate how to precisely date decay of a material or substance.

You are a forensic investigator doing basic research. Your assignment: Design a structured experiment with common materials or substances that will allow you to develop a physiologic timeline and standard.

Example: An apple, when peeled, turns brown due to the process of oxidation. Similarly, a nail, when exposed to moisture, will rust. How long will it take for an oxidation reaction to occur? What factors will influence this change? Can you construct a timeline to track such a change? Your group will become an expert in that item.

Within your group, come up with an item or substance that will show short term (ideally, no longer than a few days), demonstrable decay in stages.
Develop a procedure to test this process out.
List your controls, dependent and independent variables.
Your group will be doing this procedure and presenting your results to the class.

For Monday: Each group will identify an experiment and submit a brief, initial outline of their procedure. We will furhther discuss the project in class on Wednesday.

Presentations by all groups will be on Wednesday, December 19th.

Forensics Evidence Analysis: Current Case

2007-11-21T08:54:00.000-08:00

Part I - Find A Case

As we discussed in class, you will research and decide on a case currently developing or a current trial (as of the date of this post) in which there is significant physical evidence.

Prepare a one to two page case summary (text, images will be in addition to this) outlining the crimes committed and the known physical evidence. Be sure to cite ALL sources and show the use (and source) of ANYthing someone else wrote.

We modeled the format for the report in class today using an article relating the Laci / Stace Peterson cases as our example.

Part I Due Date: Friday, November 30, 2007, IN CLASS
Late reports will be lose one letter grade per day, including weekend days.

Part II - Same as last time -
(a) Your group will prepare a presentation (including some form of display) of the case and present it to the class. Presentations will be scheduled for Wednesdays beginning December 5th.

(b)Your group will split into two and will present to the jury (your classmates) a case for the prosecution and a case for the defense based on the physical evidence. Groups will present their cases (two groups per class) every Wednesday in November-December.

Re-Peterson: Deja Vu All Over Again

2007-11-21T08:47:00.000-08:00

Stacy And Laci Peterson: The Eerie Similarities

(CBS) It's like deja vu all over again: This missing woman might not be pregnant, but the similarities in the Stacey Peterson and Laci Peterson cases are eerie at best... and not just because of their names.

LACI PETERSON

What the husband said: Scott said Laci took the dog for a walk.

Murder in the first: Police have been investigating whether a college student, Kristin Smart, who went to Cal Poly at the same time of Scott Peterson might have been murdered by him.

A watery grave: Police found the remains of Laci after they washed up in the San Francsico Bay. The remains of the couple's unborn son, Connor, washed up days before.

In the family way: Laci Rocha Peterson was eight months pregnant when she was killed on December 24, 2002.

I'm not guilty: Scott Peterson is on death row in San Quentin for the murder of Laci and their unborn child. He maintains his innocence.

Ironically: Laci's best friend, since third grade, was a woman named Stacey (Boyers.)

STACY PETERSON

What the husband said: Drew said Stacy left voluntarily.

Murder in the first: Police now think Drew Peterson might have had something to do with his third wife's (Kathleen Salvio) mysterious bathtub drowning.

A watery grave: Search crews are still looking for Stacy. They recently dredged a nearby lake but found nothing.

In the family way: Stacy Peterson had two children with her husband Drew when she was reported missing.

I'm not guilty: While he was officially called a "suspect" on November 9th for the October 28th dissapearance of his wife, Drew maintains his innocence.

Ironically: Stacy Peterson has a daughter named Lacey.

Robert Chambers

2007-10-24T11:59:00.001-07:00

The following case summary (and class discussion) was loosely adapted from material available at CourtTV.com and from Crime Library.com:
The Preppie Murder Case

Just after six on the morning of Aug. 26, 1986, a bicyclist pedaled along her usual morning route down a winding tree-lined path. As she made a final turn, something caught her eye. It was a young woman, her pink and white miniskirt hiked up past her waist and her bra and white blouse pushed up around her neck.

While dead bodies in public places were not entirely uncommon in a year when New York City notched nearly 1,600 homicides, the discovery of Jennifer Levin's body under a leafy elm tree behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art instantly drew attention.

On the night of Levin's death, Robert Chambers' girlfriend Alex publicly broke up with him at an East 84th Street bar, allegedly because of Levin. That night, Chambers left the bar with Levin.

Levin's strangled, semi-clad corpse, covered in bruises, bite marks, and cuts, was found by a bicyclist beneath an elm tree on a grassy knoll near Fifth Avenue and 83rd Street behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her bra and shirt were pushed up to her neck, and her skirt was around her waist. The city Medical Examiner's office said Levin died of "asphyxia by strangulation" and police officials said there were numerous bruises on her neck, both from the strangulation and from her own fingernails as she clawed at her murderer's hands. Later,

Chambers watched from nearby as police officers investigated and found Levin's underwear some 50 yards away

Chambers was charged with, and tried for, two counts of second-degree murder. The trial opened on January 4, 1988.

The prosecution had police officers and forensic investigators detail the crime scene, the location and condition of the body, however the handling and processing of the evidence at the crime scene was not perfect. At times, it was less than acceptable and defense attorney Jack T. Litman was able to cast doubt on much of the critical forensic evidence offered by Prosecutor Linda Fairstein concerning the crime scene.

When police first came upon the scene, they theorized that Ms. Levin must have been killed by a stranger. Only after interviewing her family and friends and learning that Mr. Chambers had been at an Upper East Side bar with her until late did the police visit Mr. Chambers’s apartment, where his body showed signs of a struggle. He was arrested at that time.

The trial judge turned down a motion by the prosecutors to use as evidence a denim jacket that they believed was used to suffocate Ms. Levin. The jacket had blood from Mr. Chambers’s fingers and Ms. Levin’s mouth, as well as her saliva. The judge ruled that the DNA analysis techniques available at the time were not sufficient to allow the jacket as evidence.

Medical Examiner Dr. Maria Alandy testified to the post mortem examination and stated that compression of the victim's neck had to be substantial in order to effect death.

A parade of young people who were friends of the victim, or who were at the bar on the fateful night, took the stand to testify.

For her final witness, Fairstein put on a Dr. Werner Spitz, the chief medical examiner for the city of Detroit who would give his opinion as to the nature of Levin's injuries. For the defense, the estimate of time it took to strangle Jennifer was essential, because Chambers' explanation was that he had grabbed Jennifer by the neck for a moment and threw her off of him.

Defense attorney Jack Litman argued that the killing had happened during "rough sex." He only called five witnesses to testify for Chambers including Dr. Ronald Kornblum, chief medical examiner for Los Angeles, who refuted Dr. Spitz's observations as best he could.

The defense sought to depict Levin as a promiscious woman who kept a "sex diary." No such diary existed; but Levin had owned a small notebook that contained the names and phone numbers of her friends.

The media labeled the crime "The Preppie Murder." Part of the media reported the more lurid aspects of the case; e.g. New York Daily News headlines read: "How Jennifer Courted Death" and "Sex Play Got Rough." Levin's reputation was attacked, while Chambers was portrayed as a Kennedy-esque "preppie altar boy" with a "promising future".

Archbishop Ted McCarrick of Newark, New Jersey, later Archbishop of Washington, wrote a letter of support for Chambers's bail application. He had known Chambers and his mother because Phyllis had been employed as a nurse by Terence Cardinal Cooke.

Chambers was bailed out by his family and the owner of the bar. He remained free on bond for the two years of his trial, reporting regularly to family friend Monsignor Thomas Leonard, a former teacher.

By March 10, the defense rested and the case later went to the jury.

We will discuss the case outcome in class on Friday

Forensics Evidence Case Analysis Project

2007-10-19T06:11:00.000-07:00

Part I - Prepare a one to two page case summary (text, images will be in addition to this) outlining the crimes committed and the physical evidence presented at the trial against the notorious figures that were assigned as your group names:

Bruno Richard Hauptmann
Elizabeth "Lizzie" Borden
John Wayne "Pogo the Clown" Gacy
Robert "Baretta" Blake
Eric & Lyle Menendez
Theodore Robert "Ted" Bundy
Aileen "Monster" Wuornos
Charles "Charlie" Manson

We modeled the format for the report in class today using an article relating the Phil Spector Murder Trial as our example.

Part I Due Date: Friday, October 26, 2007

Part II - Your group will prepare a presentation (including some form of display) of the case and present it to the class. Presentations will be scheduled for Wednesdays in Novmber. An example from the 2006-2007 class will be on display.

Part III - Your group will split into two and will present to the jury (your classmates) a case for the prosecution and a case for the defense based on the physical evidence. Groups will present their cases (two groups per class) every Wednesday in November-December.

digital forensics 101

2007-10-04T07:07:00.000-07:00

Dr. Hany Farid, a 41-year-old engineer, is a founder of a subdiscipline within computer science: digital forensics. Most days, he spends his time transforming ordinary images into ones with drastic new meanings. Click, goes his mouse. Courtney Love has joined Grandpa at the family barbecue. Click. Click. Elvis Presley is on Dartmouth’s board of trustees.

The purpose of all this manipulation is to discover how computerized forgeries are made. Intelligence agencies, news organizations and scientific journals employ Dr. Farid’s consulting services when they need to authenticate the validity of images. Dr. Farid sells a software package, “Q,” to clients so they, too, can become digital detectives. read more...

The myth of Fingerprints

2007-10-03T10:50:00.000-07:00

True or False: Fingerprints, as we are discussing in class this week, are an exact science. (note that we use "fingerprints" here, but really they are just ridges - the prints are what they leave behind)

Questions to research for Friday's (10/12/07) Class:

Write a response of at least one paragraph answering ONE of the following questions (be sure to cite your sources, not that wikipedia is not an acceptable source):

- Does every person have fingerprints?
Is it possible for two people to have the same fingerprints?
Do identical twins have identical fingerprints?
Does EVERYONE have fingerprints?
Can fingerprints be removed? If you burn your fingers, will the prints grow back?
Is everyone BORN with fingerprints?
TV Crime shows have programs that automatically scan a fingerprint and get a confirmation in minutes - how come we don't catrch more criminals this way?

Last year class (& blog) discussed the arrest of an Oregon lawyer in connection with a train bombing in Spain. Here's a summary of the incident.

Is Anybody Guilty Anymore?

2007-10-01T14:20:00.000-07:00

Exoneration Using DNA Brings Change in Legal System
By SOLOMON MOORE October 1, 2007, NY Times

"State lawmakers across the country are adopting broad changes to criminal justice procedures as a response to the exoneration of more than 200 convicts through the use of DNA evidence.

All but eight states now give inmates varying degrees of access to DNA evidence that might not have been available at the time of their convictions. Many states are also overhauling the way witnesses identify suspects, crime labs handle evidence and informants are used."
READ MORE

Vaguely Related Story: You Can't Spell "Dumb Criminal" without D-N-A:
CARSON CITY (Las Vegas Review-Journal) — A Reno man who voluntarily submitted DNA evidence to support his claim of innocence in a robbery case could not later prohibit the same sample from being used to convict him of a separate murder charge, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday...
Read More

Mistrial Declared In Spector Case

2007-09-27T05:58:00.000-07:00

LOS ANGELES — A judge declared a mistrial Wednesday after jurors in Phil Spector's trial said they could not reach a unanimous decision as to whether the death of an actress was murder or suicide.

The panel deadlocked 10 to 2 in favor of conviction after 12 days of deliberations that jurors described as often heated and ultimately doomed by doubts raised by the defense concerning forensic evidence and the mental history of the dead woman, Lana Clarkson.

"Some thought there was enough background to say yes, possibly she did kill herself," an electrician who voted to convict Spector said at a press conference.
Prosecutors said they will try again to convict Spector of a second-degree murder charge.

After the decision, the district attorney's office indicated it would retry Spector.
READ MORE

The Stairwell of Death

2007-09-23T21:36:00.000-07:00

Recently, we found a member of the QHST faculty looking not at all well in the stairwell. Please click on the image to view the crime-scene photos.

A few questions:

Was the vicitm right-handed or left handed?
Was there any evidence at the crime scene that was not identified and catalogued at the time?
Based on our initial investigation of the crime scene, what items would you expect to find in use at the scene of a crime like this?

A History of Violence

2007-09-21T05:50:00.000-07:00

In class on Friday morning we read details of an abusive relationship, a brutal double murder and the sad effect of forensic procedural problems. Yes, OJ Simpson is in vogue again this season.

A couple of questions we will be discussing on Friday:

What was the main reason for the jury's verdict, according to the defense team?
What significant evidence was withheld from the jury?
What significant evidence came to light after the trial, during civil procedings which led to Simpson being held liable for the deaths of Goldman and Brown?

Extensive links to the case can be found in this forensics blog entry from last year.

Pichushkin - The Bitsevsky Maniac is the Chessboard Killer

2007-09-14T21:15:00.000-07:00

Video surveillance and a victim's note lead to the capture of a Russian Serial Killer intent on breaking the record of serial killer Andrea Chikatilo, the Rostov Ripper

Check out the Crime Library

2007-09-14T21:13:00.000-07:00

The Crime Library is a rapidly growing collection of more than over 600 nonfiction feature stories on major crimes, criminals, trials, forensics and criminal profiling by prominent writers. The stories focus mostly on recent crimes, but an expanding collection also delves into historically notorious characters, dating back to the 1400s and spanning the globe.

Astro-naughty or just No-wacky?

2007-02-06T11:07:00.000-08:00

Space shuttle astronaut Lisa Marie Nowak, has allegedly gone where no astronaut has gone before: prison. The 43 year-old mother of 3 flew on a shuttle mission last summer, but her motives are in question following a bizarre incident in Orlando yesterday.

Here's a little-known astronaut secret: astronauts wear adult diapers during launch and re-entry. Nowak used that strategy to drive continuously for almost a thousand miles from Houston to Orlando to confront Air Force Captain Colleen Shipman in an underground airport parking lot.

Wearing a wig and trenchcoat (a flawless disguise for a frigid locale like Orlando - yet she's literally a rocket scientist?), Nowak attacked Shipman in her car, but couldn't get her to come out.

Besides the disguise, Nowak was carying a BB-gun, but police were more alarmed by a bag Nowak was carrying which contained a steel mallet, a 4-inch folding knife, rubber tubing, $600 and garbage bags.

Inside Nowak’s vehicle, which was parked at a nearby motel, authorities uncovered a pepper spray package, an unused BB-gun cartridge, latex gloves and e-mails between Shipman and [Navy Cmdr. William Oefelein, pilot of the Discovery for its flight last December]. They also found a letter “that indicated how much Mrs. Nowak loved Mr. Oefelein,” an opened package for a buck knife, Shipman’s home address and hand written directions to the address, the arrest affidavit said.

Nowak told police that she “only wanted to scare Shipman... " and was initially charged with attempted kidnapping, vehicle burglary with battery, destruction of evidence and battery.

Before she was released, police put two and two together and Nowak is now being held on an additional charge of attempted murder.

this really bites

2007-02-04T19:52:00.000-08:00

A recent NY Times article pointed out that dental evidence is far from the exact science that some would tell you it is.

"Fifteen years ago, Roy Brown, a hard-drinking man with a criminal record, was convicted of stabbing, beating, biting and strangling a social worker in upstate New York. The case rested largely on one piece of forensic evidence: bite marks on the victim that the prosecution’s witness, a local dentist, said matched Brown’s teeth.

On Tuesday, Brown was released from prison, after DNA testing on the saliva left by the biter proved his innocence and implicated someone else in the crime. At the time of his conviction, Brown, 46, was missing two front teeth. The bite marks, meanwhile, had six tooth imprints..." more

DNA has proven to be one of the more reliable methods of determining the validity of other physical evidence.

How Hannibal got his Groove

2006-11-23T12:37:00.000-08:00

One of the most popular fictionalized protrayals of criminal profiling was presented to the public in the form of FBI agent Clarice Starling in the Thomas Harris novel 'The Silence of the Lambs", which was made into perhaps one of the scariest films ever.

"It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again")

Clarice was great, but the public was so fascinated by the character of Dr. Hannibal Lecter that it led to a couple of sequels and now the inevitable prequel, Hannibal Rising.

The novel, by Harris, will be available on December 5th and the movie of the same name is set to be released in February. You can read or hear an excerpt from the novel at the Thomas Harris website.

A Trace of Irony?

2006-11-21T11:48:00.000-08:00

A few helpful links for your research and analysis following today's lab on Locard's Exchange Principle:
"Edmond Locard (1877-1966) was the founder and director of the Institute of criminalistics at the University of Lyons in France. He believed that whenever a criminal came into contact with his environment, a cross-transference of evidence occurred. He believed that "every criminal can be connected to a crime by dust particles carried from the scene." (Saferstein, Richard, Criminalistics, Seventh Ed., 2001)"

DOJ/FBI: Hairs, Fibers, Crime, and Evidence
Crime and Clues: The Art and Science of Criminal Investigation - Trace Evidence: Hair
Teachingtools.com: FBI TRACE EVIDENCE AND DNA ANALYSIS
General info from the Denver Museum of Science and Nature: Understanding Forensics
More links will be posted shortly

Katrina's Legal Legacy: Evidence Washed away.

2006-11-20T19:18:00.000-08:00

The NY Times today reported on what we knew was coming: as many as 500 defendants, mostly in drug, theft and assault cases, have been freed because of problems with evidence (as much as 90% of pending case evidence, it seems, had been stored in paper containers), including difficulty in finding the witnesses who have moved away, a shortage of jurors, possibly ruined DNA samples and other factors.

IF(!?!) OJ did it

2006-11-18T19:28:00.000-08:00

Newsflash: He aint gonna get the chance to tell us.

"The good news for him is that now he will have plenty of time on his hands to do what he said he was going to do years ago: spend all his energy and resources seeking out the real killer. "

Years after the "Trial of the Century", OJ Simpson has come clean.

Sort of.

In a new book and upcoming TV Interview by "If I did it" Publisher Judith Regan (set to air Nov 27 & 29on Fox, the model of tasteful, quality programming), The Juice tells us exactly how he did it, if he had done it, which he says he didn't.

Uh-huh.

Since Simpson was aquitted of the murder (though found responsible in the civil case), he cannot be tried on the murder charge in the state of California. We're hoping that a Federal prosecutor out there is watching, and perhaps he can be prosecuted in the same manner as the murderers of Civil Rights workers were prosecuted years after the events on Federal Civil Rights charges.

Would it surpise you to know that this is actually OJ's SECOND book about the crime? In February of 1995, in the middle of his trial, OJ published "I Want to Tell You". An Amazon.com review of the book puts it best:
"The killer tells us about his glory days as a football player and his "wonderful" life with poor Nicole, conveniently omitting his no contest plea to spousal abuse and eschewing references to the 8 times Nicole called the police to settle their domestic disputes. But the most glaring omission in this trashy, exploitive book is a confession"
and now we have that part too.

Helpful links:

OJTrial.com

Famous Trials: OJ Simpson

Wikipedia entry on the trial

Court TV

Goldman wants to own OJ's face

Celebrity Mugshots

OJ Find Real Killer (theOnion.com)

The OJ Trial if written by Suess

Blood! So Much BLOOD!

2006-11-18T14:39:00.000-08:00

A couple of helpful links for blood evidence analysis:

Murder by the Book

2006-11-18T14:31:00.000-08:00

Following up on our viewing of the James Ellroy episode in class, the Murder by the Book Series on Court TV continues over the next few weeks with:

In case you missed it, here's the class assignment:

(1) Write a short summary of the Elizabeth Short Case (see the Black Dahlia entry on this blog)
(2) Compare the Short murder to that of Geneva Helliker Ellroy in terms of forensics
(3) Based on the various aspects of modern forensics we have studied and discussed in class, do you think the Ellroy murder case could be solved it it were committed today? Why or why not? What modern techniques and resources would help the investigation?

DNA can convict... and unconvict

2006-10-14T11:45:00.000-07:00

DNA evidence can seemingly make a case a done-deal, however it can just as convincingly exonerate a wrongly-convicted person.

There are several high-profile organizations that seek to right these wrongs, among them exonerated.org, the Innocence Project and The Justice Project

This morning, during a captious televised debate between Andrew Cuomo and Jeanine Pirro, candidates for NY State Attorney General, the case of Jeffrey Deskovic became an issue, Deskovic, convicted in the 1991 rape & murder of Angela Correa, then a high school classmate of Deskovic. Recent DNA testing linked the crime to another man, who is currently serving a life term for murder and who has now confessed to killing Correa.

During this morning's debate, the focus turned towards whether Pirro, the Westchester Attorney General, had ignored Deskovic's pleas for a review of DNA evidence, since he was initially convicted based solely on testimonial evidence.

Deskovic was convicted based almost entirely on a "confession" that he gave after spending approximately nine hours in police custody without his parents or attorneys and without access to food. During that time, he was taken to Putnam County and held in a small room for at least six hours for a polygraph exam. At the end of the interrogation/exam, he was curled up under a desk in the fetal position, sobbing. Police had initially focused on Deskovic, a sophomore in high school at the time, because he seemed fascinated with the details of the case and offered to help them investigate it.

Mr. Deskovic was freed from jail last month.

Forensic Skills Seek to Uncover Elder Abuse

2006-09-27T19:19:00.000-07:00

From Today's NY Times:
Forensic Skills Seek to Uncover Elder Abuse
By Jane Gross Published: September 27, 2006

SANTA ANA, Calif. — The elderly man in the emergency room was covered with bruises, some purple and others fading to yellow. Despite signs of dementia, he told the same story over and over: His wife’s burly home health aide had beaten him. But the health aide and the wife insisted he had fallen. Now it was up to the members of Orange County’s Elder Abuse Forensic Center to decide which story was true.

Read Entire article
(free registration may be required to read NY Times articles on-line)

The REAL Case of the Black Dahlia

2006-09-19T21:15:00.000-07:00

The Black Dahlia is the story of aspiring actress Elizabeth Short, whose body was found on January 15, 1947.

"When it comes to the study of murder cases, nothing tops the case of the Black Dahlia. It has stumped thriller writers and readers for more than half a century, and will continue to do so."

What, exactly, can be evidence?

2006-09-12T22:09:00.000-07:00

The forensic investigator has a big burden, as Evidence constitutes the most important factor to determining a just verdict, and the time may come when attorneys will pore over every detail of how evidence was collected and handled. The chain of evidence or custody chain is important to maintain, and even the smallest gap in that chain is like the grand canyon when the time comes to present it in court.

The chain of evidence is vital in forensics, and it is maintained no matter what branch of forensics is involved. Even veterinarians can be forensic scientists.

Evidence can take many forms, fingerprints, blood and carpet fibers are great, but in the past few years, forensics has gone into the cyber world, and a whole new definition had to be worked out to establish a chain of evidence.

However sometimes even the most confusing evidence can be clarified with a simple search of the internet. Even things like this

Not-so-perfect physical evidence?

2006-09-10T19:05:00.000-07:00

No two people have the same fingerprints, right?
Maybe not.

Two years ago, in the aftermath of the Madrid Train Bombing, a Portland, Oregon attorney was arrested based on an alleged match between his fingerprints and prints found on a bag of detonators used in the attack. They were wrong.

Autopsy of a Murder

2006-09-02T19:28:00.000-07:00

What is all this forensics stuff about? Check out Autopsy of a Murder, an interactive presentation on forensic sciences and techniques, produced by the Montreal Science Centre.

JonBenet Ramsey, DNA, Procedurals & the OJ Blunder

2006-08-23T18:23:00.000-07:00

Obviously, the biggest thing in the news for August is the arrest of a suspect in the ten year-old murder of JonBenet Ramsey. I may be proven wrong, but so far, the confession of this nut-job alone doesn't seem to cut it, even though certain news media outlets have decided that it is quite simply the most important thing going on in the world right now.

Ten years after the event, a confession alone simply won't be enough.

What would be the conclusive evidence?

Can there be conclusive evidence?

The big indicator is going to be the much ballyhooed DNA match. The popular "procedural" TV crime dramas all place so much emphasis on a speedy and accurate DNA result, but in reality, it doesn't work that way. In fact, as we learned in the biggest criminal case of the 90's, conclusive evidence can be completely useless if proper procedures are not followed.

What will the outcome of the Ramsey case be? Stay tuned.

Digging up the Dirt

2006-08-17T13:35:00.000-07:00

Some useful links:

Science Daily: Forensics

Court TV's Forensics in the Classroom

Forensics Files (Court TV Show)

Forensics in School Resources

NSTA Forensics article (pdf file)

Science News: Forensics on Trial - Chemical matching of bullets comes under fire

Scientific American: SCI: The reality