Talk:Forensic science

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Seemingly contradictory redirect

Searching for "criminalistics" redirects to this page, but the very first sentence says "Forensic science, often confused with criminalistics." It seems to me that either the redirect is inappropriate, or the first sentence is wrong. 38.100.19.66 (talk)

Note the first citation, the Criminalistics entry from World of Forensic Science. See also the second, Criminology Vs. Criminalistics: What's the Difference?. Mcljlm (talk) 18:17, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

I agree it's a little confusing, and the encyclopedia.com entry is poorly written. But I guess the introduction serves to express the fact that some people might assume that criminalistics (identifying and collecting evidence at crime scenes) is all there is to forensic science, when in fact it's a much broader field. Omzrs (talk) 06:47, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Legal Research

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Fire science

This article badly needs the addition of information on the revolution in fire investigation techniques occasioned by the application of the scientific method to undermine previously accepted methods used to prove or disprove a hypothesis of arson, beginning in around 1989 and evidenced in succeeding iterations of NFPA 921. PDGPA (talk) 04:17, 2 February 2025 (UTC)

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Strange line discussing whether "darker skin extends a protective element" against injuries

I'm not an expert, but this one sentence in #Controversies stood out as strange to me.

"Many studies have discovered a difference in rape-related injuries reporting based on race, with white victims reporting a higher frequency of injuries than black victims. However, since current forensic examination techniques may not be sensitive to all injuries across a range of skin colors, more research needs to be conducted to understand if this trend is due to skin confounding healthcare providers when examining injuries or if darker skin extends a protective element [emphasis mine]." To me this sounds like the racist notion that black people have "thicker skin" and feel less pain than their white counterparts.

The cited study included the line However, until further research is done, clinicians need to recognize that the differences in injury prevalence and frequency at these locations may be due to a protective nature of dark skin. as well as the less definitive This finding suggests ... light skin and dark skin have different protective properties. Because the line is essentially supported by the study, I don't know what action to take on the main article. I also may be wrong, but it definitely feels sort of pseudoscientific as it's written now. ‍ –‍ Kilvin77 • 👾  22:31, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

Adding that this article has a conclusion (last line of the abstract) that IMO makes more sense: Sexual assault forensic examiners, therefore, may not be able to detect injury in women with dark skin as readily as women with light skin, leading to health disparities for women with dark skin. This seems like the no-brainer conclusion to reach, certainly the more plausible one if one is at the point of speculating about an inherent "protective" quality of darker skin.

If darker skin did indeed have some "protective quality" with respect to injuries, we would expect to see this with varied injuries and circumstances. Instead, it is primarily in this study focusing on anogenital injury resulting from consensual and non-consensual sexual intercourse that we see these differences.

In fact, outside of the above linked article with a conclusion specific to sexual assault forensic examiners, we also see a similar pattern for other injuries/circumstances. For example, "pressure injuries":

• Black J et al. Current perspectives on pressure injuries in persons with dark skin tones from the National Pressure Injury Advisory Panel
• Insights on pressure injuries in diverse skin tones (Not a published article but interview featuring two medical professionals, includes discussion of findings from the above article)

So the current staging and identification system does not adequately address the diversity of skin tones and color, particularly in people with dark skin. For instance, a stage one pressure injury is typically defined and described as a nonblanchable area of redness, typically over a bony prominence. While a deep tissue injury on the other hand is described as an area of dark discoloration, again, over a bony prominence. Well, that's much easier to identify in someone with lighter skin, whereas in a person with a darker skin tone, those changes will be more difficult to identify and describe because the skin is already dark. So no wonder we have extensive clinical data that shows that people with darker skin tones have more advanced pressure injuries. They have rates of pressure injuries that are multiple times higher, especially in the advanced stages, compared to people with lighter skin.

There are articles like this one "Archive: Darker Skin is Stronger Skin, Says New View of Human Skin Color" which make vague claims about the strength of the skin barrier that could maybe be extrapolated to claims about injuries... but this falls apart when consulting the actual study the article was based on which, published in the American Journal of Biological Anthropology, is much more about the evolutionary reasons behind changes in human skin pigmentation.

I'm quite baffled as to why the Baker et al. source cited in the article states that "clinicians need to recognize" the possibility that "differences in injury prevalence and frequency" are due to protection conferred by darker skin when it would be more consistent with other studies for it to be an issue of the detection abilities of healthcare providers.

The study does acknowledge this by saying: "One possible explanation ... is an intrinsic difference in the skin of women of different races or different skin colors that puts some women at a greater risk for sustaining injuries. An alternative explanation is that the methods used to detect injury are less sensitive to visualize anogenital injury in victims with darker skin." Ultimately this needs to be better represented in the WP article. ‍ –‍ Kilvin77 • 👾  02:29, 17 May 2026 (UTC)