Dead Reckoning - The Art of Forensic Detection (gnv64)

Dead Reckoning - The Art of Forensic Detection
by Jon J. Nordby, Ph.D.
CRC | ISBN: 0849381223 | 1999 | PDF | 284 pages | 10,2 mb

Her Brentwood home became a hotbed for homicide. But in the wake of intense public and media attention, one saliant and hard truth was often overlooked: the murder of Nicole Brown-Simpson, while brutal and heinous in its form, was just one of thousands of homicides committed during that same year. Most escaped the scrutiny of public interest. Many never made it to trial, and still others were dismissed as natural deaths-perfect crimes that remain forever unsolved. How, then, do investigators solve a murder when the trail goes cold?Like mariners navigating without landmarks under a starless night sky-lacking a reliable witness or smoking gun-they plot their course through the clues by applying their own style of Dead Reckoning, reconstructing the crime by disciplined observation, careful reasoning, and experience.Dead Reckoning: The Art of Forensic Detection examines the applications of logic and science to decipher chaotic death scenes and difficult cases, and to derive orderly explanations from their jumbled clues. The 10 case studies in this book illustrate the powers of observation exercised in reading the signs, identifying them as clues, and reasoning from them to the best explanation.For investigators, as well as forensic pathologists, coroners, prosecutors, and defense attorneys, Dead Reckoning: The Art of Forensic Detection stresses the importance of trusting your own observations even in the wake of contradictory evidence

Introduction
About the Author
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1 Method—The Andrews Case
Reasoning Backward Analytically
Chapter 2 Signs—The Duffy Case
Reading Signs
Chapter 3 Chance—The Davenport Case
Probability and Serendipity
Chapter 4 Elimination—The Homberg Case
Inductivism, Best Explanations, and Testing Alternatives
Chapter 5 Explanation—The Majcher Case
Natural Signs and Statistical Inferences
Chapter 6 Diagnosis—The Ridgeley Case
Natural Signs and Logics of Discovery
Chapter 7 Confirmation—The Selsner-Martin Case
Logical Testing
Chapter 8 Proof—The Melrow Case
Causal Explanation and Formal Deduction
Chapter 9 Error—The Baby Belden Case
Fallacious Appeals to Medical Authority
Chapter 10 Disagreement—The Darcy Case: An Open Verdict
Opinion, Uncertainty, and Conflicting Conclusions
Annotated Bibliography