Distinguishing between science and pseudoscience in forensic acoustics

The purpose of this paper is to preliminarily present the status of the paradigm shift or new paradigm in forensic voice comparison in Peru. First, the ambiguous terminology (such as forensic acoustics, voice identification or forensic phonoaudiology as forensic voice comparison) used to avoid its inappropriate use in academic and judicial situations is reviewed. Second, forensic phonetics and its areas of practice are presented in general terms. Third, the methodological approaches in voice comparison and the way of expressing the results are presented and it is explained why the forensic expert in voice comparison should opt for the analysis and results through the likelihood ratio. Fourth, the basis of the paradigm shift and its influence on forensic voice comparison is discussed in depth. Fifth, the current state of research in forensic voice comparison in Peru is presented. As a result of this research, it can be argued that the current studies demonstrate a transition towards a paradigm shift, especially through the use of automated programs.

Refining the relevant population in forensic voice comparison – A response to Hicks et alii (2015) The importance of distinguishing information from evidence/observations when formulating propositions

The development of forensic DNA analysis: New debates on the issue of fundamental human rights

Mismatched conditions between the recordings of suspect, offender and relevant background population represent a typical scenario in real forensic casework. In this paper, we investigate the impact of mismatch conditions associated with mobile phone speech recordings on forensic voice comparison (FVC). The two major mobile phone technologies currently in use today are the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) and Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA). These are fundamentally different in the way in which they handle the speech signal, which in turn will lead to significant mismatch between speech recordings. Our results suggest that the resulting degradation on the accuracy of a FVC analysis can be very significant (as high as 150%). Surprisingly, though, our results also suggest that the reliability of a FVC analysis may actually improve. We propose a strategy for lessening this impact by passing the suspect speech data through the GSM or CDMA codecs, depending on the network origin of the offender data, prior to the FVC analysis. Though this goes a long way to mitigating the impact (a reduction in loss of accuracy from 150% to 80%), it is still not as good as analysis under matched conditions.

Multi-laboratory evaluation of forensic voice comparison systems under conditions reflecting those of a real forensic case (forensic_eval_01) – Introduction

Forensic voice comparison (FVC) is gaining global recognition as a scientific method for speaker identification in legal proceedings. In Indonesia, however, the application of FVC remains underdeveloped, despite increasing reliance on digital and audio based evidence in criminal cases. This study presents a legally and methodologically robust framework for implementing FVC within the Indonesian judicial context. The research integrates Indonesian legal standards (KUHAP Articles 183–184, UU ITE) with international forensic protocols, including ISO/IEC 27037 for digital evidence handling. A combination of acoustic features MFCCs, F0, formants, and VTLN was extracted from disputed and reference voice samples. Likelihood ratios (LRs) were calculated using Gaussian Mixture Models, with score calibration via logistic regression. Results showed mean log LR values of 2.1 for genuine trials and –1.8 for impostor trials, with an ROC AUC of 0.91. Visual tools, including Tippett plots and ROC curves, were used to interpret and communicate evidence reliability. The findings confirm that calibrated, probabilistic FVC methods are feasible and legally admissible in Indonesia. However, challenges remain in handling low quality recordings, maintaining chain of custody, and bridging communication gaps between scientific experts and legal practitioners. The study recommends structured training, standardized protocols, and the use of visual aids to enhance evidentiary transparency. This framework lays the foundation for a scalable, court ready FVC system aligned with national law and global best practices. It supports interdisciplinary cooperation aimed at strengthening Indonesia’s forensic infrastructure.

Use of relevant data, quantitative measurements, and statistical models to calculate a likelihood ratio for a Chinese forensic voice comparison case involving two sisters

As a result of the popularity of smart mobile devices and the low cost of surveillance systems, visual data are increasingly being used in digital forensic investigation. Digital videos have been widely used as key evidence sources in evidence identification, analysis, presentation, and report. The main goal of this paper is to develop advanced forensic video analysis techniques to assist the forensic investigation. We first propose a forensic video analysis framework that employs an efficient video/image enhancing algorithm for the low quality of footage analysis. An adaptive video enhancement algorithm based on contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization (CLAHE) is introduced to improve the closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage quality for the use of digital forensic investigation. To assist the video-based forensic analysis, a deep-learning-based object detection and tracking algorithm are proposed that can detect and identify potential suspects and tools from footages.

As part of the Expert Evidence series this chapter is intended to be accessible to lawyers, judges, police officers, and potential jury members; however, it is hoped that this chapter will also be of interest to forensic scientists, phoneticians / speech scientists, speech-processing engineers, and students of all these disciplines. It introduces forensic speech science in a relatively non-technical way, assuming a reader who has no prior knowledge of the subject. The 2010 edition had a heavy focus on acoustic-phonetic statistical approaches to forensic voice comparison. The 2018 edition has a heavier focus on automatic approaches. The 2018 edition includes examples of forensic voice comparison based on real cases. The 2018 edition also includes expended coverage of other branches of forensic speech science. Topics covered include: The likelihood ratio framework for the evaluation of forensic evidence. Approaches to forensic voice comparison. Assessing the validity and reliability of forensic-comparison systems. Speaker identification by laypeople. Disputed utterance analysis.

The background of this research stems from the need for an in-depth understanding of suicide notes, where language is used as evidence in a legal context. Utilization of a forensic stylistics analysis technique is crucial in the assessment of written texts in criminal investigations, with the objective of revealing indications of deception, narrative coherence, and implicit connotations within the text. This research aims to uncover the hidden meanings contained in the language used in suicide note writing. This study employed a descriptive qualitative research methodology to examine suicide notes obtained from the IndiaToday news website using a Google search. The method of data collection entails obtaining, reading, comprehending, and analyzing the suicide notes as major sources of evidence. The results of this study indicated the importance of understanding suicide communication from a pragmatic point of view and that social and psychological elements should be considered in dealing with suffering. With this research, it can be proven that language as evidence can have a major influence on the investigation process; it can show the audience that the words are not just words but words that have the meaning implied in the word.

In recent years, extreme monsoon events and devastating earthquakes have caused serious damage to infrastructure, including bridges.Failures of bridges not only result in threats to vehicles and people traveling on them at the time of the failure but also interrupt emergency evacuation and rescue traffic, increasing the severity of the disaster and adding to casualties and economic loss.Often, awareness of the need for design or retrofit code revisions is raised immediately following extreme hazard events.Bridges that fail during extreme natural hazards usually have complicated failure causes, including environmental system collapses and massive structural malfunctions.Forensic investigations and performance analyses for bridges suffering such natural hazard events can be more challenging than those for bridges that fail in general service condition.General investigation guidelines or specific observational methods for such forensic investigations are not an easy task.Thus, actual performance of bridges under critical natural hazards is of great interest to practicing engineers and researchers.This special section of the Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities (JPCF) was proposed in an effort to introduce the current state-of-the-art for forensic investigations of bridge failures in recent extreme natural hazard events and to provide insights of performance analysis for the behavior of bridges under such extreme natural hazards.Fortunately, we were able to invite professional experts who had personally been involved in forensic investigation, failure analysis, and performance monitoring during recent extreme natural hazards including the 2011 Turkey Van Earthquake, the 2010-2011 New Zealand Christchurch Earthquakes, the 2011 Japan Tohoku Earthquake, the 2005 Hurricane Katrina in the United States, and the 2009 Typhoon Morakot that overran Taiwan.Case histories and performance data presented in these invited papers are invaluable to practicing engineers and researchers.This special section includes case histories of bridge performance involving more than 20 bridges suffering from a variety of natural hazards such as strong ground motions, soil liquefaction, tsunami, storm surge, extreme winds, scour, and debris impact.Whether the bridge was damaged, failed, or luckily survived, such performance information and analysis results are instrumental to bridge design and retrofit against critical natural hazards, including great earthquakes and massive storms.Results of the forensic investigations and analyses have deterministic influences on upgrading guidelines of risk assessment, hazard mitigation, structural design, and retrofit.Invited papers within this special section are generally divided into two major categories: bridge performance under seismic hazards and under storm hazards.The reported seismic hazards include strong ground motion in a recent Turkish earthquake and the Japan Tohoku Earthquake that caused severe damage to both highway and railroad bridges.These bridges were in locations that

This article examines the effectiveness of artificial neural networks (ANNs) as forensic voice comparison techniques. This study specifically considers feed-forward multilayer perceptron (MLP) and radial basic function (RBF) network models. Formant frequencies of Polish vowel e (stressed or unstressed) in selected contexts were used as predictors. This has already been confirmed in an earlier investigation that determined that dynamic formant frequencies of vowels are powerful elements in distinguishing the voice. It has been concluded that neural networks might assist in distinguishing speakers from the others with very good accuracy, reaching 100%. MLP models should be given preference. The results of the investigation have shown the influence of vowel e triads on the effectiveness of correct classification rates. In addition, the authors have determined that the accuracy of classification is greater when based on a single context than for similar input data aggregated over several different contexts.

Forensic phonetic features have been being the most commonly used features in forensic voice comparison technology, and few dispute that they are dramatically affected by real-world conditions, which leads to within-speaker variations and consequently reduces the reliability of forensic voice comparison results as evidence. In this study two experiments are designed and the conversations recorded in pure real-world conditions are adopted as experiment materials to respectively demonstrate the effects of real-world conditions on quantitative phonetic feature of formant trajectory and qualitative phonetic feature of formants pattern that have been tested valid in researches or practice. The results of experiments vividly display that pure real-world conditions do reduce both the amount and quality of available quantitative and qualitative phonetic features, which consequently makes forensic voice comparison impossible or forensic voice comparison results less valid and reliable.

Paper #1 Surface Degradation Linked to Actuator Pin Fracture in Magnetically Controlled Growth Rods (MCGRs)?

Background:In recent years, the techniques used to identify human remains post accidents, trauma or in case of criminal investigation have been expanded, improved and rendered more complex by the emergence of technologies based on deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) analysis. In the head and neck area, tooth has been proven to be the best quantitative source for DNA but in certain cases where the mandible specimen is edentulous or the tooth is extensively destroyed with caries, large dental restorations, mobile, or if they show any perimortem or postmortem fractures, sampling of such tooth specimen is usually avoided. In such situations, bone is considered the next best site for DNA analysis. Mandible being the largest, strongest and dense cortical bone is the most prominent facial bone that can be easily disarticulated. It can be analyzed for the best short tandem repeat (STR) segment qualitative amplification using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique for forensic analysis which can be used for gender and age determination.Aim:The aim of this study is to determine the best site for optimum quantitative and qualitative yield of DNA for amplification using specific and standard STR segment by conventional PCR technique.Methodology:Fifteen mandibular samples exposed to different environmental conditions were collected. Bone pieces of 1 cm × 1 cm were cut from each mandible from three sites, i.e., the ramus, angle and body, wherein the genomic DNA was isolated and was subjected to PCR using restricted number of 25 cycles.Results:The STR segment D3S1358 from clone RP11-438F9 used for the study showed very good amplification in restricted number of PCR cycles in the ramus region with number of repeats in every 15th genomic region.Conclusion:This study highlights the use of mandibular bone for the expeditive human identification. As per the study, the ramus of the mandible gave high quantitative and qualitative yield of DNA with thick amplification band of the STR segment as compared to the body and angle of the mandible. Thus ramus of the mandible can be preferred over other sites for molecular forensic investigations.