Forensic Anthropology

So, you've come to this page because you're studying at York, and you're interested in a career in forensic anthropology, right?

You're not alone. Many students come to talk to me about this. I welcome that, but I like to encourage people to think quite deeply about this. (Perhaps a little more deeply that other career choices.)

First of all, I'd like you to remember that being generally interested in a subject doesn't necessarily mean that you really want to have a career in that area. (e.g. I like reading about advances in genetics research, but that doesn't mean I actually want to work in a genetics lab... or that I'd be good at it. Similarly, I might like reading about expeditions to the Antarctic, but that doesn't necessarily mean I'd really like living down there.) So even if you really enjoy watching CSI or reading popular books about forensic anthropology or detective work, you might not like actually doing the work itself.

1) Why are you interested in forensic anthropology? Really think hard about this. What do you know about it? Why does it appeal to you?

2) Are you very very interested in human biology, and is it a subject you do well in?

4) Are you willing to spend around 8 years doing additional degrees and training after you finish your undergraduate degree? (Bear in mind that this is often expensive, can be lonely, may require living in cities that you might not like all that much, and can certainly interfere with plans to have a home and family.)

If you're not sure about #1, and if your answers to #2, #3, or #4 are not "Yes"... then this may not be the field for you. But you can still enjoy reading about it and learning about it. And maybe if you think about your answer to #1 -- what really interests you about it? -- you can find an idea that will set you off down another career path. So for example...

... if you're attracted to the idea of contributing to justice or helping people, maybe you'd be interested in an area of police work, or law, or in social work, or working in an agency devoted to helping people.

...if you're interested in large-scale justice -- e.g. in cases of war crimes, human rights abuses, or genocide -- then you might consider studying how to prevent such catastrophes, and working in the field of conflict resolution. The world certainly needs more peace!

...if you're attracted to the idea of using logic to solve puzzles, maybe you'd be interested in another area of science, maybe biological science or another area like computers.

...if you're interested by human biology or the skeleton in particular, perhaps you'd be interested in an area of medicine, kinesiology, or complementary fields like chiropractic or massage therapy.

... if you're interested by the notion of lab work, there are certainly lots of possibilities there.

...if you really like the way the stories unfold, maybe at heart you want to be a writer of detective fiction.

I have taught basic forensic anthropology to students with each of these real interests. (And there are also some people who are just really interested in the study of death, who might like to work in the funeral business.)

Does that mean that you shouldn't look into taking a course in forensic anthropology? Of course not -- it can be interesting to study, whether you would like to have a career in it or not. And you do have some interesting options for learning just a bit more. See Single Courses, below.

If you think you have some clear and positive answers for questions 1-4 above, then it might be worth talking some more about what forensic anthropology involves. I have more questions and suggestions for you. Do feel free to come and see me during my office hours. And see Degrees, below.

Single Courses: As of autumn 2005, you can get an undergraduate level introduction to the field at Ryerson University (see here), and at George Brown College (see here), and at McMaster University (see 2FA3 and 2FF3 here and here). There's also an introduction available via U of T Continuing Education (see here and here) . [And if you're lucky enough to be in grades 9-12, you can go to DNA Forensics Camp at Trent!]

Books: There are lots here: http://www.forensicanthro.com/forensic-books/ For good, reasonably brief introductions to forensic anthropology, I recommend Flesh and Bone by Myriam Nafte and the Forensic Anthropology Training Manual by Karen Ramey Burns. In the realm of popular nonfiction, you might look for William Maples or Stanley Rhine. For fiction, there's Kathy Reichs.

Forensic science gains cachet

For more than a decade, when a skeleton or partly decomposed body was found in Ontario, Jerry Melbye was the man police forces turned to. He was the bone collector, the forensic anthropologist who could look at human remains and tell investigators the age, sex, race, height and sometimes the probable cause of death. Since 1990, he was called in on about 100 cases by his own count.

"As a scientist, I am on the side of the victim," he says, describing how his primary goal was to identify the person through the process of biological examination. "It greatly narrows the field. What we want to find out is if a crime has occurred and if there is a chance the perpetrator is still alive."

The downside is you cannot make a living in Canada in the ultraspecialized field of forensic anthropology, he adds.

"There just aren't enough homicides," says Dr. Melbye, now retired after 30 years as a University of Toronto professor.

While television programs such as CSI and Exhibit A and books by Michael Ondaatje and forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs have created interest in forensic anthropology and forensic sciences in general, the plain truth is that in Canada the opportunities, while growing, are still limited. What's more, the life of a forensic scientist bears little resemblance to television counterparts.

"The interest has been created by media hype," says Myriam Nafte, who now teaches a forensic anthropology course at Ryerson University in Toronto and previously did the same for eight years across town at George Brown College. "There is really little demand for your skills as a forensic anthropologist, for example, except in academic circles."

But unlike the anthropological branch, there is a growing demand for forensic scientists at the more grassroots level of crime-scene investigation and laboratory work at police forces across the country and the nation's eight centres for forensic science.

"We have hired quite a number of scientists and technologists in the past few years just to keep pace with demand," says Ray Prime, director of Ontario's Centre for Forensic Studies in Toronto, the largest of its kind in Canada. The centre does scientific testing and examination to establish cause of death or to prepare evidence for the courts. As he explains it, "The police collect the evidence and we do the science."

With laboratories in Toronto and Sault St. Marie, the centre currently employs 255 staff and handles all criminal work in the province -- about 8,000 cases a year. The work ranges from DNA testing, through document analysis to toxicology and firearms. There is even a new electronic documents section. Quebec has its own centre. All other provinces are served by six regional centres operated by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Minimum qualification for a scientist is a bachelor's degree and while many forensic technologists are drawn from diploma programs at community colleges, increasingly they too have a bachelor's or master's degree.

While the top rate for scientists is only about $70,000, the lure of a career as a modern Sherlock Holmes is so great that the centre regularly draws between 300 and 500 applicants for each advertised position, says Dr. Prime.

"It is very satisfying work," he says. "Most positions involve a combination of bench work, desk work, site visits and court testimony. You get a real sense of accomplishment."

While the staff at the centres for forensic science deal with crime once removed, members of the police forensic identification services practise their profession at the heart of the action: the crime scene. Again university science graduates are increasingly in demand, says Detective Constable David Wieland, a member of the 113-member Forensic Identification Services unit of the Toronto Police Services. A career path can take one of two directions: civilian employee or uniformed officer.

"Jobs go first to uniformed officers and then, if we can't find one who is qualified and interested, we hire civilians," Det. Constable Wieland explains. The Forensic ID unit is split into two main divisions: crime scene investigators who are all police officers, and forensic technicians who can be civilians. The investigators not only supervise the evidence collection and work with the investigative team, but also attend post mortems, the often grisly process of establishing cause of death. The technicians focus on the nuts and bolts of evidence like fingerprints, creating plans and drawings of crime scenes, creating pictures of perpetrators from witness accounts and firearms analysis.

While the pay range for civilian staff runs from about $25,000 to $45,000, police officers can earn up to $80,000 or $90,000 including overtime. A veteran constable's base pay is in the $63,000 to $65,000 range, including a plainclothes supplement.

The main talent source for both police forces and the various centres for forensic sciences for the past 11 years has been the University of Toronto at Mississauga. In 1992, UTM in partnership with the Centre for Forensic Studies and the province's Chief Coroner's office launched a combined Bachelor of Science degree course. It confers a degree in forensic science plus one other specialty like biology, anthropology, chemistry and most recently computer science. Students can apply for one of the 35 seats after completing first year in another program. Laurentian College in Sudbury also offers a similar forensic studies undergraduate program.

"There is a huge demand for spots," says Dr. Raymond Cummins, director of the UTM forensic sciences program. "I get thousands of e-mails a year from people. They all want to be CSIs."

Successful graduates may not get the romantic life of a TV crime scene investigator, but they do find rewarding work in both crime labs and police forces, he says. Police forces, in fact, have begun to move away from the traditional demand for six or seven years as a uniformed officer before offering slots in a forensic unit.

As for the would-be forensic anthropologist, there is, sadly, a field of growing demand, says Dr. Shelley Saunders, Canada Research Chair and professor at McMaster University in Hamilton.

"The growth area is with international agencies working in places like Kosovo, East Timor, Rwanda and Argentina," she says. As with Mr. Ondaatje's heroine in Anil's Ghost, the job involves identifying victims of political atrocities, often buried in mass graves. As political terror rises, so does the need for forensic anthropologists to put a name to the victim.

There is a downside though. "That downside is traumatic stress disorder. Everyone I know who got involved now suffers from it."

A few months ago, a crime scene investigator from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department was dusting for fingerprints at the scene of a residential burglary. The victim of the crime was not impressed, however. "That's not the way they do it on television," she told the investigator.

Capt. Chris Beattie, who heads the L.A. County's Scientific Services Bureau—or "the crime lab"—calls it the "CSI effect." The popularity of television shows like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and Forensic Files, he says, has turned millions of viewers into real-life science sleuths.

The phenomenon has reached into both classrooms and courtrooms. Universities have seen a dramatic increase in applications to forensic science programs. Prosecutors, meanwhile, are facing greater pressure from science-savvy juries to present sophisticated forensic evidence in court.

"It's a double-edged sword," said Beattie, a bald man with steel-rimmed glasses who has been with the Sheriff's Department for 32 years. "We have a larger pool of qualified people to do the job. But it's also created unreasonable expectations that we can solve every crime the way they do on CSI."

From O.J. to CSI

The public's fascination with crime on television is hardly new. Classic detective shows like Colombo and Murder, She Wrote often used forensic evidence in story lines. But the new crop of shows has focused attention on the use of science in solving crimes.

On CBS's CSI—and its spin-off series CSI: Miami and CSI: NY—sharp-minded investigators, armed with high-powered forensic gadgetry, descend on crime scenes to study the evidence. Much of the action takes place in a laboratory.

"In the old shows, no one could figure out how to make the analysis of evidence interesting," said Elizabeth Devine, a supervising producer on CSI: Miami, who worked for 15 years as a forensic-scientist at the L.A. sheriff's office.

"What we did was slow things down to say, 'This is cool stuff,'" she said. "We wanted people to look through the microscope to show them what forensic scientists are looking at. This is the heart and soul of a lot of investigations."

Movies like Silence of the Lambs and Kiss the Girls, as well as real-life trials—from the O.J. Simpson case to the current Scott Peterson trial—have also drawn scores of new students to the forensic-science field.

There are now at least 90 forensic-science programs at universities across the United States. Last year 180 people applied for 20 spots in the forensic-science master's program at Michigan State University in East Lansing.

Jay Siegel used to run the Michigan State program and now heads a new undergraduate forensic-science program at Indiana-Purdue University in Indianapolis. He says the field is so competitive that it attracts the very brightest students, though many come with unreasonable expectations.

"A lot of them have watched CSI and say, 'That's what I want to do, go to crime scenes and collect evidence, analyze it, and confront [the criminals] and testify in court,'" Siegel said. "But no one does all of those things in real life, so people have to be disabused of these expectations."

While the cool technology in the CSI crime lab sometimes seems lifted out of Star Trek, real-world experts say the equipment used on the shows is firmly rooted in reality.

"The gadgetry that you see on TV is very close to what we have in real life," said Dean Gialamas, the director of the forensics laboratory at the Orange County Sheriff-Coroner Department in Santa Ana, California. "The major difference is the application of some of that technology."

For example, on CSI, a computer automatically matches fingerprints to those in its database. But in real life, scientists must perform such detailed work. And while DNA testing on the show is instant, in real life it takes at least a week.

There have been some obvious errors. In one episode during the first CSI season, scientists put a casting material into a stab wound and let it harden. When they pulled it out, the cast was in the shape of a knife.

Real-life investigations, of course, take a lot longer than they do on television.

"We don't show any of the immense amount of documentation that has to be done in the field," said Devine, the CSI producer. "Nobody wants to see someone sitting at their desk taking notes."

Real-life forensic scientists are also often too busy to focus on a single case.

Take, for example, the L.A. County Sheriff's Office, the largest sheriff's office in the United States. It handles more than 50,000 cases involving forensic evidence per year. A crime lab in Downey, south of Los Angeles, handles about 70 percent of the cases—those involving narcotics and alcohol.

The rest of the cases, including major crimes such as homicide and rape, are handled in a nondescript building on the edge of downtown Los Angeles. Here, scientists analyze a wide array of forensic evidence, from firearms and explosives to fingerprints, hair, and fiber.

The workload is so severe that forensic scientists may work two dozen cases at the same time, though there are exceptions. Two scientists spent two years solely on the case of Richard Ramirez, also known as the Nightstalker, a serial killer who stabbed, shot, raped, and tortured dozens of victims in southern California in the mid-1980s.

But improved technology, such as DNA testing and advanced databases, has helped scientists in their crime-solving quest. Forensic experts from the L.A. County Sheriff's Office recently solved a 20-year-old homicide by identifying the DNA in a piece of hair.

"Strong technical competency, first of all," said Harley Sagara, an assistant director at the L.A. County crime lab. "But [he or she] should also be open-minded and have the ability to analyze the big picture and test an hypothesis."

Forensic scientists must also be able to explain their science. Sagara, who has more than 30 years of field experience, says he has given 300 to 400 court testimonies. Others have testified more than a thousand times.

The field is still dominated by men, who run 75 percent of U.S. crime labs. But that may be changing. The vast majority of students applying to university forensic-science programs are now women.

Devine, the CSI producer, says she would recommend the forensic-science field to anyone.

"I loved the crime scenes, I loved the challenge, and I loved the puzzle," she said. "It's a fantastic job."