I posted the following in reply to an odontologist calling for us not to abandon bitemark analysis because it is "uiseful evidence"...

    All that needs to be done is a bona fide scientific study that shows bitemark analysis is valid and reliable. That's all. Just that. But no one has been able to do that so far.

   And "easier to destroy than to build..." Bitemark analysis has been built up for years and yet has destroyed numerous lives by wrongful conviction, do those lives not matter? Further, be honest, the ultimate aim of a bitemark analysis is always to try to figure out who made the bitemark...and we simply cannot do that very well. You know that as well as I do.

   DNA? Ok sure, collect DNA from the injuries, but in a domestic situation, what does that prove? Nothing much. A stranger-on-stranger scenario is pretty much the only situation where DNA would likely be probative in these cases.

    The study cited does not show that bitemark analysis is worthwhile, just that there are a lot of injuries that could be used to profile a potential abuse victim.

    Bottom line, don't eliminate bitemark analysis **IF** it can be shown to be valid. Just do the research and publish the studies. Why do folks cringe and resist so much at the call for more science in our discipline? If we want to be called a *scientist* then we should act like one and do some research, no?

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    Following up on the above...please note that I, following the lead of the Texas Forensic Science Commission, have not called for the elimination of bitemark analysis.  I have not used the perjorative term "junk science."  All that is asked is, if we're going to use it to send folks to prison, or worse, can we just show that it really works?  We need studies on validity and reliability.  Just do those. 

    And the call to keep using bitemarks as evidence?--well, to what end?  Suppose a female shows up at the ER with, among other injuries, a bitemark on her cheek.  Well, the reality of the siuation is, as I noted above, that everyone will want to know who made the bitemark.  Of course that's what we want to know.  And, as it turns out, we dentists simply can't answer that question very well.  We might be able to give a pretty good opinion in some cases whether a true bitemark was made by an adult or a child, but that's about the extent of it.  Keep in mind that in a lot of cases, two "expert" board-certified forensic odontologists can't even agree whether or not a patterned injury is even a bitemark to begin with. We have no idea what our true error rate is out in the real world, and no idea how to determine it.

    So what do we do?  Use the bitemark as a guide as to where to collect some DNA?  OK, fine, collect DNA from the woman's cheek--if the profile is consistent with her partner, so what?  One would not at all be surprised to find a partner's DNA pretty much anywhere on or in the victim.  Not very probative or compelling.

   OK, so if we can't tell who made the bitemark, and DNA is not going to be very helpful in a domestic situation, how do we use the bitemark as evidence, other than simply documenting that there's an injury present?  No one has said not to document the injury--in fact, dentists in every jusrisdiction I am familiar with the US are "mandated reporters" and we are compelled to report such injuries to the proper authority.  But other than that, I don't know what to do with a bitemark now.

   And I cannot fathom why dentists who claim to be "scientists" resist so much the call for studies on validity and reliability of our most basic procedures and principles. Well, actually, yes, I do--I've been there.  It's the attitude:

"Well, I'm the expert here and I know what I'm doing, and I don't need to be tested, and I don't need to listen to anyone who is outside my field (even well-credentialed, nationally recognized, real scientists who deal in these sorts of research issues all day long), and I don't need supervision because I know in my heart that I'm doing things right.  Oh, and I'm not biased, either."  Yeah, believe me--been there, done that!

    But, hey, if it can be shown that odontologists can reliably identify a bitemark and can reliably "match" it to a suspect, and we can figure out what our error rate is, then I'm all for it!   Just show me some research and peer-reviewed publications that show this can be done--that's all.  Unfortunately, over the last 50 years no one has been able to do this.