There is a second and more practical point I would like to make. Our young and less wordly-wise colleagues might be temptcd by such weighty ex-cathedr...
There is a second and more practical point I would like to make. Our young and less wordly-wise colleagues might be temptcd by such weighty ex-cathedra denunciations of the unstructured data-bank to try their hand at "improving" any to which they have access by the introduction of a moiety ofweightings and sub-groupings and so on. I suggest that it cannot be too often stressed that data-banks must be absolutely structureless. Best that they be managed by good reliable clerical sorts of person, meticulously careful, but with no interest whatsoever in the subject matter of the collection. As soon as someone who knows the subject becomes involved, ripples of structure are bound to appear. Such fact-stores simply must be held quite bland. And for a very good reason. Nobody knows in advance what retrieval programmes will eventually be applied, and cross-correlation between a pattern in the data-bed and one in the retrieval apparatus can sink the ship. I t is in the retrieval system that one can begin to be clever. The programmes can be weighted forwards or backwards, employ sub-groupings to any degree required, and sport around with wonderous techniques of correlation and collation to the heart's content. Elder statesmen may apply their learning and erudition here. Then the user, maybe a much less experienced practitioner, may without much difficulty, I should think, be borne upon the professor's shoulders and thus be able to see further. Of one thing I a m sure, that if there have been miscarriages of justice, they will have arisen much more frequently from a court bowing to a towering reputation, than from some young expert witness getting into a tangle over the theory of probability. (Editor's note :I am pleased " A Frame of Reference . . ." hasprevented C. 3. Stephen's hibernation from being terminal and wish the credit for this were automatically mine. Unfortunately, as he could see from an earlier edition, Time to Change, Editorials are not necessarily penned by me, and therefore success in stimulating responses from readers cannot always be claimed jrst-hand.) Left Out
From
P. J . NICHOLSON The Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Laboratory, 109 Lambeth Road, London S E 1 7LP. (August 1982)
Sir: I wonder if I might be allowed to make two small comments on the paper by Franks (Journal of the Forensic Science Society 1982; 22: 271-274) on The Direction of Ballpoint Pen Strokes in Left- and Right-handed Writers as Indicated by the Orientation of Burr Striations? The "personal communication" from me was made at a meeting in 1980, and not 1981 as shown. Also the direction of cross strokes made by left- and right-handed writers is dealt with in a paper by B. Shanon, published in a journal which may not be familiar to forensic scientists. The 'reference is: Graphological Patterns as a function of Handedness and Culture. Neuropsychologia 1979; 17 : 457-465.