Digital Directions

Does(n't) science meet the law? And does law meet the scientists?!

A recent article in the UKCLE's hard-copy magazine - Directions (McCartney & Cassella, pg 8-9 Autumn 2008 edition) - discusses the absence of forensic modules on the LLB in England and Wales.

Of all the 10 LLB providers in Scotland,the majority (7) offer an elective forensic module of some description:
Aberdeen - Advanced Evidence (which includes expert witness and probability evidence)
Abertay - Scientific Detectives (two modules available) (catalogue not available online)
Dundee - Forensic Medicine
Edinburgh - Medical Jurisprudence
Glasgow - Forensic Medicine
Glasgow Caledonian - Evidence and Forensic Identification (two modules available)
Strathclyde - Forensic Medicine & Science (two modules available)

Beyond the issue of whether LLB students can opt for a forensic module, Napier offers a Law for Forensic Scientists module and the Robert Gordon University offers a named BSc Forensic Science with Law that combats the opposite issue - do forensic scientists get enough training in legal issues?

So, it seems that forensic issues are more mainstream in the Scottish LLB curriculum, although not as a core subject, and students are required to opt for these modules as an elective.  Whether they have a 'scientific background' in terms of secondary schooling, I couldn't comment.  But, Scottish students arrive at university with around 5 to 7 Highers taken over two years- therefore there is a greater possibility of having some scientific knowledge, albeit slightly lower than A level standard.

As a very rough and ready analysis, I had a quick count up of our own first year intake (47) for Glasgow Caledonian and found that students had the following Highers:

Biology	28%
Chemistry	32%
Physics	23%
Maths	53%

I've included Maths as I'd like to suggest that a knowledge of maths and stats is equally important for a law student when taking a forensic module to appreciate the problems and issues around probability and likelihood ratios that had confounded the courts in the 1990s and probably still confounds the jury today.

Carole McCartney at Leeds looked at unconditional offers (214) and found approx 18% have an A level in a science (such as biology, chemistry, physics). With Scottish students having a larger number of subjects they can take, this will clearly be higher, and of course, I've included maths too.

All 4 Sciences	4%
At least 3 Sciences	19%
At least 2 Sciences	47%
At least 1 Sciences	72%
No Sciences	28%

But does this make their grades any better? I'll tell you in four years! Will this make them better lawyers?  Who knows!

Facebook for academics!

Last month, I received an email from the ARMA@JISCMAIL.AC.UK mailing list, via our research administrator regarding the www.academia.edu project - devised by Richard Price at All Souls College, Oxford.

"- It displays academics around the world in a 'tree' format, according to what university/department they are affiliated with.

"- It enables researchers to keep track of the latest developments in their field - the latest people and papers.

"My hope for the site is that it will list every academic in the world --Faculty members, Post-Docs, and Graduate Students.

"It's gaining some traction - Richard Dawkins is on there (http://oxford.academia.edu/RichardDawkins ), and some other professors are such as Stephen Hawking ( http://cambridge.academia.edu/StephenHawking ) and Noam Chomsky (http://mit.academia.edu/NoamChomsky )."

After filling out a few fields, there is the option to link your publications and other research outputs - interstingly, this gives the article a really high Google Ranking - great for getting noticed online!!

On Tues 14 Oct, someone searched Google using the terms "Jury Directions"  (Academia.edu has a handy page of all keywords used).  The second hit is my academia.edu page with an article I wrote last year for the Common Law World Review... the publisher website (Vathek) doesn't appear on any of the five pages of Google hits that I looked through before I got bored - so, this seems like a useful feature indeed!

The Terms and Privacy Policy don't offer any assistance for disputes between members - and any disputes between a member and academia.edu will be subject to the laws of Oregon (must be where the servers are located).  Given that anyone can alter the name of an institution (I altered Glasgow Caledonian to read Glasgow Caledonian University - but I could have written anything that would then appear on the profile of all members from GCU) and rename departments, then there is room for plenty of both un-intentional mistakes and deliberate errors that will affect many personal member pages quite significantly.

Members may also add research interests and add other members as contacts - this then makes the tree more interactive and allows users to browse for new stuff, both purposefully and serendipitously.  The number of research interests is constantly growing - law has 33 sub-research interests - but again, you can add your own and it might get messy - Torts Law exists as a sub-research interest, but someone has also added Torts under Civil Law as a third level interest.  Forensics exists as a top level research interest, but also twice more under other topics, Criminology appears a few times under various top level interests.  I suppose this might allow members to decide whether they see themselves as social, legal or psychological criminologists.

There are currently 81 law departments listed worldwide - some UK ones are Oxford, Strathclyde, Manchester, Glasgow Caledonian, Nottingham Trent, Teesside, KCL, Durham, Middlesex, Birkbeck, Bangor, Sheffield and Westminster (ordered as found online).  There are currently 147 people listed within the top-level law interest - but only 6 within Legal Education - so let's see if this blog post gets any more interest on this social networking site for academia!!