Fermilab Into the Era of Megascience—“A Bigger Big Science Shaped By

260 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 101 : 1 (2010)

Fermilab into the era of megascience—“a bigger you probably know that DNA fingerprinting, big science shaped by restricted funding for unlike the notoriously fallible eyewitness, is physics after about 1970” (p. 262). Under this conceived of as a “truth machine” that reaches new form of research, experimental programs its conclusions objectively, without racial, gen- continued to operate for decades or more, as der, and other subjective biases. It is this ideal physicists struggled to survive in the smaller and vision of justice obtained that the authors of more competitive funding environments of the Truth Machine: The Contentious History of 1980s. Under Lederman, Fermilab crucially DNA Fingerprinting set out to examine, and contributed to the discovery of the top quark and their compelling conclusions make this superbly elaborated plans to expand its research program argued book well worth reading. by participating in the proposed Superconduct- The authors’ previous work includes path- ing Super Collider (SSC). The demise of the breaking ethnographic and sociological studies SSC shattered that dream and raised new doubts on scientific practices (Michael Lynch) and a about the laboratory’s relevance and its future. history of fingerprints (those produced by oily Throughout their discussion of the laboratory’s fingers, not DNA) in criminal identification (Si- history, the authors turn to the organizing metaphor mon A. Cole). This book is not a history of of the “frontier.” The proton synchrotron, they DNA fingerprinting, as the subtitle states (such a argue, has parallels in the tools of the early Amer- history has been provided by Jay D. Aronson in ican West—axe, spyglass, plough. These were Genetic Witness: Science, Law, and Contro- used to explore and harness the geographical versy in the Making of DNA Profiling [Rutgers, frontier, just as the accelerator did for the fron- 2007]), but, as the authors explain, a sociologi- tiers of physics. Driving explorers forward in cal history (p. xvi) of how the interaction be- both cases was the internal drive to push into tween science and the law has turned DNA unknown territories; holding them back were fingerprinting into a “truth machine.” Indeed, if social and economic constraints. The metaphor courts eventually reached agreement over the is powerful and useful when dealing with the robustness of DNA fingerprinting, it was only early vision of the laboratory—its radical de- after years of devising various “technical, legal mocracy, its ingenuity and frugality, its potential and administrative fixes” (p. 228) in response to as an instrument for social transformation. in-court challenges to the forensic use of DNA (Wilson, for instance, lent the laboratory’s pres- fingerprinting. In the best STS tradition, this tige to support civil rights in Illinois and the book is a sophisticated and nuanced study that campaign for open housing.) As the story takes the very existence of the controversy as a progresses, however, the metaphor becomes key element in the controversy over the validity perhaps too flexible, invoked to explain every- of DNA fingerprinting. thing from the SSC as an “outpost” to the un- The authors base their arguments on more explored “frontiers” inside the atom. In this than sixty legal cases involving DNA finger- way, it loses purchase on the particularities of printing (from the United States and the United Fermilab and of high-energy physics in the Kingdom), a number of interviews, and publi- 1970s and 1980s more generally. The impulse cations by scientists, lawyers, and legal scholars behind it, though—the attempt to understand (plus a couple of episodes of CSI). The method Fermilab as part of the history of the United of using courtroom deliberation as a way to States in the late twentieth century—is one deconstruct scientific evidence used in court is of the strongest and most valuable contribu- now familiar to historians of science, but the tions of the book. Meticulously researched and authors give it an illuminating twist. Rather than full of fascinating details, Fermilab will inspire viewing courtroom deconstruction as a “method others to take up where the authors have left off. for unmasking a reality that supposedly lies be- EDWARD JONES-IMHOTEP neath the construction of expert evidence,” the authors see it as “an interactional production” in which the method (deconstruction) and the re- Michael Lynch; Simon A. Cole; Ruth Mc- sult (factual claims) are both contested (p. 20). Nally; Kathleen Jordan. Truth Machine: The The successful use of DNA fingerprinting in Contentious History of DNA Fingerprinting. criminal cases depends on accurately answering xxii ϩ 391 pp., illus., bibl., index. Chicago/ two questions. First, is there a match between a London: University of Chicago Press, 2008. DNA sample found at a crime scene and that of $37.50 (cloth). a suspected person? Second, how likely is it that this match is a random one—that is, that the Unless you have never seen an episode of CSI: DNA samples match but in fact belong to an- Crime Scene Investigation, or similar TV shows, other person? What is missed in most popular BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 101 : 1 (2010) 261 discussions of DNA fingerprinting is that, unlike behavior, and disease. The power of DNA seemed our “finger fingerprints,” our “DNA finger- without bounds, and this undoubtedly lent a cloak prints” are not unique. Genomes are unique, but of authority to DNA fingerprinting in courts. Also, a DNA fingerprint represents only a tiny sample the increasing distrust of jury impartiality, espe- of a genome. Determining the likelihood of a cially in race-related cases of violence in the random match involves complex speculation United States, contributed to a climate where a about the probability that another individual in a greater reliance on evidence perceived to be ob- relevant population would have the same DNA jective was welcomed with relief. fingerprint as the suspect. And in the definition The authors beautifully succeed in their project, of that “relevant population,” as the authors so asociologicalhistoryofDNAfingerprinting’srise clearly show, assumptions about the suspect’s to power. As they show so compellingly, DNA characteristics—ethnicity, for example—will fingerprinting was not entirely immune to racial inevitably (re)enter, undermining the claim that and other biases running through society because DNA evidence speaks for itself. “‘DNA’ points the way to guilt or innocence only But problems with DNA fingerprinting can when it is surrounded by a story containing other also arise from the first step. A brilliant chap- claims and evidences” (p. 336). Thus, if much of ter expands the earlier work of two of the the criticism against DNA fingerprinting discussed authors (Lynch and Kathleen Jordan) on local in this book might now seem obsolete because it variations in experimental practices. There is was directed toward inadequate technical proce- the obvious risk that arises from incompetent dures that have since been improved, other key or careless forensic scientists who perform uncertainties will always remain because they re- messy DNA analysis. Yet even where consci- sult from the fact that both science and the law are entious scientists practice careful technique, human practices. This book does not try to debunk the authors observe, scientific practices are either science or the law. Rather, it takes a lucid inherently variable because written protocols and nuanced approach to show how science and are incapable of specifying practices unam- the law together produced a relatively robust new biguously. Anyone who has worked in a lab- form of evidence, if not one that should be treated oratory knows the “magic” that is sometimes as the kind of revealed truth that CSI viewers are required to make an experiment work. But the so familiar with. acknowledgment of this fact in court will BRUNO J. STRASSER leave lawyers unimpressed and have disas- trous consequences for the credibility of the evidence presented. Jo Marchant. Decoding the Heavens: A Two- The detailed legal and scientific material pre- Thousand-Year-Old Computer—and the Century- sented in Truth Machine lends itself to other Long Search to Discover Its Secrets. 328 pp., historical readings, as well. Since law and sci- illus., bibl., index. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo ence are both fact-establishing institutions, the Press, 2009. $25 (cloth). controversial history of DNA fingerprinting can also be read as a power struggle between these Jo Marchant’s Decoding the Heavens is an ap- two institutions over the authority to determine proachable and enthralling tale of twentieth- and the truth. Scientists who have testified in court twenty-first-century attempts to decipher the have agreed that in principle this form of scien- Antikythera Mechanism. As a freelance journal- tific evidence can establish facts with quasi- ist, Marchant provides an outsider’s perspective certainty. The law, for its part, has fought hard on the history of science, and, with this volume, to define, and limit, exactly what experts may she introduces the Antikythera Mechanism to a say in court and the parameters of expertise popular audience. itself, from the 1923 case Frye v. United States Salvaged in 1901 from an ancient shipwreck to the 1993 Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharma- off the Mediterranean island of Antikythera, the ceuticals, both discussed in the book. More fun- Antikythera Mechanism is unique. Constructed damentally, courts have made sure that expert around 100 B.C., it is the most sophisticated witnesses would not challenge their authority in piece of technology known from antiquity, and deciding the issue of guilt or innocence. no geared mechanism of the same complexity Historians might miss some of the broader, if arises in the historical record for another millen- not longer, historical context to these debates. In- nium. Approximately 315 x 190 x 100 mm in deed, the stellar rise of DNA fingerprinting to size and now consisting of eighty-two frag- unprecedented authority in the late twentieth cen- ments, the mechanism contains thirty gears tury took place during a period of great enthusiasm (Tony Freeth et al., “Decoding the Ancient for the power of DNA in determining identity, Greek Astronomical Calculator Known as the