Amy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
brightknightie) wrote2021-02-23 08:49 pm
brightknightie) wrote2021-02-23 08:49 pm
“There is no acceptable reason for [a detective to be present during an autopsy].”
This past weekend, I read an essay in the Washington Post that left me with a case of "TV lied to me!" Specifically, Forever Knight, and just about every other police procedural told from the primary perspective of the police officers. (A few procedurals told from the primary perspective of the medical examiners have managed to get this right.) A certain genre storytelling shorthand is flat wrong, and ... we should be able to get some fanfic stories out of that discrepancy, I imagine?
This fannish insight is not the primary point of the essay: "Study finds cognitive bias in how medical examiners evaluate child deaths" by Radley Balko (Feb. 20, 2021 at 8:33 a.m. PST).
Rather, what leaped up and grabbed me with its real-world obviousness, at odds with so many scenes from so many procedurals, is:
Blink. Blink. He's right. He's completely right. Factual information should flow from the medical examiner to the detectives, and eventually to the prosecution and defense equally, without bias. The medical examiner should not be told by the detectives what the detectives suspect and perhaps hope to hear, and thus be primed to see what may not be there.
Nick, Schanke, and Tracy should stay out of the morgue. Or Natalie should at least control the conversation much more strictly. Natalie should not be involved in solving cases in any way until after her full and final report is filed.
As we all know, in genre procedurals from the primary perspective of the police officers, the medical examiner or coroner is storytelling shorthand. Exposition incarnate. Natalie, or Ducky, or all the others on Wikipedia's list of fictional medical examiners stand in for all the other scientists and technicians who would be involved in a real investigation. They give the detective character a consistent, compressed, "science-y" source of whatever information is needed for that episode. And of course the fictional detective is by definition the hero: why wouldn't the fictional coroner be on his or her side every step of the way?
And of course the answer is that, with all the best intentions, we humans get knocked about by bias. Out here in the real world, at least, we have to put up guardrails to get the most unbiased results possible in each circumstance. In there in the fictional world... different stories, new angles, new questions?
This fannish insight is not the primary point of the essay: "Study finds cognitive bias in how medical examiners evaluate child deaths" by Radley Balko (Feb. 20, 2021 at 8:33 a.m. PST).
Rather, what leaped up and grabbed me with its real-world obviousness, at odds with so many scenes from so many procedurals, is:
...to the extent possible, medical examiners should be given only medically relevant information. Often this isn’t the case, because in much of the country, medical examiners are considered part of the prosecution’s team, not independent analysts. So they’re privy to information that can corrupt their analysis. “I’ve seen cases where a detective was present during the autopsy itself,” Dror says. “There is no acceptable reason for that.” To that end, we could reduce cognitive bias by ensuring that medical examiners’ offices are independent of police and prosecutors, and that law enforcement officials don’t have a say in an analyst’s raises, promotions or performance reviews. That the very notion of a state ME testifying for the defense seems to offend some prosecutors demonstrates that in many jurisdictions, an ME isn’t expected to be independent. [emphasis mine]
Blink. Blink. He's right. He's completely right. Factual information should flow from the medical examiner to the detectives, and eventually to the prosecution and defense equally, without bias. The medical examiner should not be told by the detectives what the detectives suspect and perhaps hope to hear, and thus be primed to see what may not be there.
Nick, Schanke, and Tracy should stay out of the morgue. Or Natalie should at least control the conversation much more strictly. Natalie should not be involved in solving cases in any way until after her full and final report is filed.
As we all know, in genre procedurals from the primary perspective of the police officers, the medical examiner or coroner is storytelling shorthand. Exposition incarnate. Natalie, or Ducky, or all the others on Wikipedia's list of fictional medical examiners stand in for all the other scientists and technicians who would be involved in a real investigation. They give the detective character a consistent, compressed, "science-y" source of whatever information is needed for that episode. And of course the fictional detective is by definition the hero: why wouldn't the fictional coroner be on his or her side every step of the way?
And of course the answer is that, with all the best intentions, we humans get knocked about by bias. Out here in the real world, at least, we have to put up guardrails to get the most unbiased results possible in each circumstance. In there in the fictional world... different stories, new angles, new questions?