Forensic Apophenia: Sensing the Bioinformation Archive

ABSTRACT:This article draws on intersecting debates on archives, infrastructures, and knowledge in anthropology to analyze a “bioinformational turn” in forensic science. Focusing on transformations in forensic science provision in England and Wales apparent in the history of a forensic archive, the article frames frictions between ways of making knowledge across scientific cultures, law enforcement, and a legal system that aims to create facts and certainty, against forensic scientists’ concern with process and context across disparate realms of practice. Following scientists’ descriptions of the changing conditions under which forensic science is currently practiced and the erosion of forensic provision as a public service, we argue that forensic practitioners interrogate positivist projections of forensic science by thinking with complexity as they follow evidence through multiple registers, infrastructures, and datasets.