TOK Presentation Plan

 

Title: Forensic Science

Describe your RLS: Robert Lee Stinson Case

  • Robert Lee Stinson is an innocent man who was wrongfully accused of rape and murder of a 63-year-old woman, Ione Cychosz
  • Bite marks, that were left on the body, were analyzed by Dr. Lowell T. Johnson, a forensic dentist, who concluded that the bite marks were Stinson’s and claimed that there was “no margin for error”
  • Dr. Raymond Rawson also testified that the evidence in the case was “high quality” and “overwhelming”
  • The forensic dentists overlaid pictures of with teeth with the bite marks on the body and created a model of his teeth to show how they match as well – this misleading and weak forensic evidence was the key reason why Robert was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison
  • In 2005, the Wisconsin Innocence Project took up Stinson’s case and alleged that the forensic evidence was faulty and DNA evidence was reassessed that proved that Stinson is innocent

How my RLS links to intuition

  • The exaggerated portrayal of forensic sciences in media
    • CSI effect
    • our imagination on forensic science 
  • Language
    • language contribute to our intuition – “science”, “high quality”, “overwhelming”, “no margin for error” ‘there was no question that there was a match to reasonable scientific certainty = very convincing phrase

 

Knowledge Question:

KQ1: To what extent do our intuition and imagination contribute to believing that scientific claims are true?

KQ2: To what extent does shared knowledge contribute to our intuition

Other RLS: galileo experiment or maths 

AOKs: mathematics – axioms are the “universal truths” so we intuitively believe that the correct application of axioms are true = based on personal and shared knowledge

TO WHAT EXTENT IS INTUITION BASED UPON REASONINGS

HOW DOES LANGUAGE CONTRIBUTE TO OUR INTUITION

  • My RLS
    • I watched a biographical film about a serial killer Ted Bundy and the movie mentioned that the most important evidence in his trial was bitemark testimony and mentioned that it is the most “damaging evidence” and of course didn’t mention the flaws of bitemark analysis = my memory from this movie made me intuitively believe that bitemark analysis is a good forensic technique 

 

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