In 1985, a mistaken identification and an unreliable microscopic comparison of hair wrongly convicted Steven Avery  of raping a Manitowoc woman. In 2003, Avery was acquitted  after DNA testing eventually identified the real rapist as Gregory Allen. This case has  gained worldwide notoriety thanks to a show called “Making a Murderer,” a Netflix docu-series which documents the shortcomings and pitfalls of U.S. judicial system.

Steven Avery,flanked by two officers in this photo, was wrongfully convicted for rape in 1985. He was later proven innocent after spending eight years in prison. Credit: AP

Innocence Project’s Keith Findley, the lawyer who won Avery’s freedom, says the film exposes the limitations that wrongfully convicted Avery, but also freed him.

“Most lawyers go to law school cause they don’t do science. It’s sort of been just tradition that over the years that whatever the forensic analyst said everybody just sort of accepted it, and it’s only recently that we’ve begun to realize that it’s not that reliable,” Findley said.

“We’re fascinated by science. We’ve got all the CSI shows that make everybody believe that the science is instantaneous, flawless and sexy, and it’s none of those,” he adds.

The National Academy of Science said the only consistently reliable forensic science is DNA, yet many courts convict people based on a shoe print or bite mark, Avery says. As a forensic science resource, we at ITSGOV.com agree. While such forensic marking are excellent to aid in investigations helping find new leads, these shouldn’t be used alone in court as evidence.

A new study conducted by Innsbruck researchers found that people who enjoy bitter foods like olives, dark chocolate and broccoli are more likely to exhibit everyday sadism.

It’s often said that the foods you like can tell a lot about yourself, but can they tell things about your deeply emotional traits? Specifically, can they indicate things like narcissism or sadism? A team of psychologists set out to investigate that. Christina Sagioglou and Tobias Greitemeyer from the University of Innsbruck in Austria asked almost 1000 volunteers to self-rate their preference for bitterness and then set out to investigate whether they were more prone to so-called everyday sadism.

Everyday sadism joins with subclinical , , and to form the so-called “dark tetrad” of personality. Studies have also found that sadistic personality disorder is the personality disorder with the highest level of co-occurrence with other types of psychopathological disorders, but this is still a work in progress – there are still many things we don’t understand about this condition. What does this have to do with bitter foods? Well, apparently… it might have something to do with it.

Bitter foods are strange – or better put, it’s strange that we enjoy bitter foods. Few animals in the wild enjoy bitter foods, greatly preferring sweet ones; there is an evolutionary advantage here, as sweet foods are more likely to be rich in calories and nutrients, while bitterness is often a sign of toxicity. So it’s strange that we enjoy bitter foods – could this be a sign of abnormality?

Well, a causality has not been proven yet, but this study showed a strong, robust link; this doesn’t mean that everyone that enjoys some olives is a sadist – not in the least. But it does seem to indicate an interesting correlation.

“The present research has demonstrated that bitter taste preferences are associated with more pronounced malevolent personality traits, especially robustly with everyday sadism. The sample was a large community sample, thereby representing a wide section of the population. In establishing a robust link between taste preferences and personality traits, this research reveals further real-world behavioral correlates of antisocial personality traits.”

Another important point to make is that correlation doesn’t imply causality – this may be a coincidence (although it seems unlikely), or there may be another underlying factor that causes both these elements – or there could be something completely different that we haven’t yet discovered.

According to , one of the most robust pillars of the forensic work, “Every contact leaves a trace”. In forensic investigations these traces are important for identifying suspects, understanding the circumstances of a crime or homicide. These clues or traces can be anything from tracks, to fingerprints, to DNA. But it’s not only humans or other animals that leave traces, tiny creatures do it too – the most numerous and most successful from an evolutionary standpoint. I’m refering to bacteria of course, which can be found on our shoes, on our clothes, on our skin and, of course, inside us. Billions of bacteria, some harmless and most beneficial, live inside making the microbiome. These are unique to every individual, depending on what he eats, drinks and other environmental factors. Some researchers think that tracking bacteria could become one of the most important tools for forensic investigators in their toolkit soon.

Image: Economical Me

For instance, one of the most enticing research was made this year by a group at University of Huddersfield. They took samples from the shoes of 89 randomly selected participants from three different conferences. They found that the bacteria collected from  shoes could be grouped into three separate families, based on where the conferences took place. That’s because the bacteria signature is comprised of the core microbiome, inherent to each individual, and secondly of the bacteria that inhabits a distinct surface. When we walk, we scrap off bacteria from our homes, from the supermarket, office and so on. So, studying these bacteria not only can tell a forensic investigator who these ‘belong to’, but also where the person carrying the germs has been.

Besides shoes, the researchers also looked at mobile phones. These too hold populations that are distinct. What’s more, there are different patterns found on the front and the rear of a mobile phone, since the back mainly comes in contact with the hands, while the front with the face.

How could these findings be applied in the field? That’s a good question with no easy answer. Because we walk around all sorts of places, the bacterial signature changes constantly. It’s so volatile you could never use it as evidence in court, but it’s good enough to track down suspects or filter a list of suspects, so law enforcement can focus their resources on the likeliest persons. Read more about the study .