Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-vpsfw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-16T10:22:21.609Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Objective Brains, Prejudicial Images

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Joseph Dumit
Joseph Dumit
Affiliation:
Program in Science, Technology and SocietyMassachusetts Institute of Technology
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this article I argue that brain images constructed with computerized tomography (CT) and positron emission tomography (PET) are part of a category of “expert images” and are both visually persuasive and also particularly difficult to interpret and understand by non-experts. Following the innovative judicial analogy of “demonstrative evidence” traced by Jennifer Mnookin (1998), I show how brain images are more than mere illustrations when they enter popular culture and courtrooms. Attending to the role of experts in producing data in the form of images, in selecting extreme images for publication, and in testifying as to their relevance, I argue that there is an undue risk in courtrooms that brain images will not be seen as prejudiced, stylized representations of correlation, but rather as straightforward, objective photographs of, for example, madness.

Type
Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , Spring 1999 , pp. 173 - 201
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ader, Mary. 1996. “Investigational Treatments: Coverage, Controversy, and Consensus.” Annuals of Health Law 5:45–61.Google Scholar
Andreasen, Nancy C. 1984. The Broken Brain: The Biological Revolution in Psychiatry. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. 1987. Criticism and Truth. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Bertin, Jacques. 1983. Semiology of Graphics: Diagrams, Networks, Maps. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Veall, Bruce v. 1897. Southwestern Reporter 41:455.Google Scholar
Caplan, Lincoln. 1984. The Insanity Defense and the Trial of John W. Hinckley, Jr.. Boston: D.R. Godine.Google Scholar
Christopherson v. Allied Signal. 1991. 939 F.2d 1106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crease, R. P. 1993. “Biomedicine in the Age of Imaging.” Science 261(5121):554+.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Daston, Lorraine, and Peter, Galison. 1992. “The Image of Objectivity.” Representations Fall:81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daubert v.Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. 1993. 113 S. Ct. 2786.Google Scholar
DeBenedictis, Don J. 1990. “Criminal Minds: PET Scans Used to Prove Accused Killers” Brain Abnormalities.” ABA Journal Jan.:30.Google Scholar
de Lauretis, Teresa. 1987. Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dumit, Joseph. 1995a. Mindful Images: PET Scans and Personhoodirz Biomedical America. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Santa Cruz.Google Scholar
Dumit, Joseph. 1995b. “Twenty-First-Century PET: Looking for Mind and Morality through the Eye of Technology.” In Technoscientific Imaginaries: Conversations, Profiles, and Memoirs, edited by Marcus, George E., 87–128. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Dumit, Joseph. 1997. “A Digital Image of the Category of the Person: PET Scanning and Objective Self-Fashioning.” In Cyborgs and Citadels: Anthropological Inter ventions in Emerging Sciences and Technologies, edited by Downey, Gary Lee, and Joseph, Dumit, 83–102. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.Google Scholar
Eco, Umberto. 1979. A Theory of Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Frackowiak, Richard S.J. 1986. “An Introduction to Positron Tomography and Its Application to Clinical Investigation.” In New Brain Imaging Techniques and Psychopharmacology, edited by Trimble, Michael R., 25–34. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Franklin, Jon. 1987. Molecules of the Mind: The Brave New Science of Molecular Psychology. New York: Atheneum.Google Scholar
Frye, v. United States. 1923. 293 F. 1013, 1014, D.C.Cir.Google Scholar
Gilman, Sander L. 1988. Disease and Representation: Images of Illness from Madness to AIDS. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Golan, T. (forthcoming). X-rays in Court.Google Scholar
Greimas, A.-J. and Courtes, J.. 1982. Semiotics and Language: An Analytical Dictionary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Guilshan, Christine A. 1992. “A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Lies: Electronic Imaging and the Future of the Admissibility of Photographs into Evidence.” Rutgers Computer and Technology Law Journal 18:365–80.Google Scholar
Halperin, Edward C. 1988. “X-rays at the Bar, 1896–1910.” Investigative Radiology 22:639–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henseler, Timothy B. 1997. “Comment: A Critical Look at the Admissability of Polygraph Evidence in the Wake of Daubert: The Lie Detector Fails the Test.” Catholic University Law Review 46:1247–97.Google Scholar
Hose, v. CNW. 1995. 70 F.3d 974.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Houts, Marshall. 1985. “Presenting the Medical Evidence: Using Brain Scans to Differentiate Stroke from Hypoxia (a case history report: $750,000 verdict).” Trauma 27(1):11–42.Google Scholar
Crowley, Huntington v. 1966. 54 Cal.2d 647.Google Scholar
Jasanoff, Sheila. 1995. Science at the Bar: Law, Science, and Technology in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jeffery, , Ray, C.. 1994. “The Brain, the Law, and the Medicalization of Crime.” In The Neurotransmitter Revolution: Serotonin, Social Behavior and the Law, edited by Roger, D. Masters, 161–78. Southern Illinois University Press.Google Scholar
Kaihara, S., Natarajan, T. K., Maynard, C. D., and Wagner, H. N. Jr. 1969. “Construction of a Functional Image from Spatially Localized Rate Constants Obtained from Serial Camera and Rectilinear Scanner Data.” Radiology 93:1345–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kevles, Bettyann Holtzmann. 1997. Naked to the Bone: Medical Imaging in the Twentieth Century. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Kousoubris, Evelyn D. 1995. “Computer Animation: Creativity in the Cour troom.” Temple Environmental Law and Technology Journal 14:257.Google Scholar
Kuhar, Michael J. 1990. “Introduction to Neurotransmitters and Neuroreceptors.” In Quantitative Imaging: Neuroreceptors, Neurotransmitters, and Enzymes, edited by Wagner, Henry N. Jr. and James Frost, J.. New York: Raven Press.Google Scholar
Kulynych, Jennifer. 1997. “Psychiatric Neuroimaging Evidence: A High-Tech Crystal Ball?” Stanford Law Review 49:1249–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lelling, Andrew E. 1993. “Comment: Eliminative Materialism, Neuroscience, and the Criminal Law.” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 141: 1471–565.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martell, Daniel A. 1992. “Forensic Neuropsychology and the Criminal Law.” Law and Human Behavior 16(3):313–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Masters, Roger D. and McGuire, Michael T., eds. 1994. The Neurotransmitter Revolution: Serotonin, Social Behavior and the Law. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.Google Scholar
Mayberg, Helen S. 1992. “Functional Brain Scans as Evidence in Criminal Court: An Argument for Caution.” The Journal of Nuclear Medicine 33(6): 18N+.Google ScholarPubMed
Mnookin, Jennifer. 1998. “The Image of Truth: Photographic Evidence and the Power of Analogy.” Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities 10:1.Google Scholar
Morse, Stephen J. 1988. “Treating Crazy People Less Specially.” West Virginia Law Review 90:353.Google Scholar
National Commission on the Insanity Defense. 1983. Myths and Realities: Hearing Transcript of the National Commission on the Insanity Defense. Arlington, VA: National Mental Health Association.Google Scholar
Nelkin, Dorothy and Laurence, Tancredi. 1989. Dangerous Diagnostics: The Social Power of Biological Information. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Oldendorf, William H. 1980. The Quest for an image of Brain: Computerized Tomography in the Perspective of Past and Future Imaging Methods. New York: Raven Press.Google Scholar
Pasveer, B. 1989. “Knowledge of Shadows — The Introduction of X-Ray Images in Medicine.” Sociology Of Health and Illness 11(4):361–81.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Penney, v. Praxair. 1997. 116 F.3d 330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
People, v. Gray. 1986. 187 Cal.App.3d 220. Cal.App.2 Dist.Google Scholar
People, v. Kelly. 1976. 17 Cal.3d 24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
People, v. MacDonald. 1984. 37 Cal.3d 351.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
People, v. Weinstein. 1992. 591 N.Y.S.2d 715.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perlin, Michael L. 1990. “Unpacking the Myths: The Symbolism Mythology of Insanity Defense Jurisprudence.” Case Western Reserve Law Review 40:599.Google Scholar
Rein, Harry. 1986. “Thermography: Medical and Legal Implications.” Legal Medicine 95–123.Google ScholarPubMed
Reiser, Stanley Joel. 1978. Medicine and the Reign of Technology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Reiser, Stanley Joel and Michael, Anbar. 1984. The Machine at the Bedside: Strategies for Using Technology in Patient Care. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Reisner, Ralph and Christopher, Slobogin. 1990. Law and the Mental Health System, 2nd ed. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing.Google Scholar
Reznek, Lawrie. 1997. Evil or Ill? New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Rojas-Burke, J. 1993. “PET Scans Advance as Tool in Insanity Defense.” Journal of Nuclear Medicine 34(1):N13+.Google ScholarPubMed
Selbak, John. 1994. “Digital Litigation: The Prejudicial Effects of High Technology Animation in the Courtroom.” High Technology Law Journal 9(2):337–67.Google Scholar
Smith, v. Grant. 1896. James W. Smith v. W. W. Grant,District Court of Colorado, First division, opinion filed December 3, 1896. Chicago Legal News 1896; 29:277.Google Scholar
Star, Susan Leigh. 1989. Regions of the Mind: Brain Research and the Quest for Scieni Certainty. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Star, Susan Leigh. 1992. “The Skin, the Skull, and the Self: Toward a Sociology of the Brain.” In So Human a Brain: Knowledge and Values in the Neurosciences, edited by Anne, Harrington. Boston: Birkhauser.Google Scholar
Stipp, David. 1992. “The Insanity Defense in Violent-Crime Cases Gets High-Tech Help.” Wall Street Journal, March 4:A1?.Google Scholar
Stover, G. H. 1898. “Medical-legal Value of the X-ray.” Philadelphia Medical Journal 2:801–2.Google Scholar
Suskind, Charles. 1981. “The Invention of Computed Tomography.” History of Technology 6.Google Scholar
U.S. v. Gigante. 1997. 982 F. Supp. 140, 12–13; CR 93–368, 35 (JBW).U.S. Dist. LEXIS 20099:35.Google Scholar
Wagner, Jr. Henry, N. 1986. “Images of the Brain: Past as Prologue.” Journal of Nuclear Medicine 27(12): 1929–37.Google ScholarPubMed
Zeeberg, B. R., Bice, A. N., and Wagner, H. N. Jr. 1987. “Concerning Strategies for in vivo Measurement of Receptor Binding Using Positron Emission Tomo graphy. II[letter].” Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow Metabolism 7(6): 818–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar