Presumptive blood detection tests are used by forensic investigators to detect trace amounts of blood or to investigate suspicious stains. Through the years, a number of articles have been published on the popular techniques of the day. However, there is no single paper that critiques and compares the five most common presumptive blood detection tests currently in use: luminol, phenolphthalein (Kastle-Meyer), leucomalachite green, Hemastix and the forensic light source. The present authors aimed to compare the above techniques with regard to their sensitivity, ease of use and safety. The luminol test was determined to be the most sensitive of the techniques, while Hemastix is a suitable alternative when the luminol test is not appropriate.

This paper presents the fi rst comprehensive and quantitative study of substances that interfere with the forensic luminol test for blood. Two hundred and fifty substances have been selected on the basis of modern lifestyles and of contiguity with crime scenes. The intensity of the chemiluminescence produced by each substance has been measured relative to that of haemoglobin and the peak wavelength shift has also been determined. The following is a short list of nine substances that produce chemiluminescence intensities comparable with that of haemoglobin: turnips, parsnips, horseradishes, commercial bleach (NaClO), copper metal, some furniture polishes, some enamel paints, and some interior fabrics in motor vehicles. Care needs to be taken when the luminol test for blood is used in the presence of these substances.

When a scientific article is found to be either fraudulent or erroneous, one course of action available to both the authors and the publisher is to retract said article. Unfortunately, not all retraction notices properly inform the reader of the problems with a retracted article. This study developed a novel rubric for rating and standardizing the quality of retraction notices, and used it to assess the retraction notices of 171 retracted articles from 15 journals. Results suggest the rubric to be a robust, if preliminary, tool. Analysis of the retraction notices suggest that their quality has not improved over the last 50 years, that it varies both between and within journals, and that it is dependent on the field of science, the author of the retraction notice, and the reason for retraction. These results indicate a lack of uniformity in the retraction policies of individual journals and throughout the scientific literature. The rubric presented in this study could be adopted by journals to help standardize the writing of retraction notices.

A wide range of domestic and industrial substances that might be mistaken for haemoglobin in the forensic luminol test for blood were examined. The substances studied were in the categories of vegetable or fruit pulps and juices; domestic and commercial oils; cleaning agents; an insecticide; and various glues, paints and varnishes. A significant number of substances in each category gave luminescence intensities that were comparable with the intensities of undiluted haemoglobin, when sprayed with the standard forensic solution containing aqueous alkaline luminol and sodium perborate. In these cases the substance could be easily mistaken for blood when the luminol test is used, but in the remaining cases the luminescence intensity was so weak that it is unlikely that a false-positive test would be obtained. In a few cases the brightly emitting substance could be distinguished from blood by a small but detectable shift of the peak emission wavelength. The results indicated that particular care should be taken to avoid interferences when a crime scene is contaminated with parsnip, turnip or horseradish, and when surfaces coated with enamel paint are involved. To a lesser extent, some care should be taken when surfaces covered with terracotta or ceramic tiles, polyurethane varnishes or jute and sisal matting are involved.

The forensic luminol test has long been valued for its ability to detect trace amounts of blood that are invisible to the naked eye. This is the first quantitative study to determine the effect on the luminol test when an attempt is made to clean bloodstained tiles with a known interfering catalyst (bleach). Tiles covered with either wet or dry blood were tested, and either water or sodium hypochlorite solution (bleach) was used to clean the tiles. As expected, the chemiluminescence intensity produced when luminol was applied generally decreased with the number of times that a tile was cleaned with water, until the chemiluminescence was neither visible nor detectable. However, when the tiles were cleaned with bleach there was an initial drop in chemiluminescence intensity, followed by a rise to a consistently high value, visibly indistinguishable from that of blood. Examination of bleach drying time suggested that any interfering effect becomes negligible after 8 h.