From the Archive: Death and What Remains - Dr. Shari Forbes on Forensic Taphonomy
This interview was recorded in March 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, as Canada was entering its third wave, and was originally broadcast on The Blue Hour on CiTR 101.9 FM at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.
Dr. Shari Forbes was then the Canada 150 Research Chair in Forensic Thanatology at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières and director of Canada's first human taphonomy facility. Her research examines what happens to the human body after death and how the environment affects the physical, chemical and biological processes of decomposition.
After feeling the pain of losing my dear dog Canela recently, I returned to this podcast with love.
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Transcript
Transcript lightly edited for clarity and readability while preserving the natural rhythm and substance of the original conversation.
Shari: In Western society we don't talk about death very much, and it's often considered a taboo topic. I think for me it's less taboo. I'm happy to talk about death. I will freely joke about it with my parents, and they have a laugh about it as well. Some of it is light-heartedness to avoid the real issue, which in some cases can be aging parents and things like that, but I don't feel uncomfortable talking about death. I think that's what it's given me, that awareness and the ability to talk about it naturally and not to avoid the issue or the topic.
Farha: Welcome to The Blue Hour. I am Farha Guerrero. Tonight I speak with Shari Forbes, who started life on a farm near Brewarrina, Australia, where her father was a grazer. She learnt at an early age that animals live and animals die. It's just a fact of life.
She is now the Canada 150 Research Chair in Forensic Thanatology at the University of Quebec in Trois-Rivières. She is the director of the first human taphonomy facility in Canada, and this comes after she established and directed the first human taphonomy facility in Australia.
Shari Forbes is investigating post-mortem changes in the body to find out how Canada's unique environment affects decomposition rates. Her forensic research will enhance the recovery, identification and repatriation of human remains in cases of missing persons, homicide, mass disasters and war crime.
But first, let's start the night with a favourite song of hers, one that comes from a scene in the movie American Beauty, the dancing plastic bag.
Shari Forbes, good evening.
We just listened to some music from a scene in the movie American Beauty, one that moved you the first time you saw it. A plastic bag is caught up in the wind and we hear the character saying, "That's the day I realised that there was this entire life behind things, that this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever."
What do you remember feeling when you first saw that scene?
Shari: I think I certainly felt goosebumps. As you said, it's really a moving scene. To me, I found it very calming. I found it really peaceful. It is a mesmerising scene too, so you do get caught up in the motion of the plastic bag.
But it's something that has stayed with me since the moment I saw it. Anytime somebody asks me for a song or a piece of music that I like, it is immediately what I think of, which is unusual. I think most people think of songs with lyrics. But for me, it just had that really magnetic feeling to it. I can almost not describe it.
Farha: And so when he says the idea of not being afraid, I'm sure you're like most of us, you have many fears. But in the context of your research, one of them is not being afraid of death, as we heard in the introduction, or working with human cadavers.
How does this song, how does that idea of not having fear, influence what you're doing today?
Shari: Greatly. It's so true about not having fear. I guess fear of things we can't control. And death is, of course, the greatest thing we can't control, but that we all know is a reality.
So again, it was that connection for me that I don't have this fear of death. There's lots of other things I fear, absolutely, but that's not one of them.
And because we're talking about death, I can actually say that piece of music is the kind of thing that reminds me of death, but also reminds me of life. It's almost something I personally would want played at my own memorial service, because I think it just brings that cycle of life and death together really well.
Farha: That's beautiful.
Now, you came to studying forensic chemistry quite early in your undergraduate studies. Tell us about how you came to this field that we can call forensic science, which has many different interdisciplinary connections. How did you come to studying forensic science in Sydney, in Australia?
Shari: I certainly studied it before it was popular, I can say that much. So before CSI or NCIS or Bones and the dozens of TV shows.
I actually chose forensic science for two reasons. I loved science during school, and I knew probably from the age of around 15 or 16 that I wanted to be a scientist. So that was clear, because it was something I enjoyed and it was something I was passionate about.
But of course, there's many jobs and roles that can involve a scientist. I think what really convinced me about forensic science was my love of reading crime novels. It's very clichéd that I still do this, but I do. I love Agatha Christie, and I have every Agatha Christie book.
At the time, I was reading a lot of those novels, and I just realised I had this opportunity to join my two passions. So to do science, but apply it to something that I found really interesting. That was how I decided to study forensic science.
At the time, as I mentioned, this was in 1994 or '95, I think. It was before CSI. There was actually only one place in Sydney, Australia, that I could study forensic science. So the decision was not hard.
But I do admit that I maybe didn't know exactly what forensic science was when I started it. I knew what it was applied to, but I didn't realise at the time that, at least my degree, was a chemistry degree. Thankfully, I enjoyed chemistry, so that worked out well.
But it is a good example of how you don't always know what you want to do, or even if you do, it sometimes turns out very differently.
Farha: Now, the beginning of your studies in forensic chemistry led you to a project that you worked on in the last year of your undergraduate degree. This was, I imagine, the first time you saw human remains, trying to understand why corpses in some waterlogged parts of some Sydney cemeteries were deteriorating much slower than in other parts of the same cemetery.
Shari: Yes. I came to that project for one particular reason, which was, as I said, I didn't know my degree was going to be so much chemistry.
I love chemistry, but forensic chemistry can be a lot of minutiae. We spend a lot of time on really minuscule, minute details and trace evidence. In fact, it's a very repetitive task. After three years of looking at glass and paint and fibres under a microscope, I really didn't want to spend another year looking down a microscope.
So when we had to choose our project for our final year, I looked at the list of opportunities. This one stood out to me. First, because it wasn't a trace evidence project. But secondly, because I just knew nothing about it.
I thought, I can't believe I've studied for three years and this is a completely new topic. So it was really useful in demonstrating to me how broad forensic science can be. Once again, I jumped in without fully understanding what I was signing up to, I guess, getting myself involved in.
But I loved it. I really enjoyed the project. It was in a cemetery, but it clearly had forensic applications. So at the end of that year, I decided to continue with my PhD, more with the forensic component of human decomposition.
Farha: Can you define for us what forensic taphonomy is?
Shari: Forensic taphonomy is essentially trying to understand what happens to the body after death. We study the physical, the chemical and the biological processes that occur in a body. We also try and understand how the environment impacts that rate and those processes of decomposition.
Farha: Now, the first time you saw human remains, they were mostly bones. But later, you witnessed something at the University of Tennessee Anthropological Research Facility, where you were doing your postdoctoral work, where you actually saw earlier stages of human decomposition.
Shari: It certainly wasn't shocking the way it would be to somebody who doesn't work in this field. As you said, I had seen quite a lot of skeletons in terms of cemetery exhumations, the work I had done on my project. And I'd seen a lot of skeletons in a forensic context as well.
But the facility at the University of Tennessee has donors in all stages, from what we term fresh remains right through to that skeletonisation stage. When I was fortunate to visit that facility, I did get to see all of those stages.
Certainly, as soon as I walked in, there were some donors who were much in the earlier stages of decomposition, much more in that fresh or even the bloated stage that we refer to.
So I guess it wasn't shocking to me because I prepared myself and I knew what to expect. But having said that, when you go into a facility and you see such a number of bodies, then it does take a little bit of time to adapt. I can say that much.
I did have to spend a moment, first of all, respecting the extreme, immense gratitude for these donors and the fact that they've given their bodies to science. But secondly, just to make sure I was okay with what I was seeing, and that I was going to be acting in the right manner, in the ethical and moral way that I knew I would act in forensic science.
But you're just never sure until you actually put yourself in that situation.
Farha: Now, death is often referred to as a process rather than an event. These physical, chemical and biological processes are highly complex after death.
As we've talked about stages, we'll listen to a clip from Science Insider titled What Happens to Your Body After You Die?
Audio clip: Death is a natural consequence of life. While it marks an end to one adventure, it launches the exciting start of another.
A few minutes after dying, something changes within the human body. Enzymes that break down food for energy during life adopt a new purpose. They start targeting the body's cells. The process is called autolysis and is the start of decomposition.
Autolysis usually begins in the liver and brain, but will eventually digest all internal organs. It also breaks open capillaries, releasing blood cells that turn the skin a pale purple.
While all of this is starting, the body is quickly exhausting its oxygen reserves. After two hours, muscles which require oxygen to function stiffen into place. This is the onset of rigor mortis.
Rigor mortis usually starts in smaller muscles that control the eyelids, jaw and neck. Eventually it will spread to the entire body 12 to 20 hours after death.
At this point, enzymes have dissolved the gastrointestinal tract and released a parade of gut bacteria. These bacteria are hungry and begin feeding on what's left of the tissues and organs.
As they go to town, they produce gases like methane, hydrogen sulfide and ammonia. With nowhere to go, the gases build up pressure within the abdomen, inflating it. The pressure also forces liquid out of the body through places like the nose, ears and mouth.
As liquids seep into the surrounding soil, they enrich it with elements like nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and calcium.
During this stage, the body also emits a sickly sweet aroma that attracts insects like flesh flies. The flies lay their eggs on what's left of the remains, which will serve as food once the eggs hatch 24 hours later.
The entire decomposition process can last anywhere from a couple of weeks to multiple months. It all depends on the temperature of your environment. The hotter it is, the faster your enzymes can go to work, digesting you from the inside out.
In a place like San Francisco, for example, where temperatures are around 70 degrees, it would only take about 16 days.
Farha: So Shari Forbes, this entire post-mortem is a continuum, is it not? These stages that we just heard about following death are actually very complex. There's a lot happening in the body after death.
Shari: Definitely. We always say it's a continuum because it's really hard to define when one process ends and the next begins. It is often the case that these processes are acting simultaneously.
So it is a good way to define it because it's an ongoing process. Eventually, it can in theory end, but sometimes that can take decades or hundreds or even tens and hundreds of thousands of years. We can't always predict how long that's going to take.
Farha: And even in one part of the body, something may be happening differently than in another part of the body. Is that right?
Shari: That's correct. We refer to that as differential decomposition because we can often see a more active or accelerated rate of decay in one part of the body compared to another.
It's something we learn and understand and know, but it just means that we can't refer to the entire cadaver as being in one stage because these stages, as I said, are not well-defined.
It's much more that continuous process across the body.
Farha: Now, your research is at the Human Taphonomy Facility in Quebec. You're the director of this facility, and prior to this, you were the director of a very similar facility in Australia, but completely different environments, as you spoke about in terms of climate and that kind of thing.
You're working with the soft tissue. You're studying the chemical and biological processes of the soft tissue decomposition.
What have you noticed just now working in Quebec? The facility opened last August, I believe. What's different than what you saw in a place like Australia?
Shari: I think the greatest difference has actually been what we've observed this winter because the extreme climate that we have here in Quebec in winter is just nothing I've ever experienced in Australia. It simply doesn't exist.
So one of the real excitements for me in terms of coming to Canada was to understand what happens under snow in sub-zero temperatures.
There's a common belief that in minus 10 or minus 20, everything just preserves. We say it's like a freezer, and it's why we use a freezer to preserve food.
But in fact, that's not the case. What we're finding is that that process, it may slow down, but it certainly doesn't stop.
So that's been something that's just fascinating for me. Even after 20 years of doing this research, I can still learn something new every day.
I think that's probably been the greatest shift for us in terms of what we believed or thought we knew, and now having to think of this in a completely different way.
Farha: So you may have had a donor this winter, for example, someone that donated their body shortly after death during the winter months. Compared to a donor that may have arrived in August last year, you've seen a very different manifestation of human decomposition.
What are the kinds of things you've observed this winter? And as the spring melt comes and spring is on the horizon, what are you expecting to see?
Shari: What we've seen is that the snow really acts like an insulator. And that's perhaps, for anyone who lives in Canada, not news.
Certainly, if you get lost in the snow, it's one of the things they tell you to do, to bury yourself in snow because it helps to trap your body's warmth and keep you warmer. But I guess I did not apply that to deceased people.
So the snow has appeared to act as this insulator. It's allowed bacteria to continue to function that otherwise would not at sub-zero temperatures.
As long as the bacteria are still proliferating and surviving, then that decomposition process continues. It's by no means as fast because in summer we have the added acceleration of insect activity and other things occurring, such as solar radiation.
But it does mean that it's still going ahead, which is really novel information for us.
In terms of what I now expect, I can hardly predict it given that I seem to prove myself wrong every day, but I expect that the rate of decomposition is going to change.
If we were to compare a donor who arrived in August last year with a donor who arrived in December, those are going to be very different rates of decomposition. They're probably going to look very different.
I think some of those differential decomposition processes will not be apparent. And I think it just reaffirms to us our challenge in terms of estimating how long somebody has been deceased.
Because I imagine that some of our donors will appear as if they only just arrived at our facility, even though they've actually been there for maybe six or more months with the snow on top of them.
And that's why we do this. This is why we're constantly doing this research, because we are asked as scientists to estimate time since death and other information for the police.
We need these research studies to be done accurately so that we can provide that accurate information to them.
Farha: So this is quite an exciting time, I can imagine, for yourself and for the researchers at this facility in Quebec, because there's only one other northern facility like this in Michigan, and then one in Europe, in the Netherlands, which has very different winters than what you're experiencing in Quebec.
In a way, this is really a first in many areas, discovering something that hasn't been seen necessarily in the ground.
That's what makes these facilities so unique, and your field so unique, is that you're actually witnessing the interactions between what's happening to the human body as it decomposes and its interactions with the environment that it's in.
Shari: Yes, absolutely. Even the facility in northern Michigan only opened one year before us, so we're really learning this together.
Having said that, there are differences in northern Michigan climate. Certainly, they do have similar amounts of snowfall and the temperatures are comparable, but there are other things that impact the process that will be different.
So again, for us to give really relevant information to our provincial and our federal police, we need to have these facilities in our local environment.
And as you say, certainly in the Netherlands, technically it's further north than us from a latitude point of view, but they're much milder in terms of their winter. They don't have much snow, and they don't have the really extreme sub-zero temperatures that we have here.
So we certainly can extrapolate information from other facilities. It doesn't take away from what they do, but it just highlights the need for more of these facilities, from my perspective across Canada, but really across the world, so we can help more and more law enforcement.
Farha: And then there are other factors. So let's say if one day a facility is opened up here in British Columbia, factors like humidity, the rainfall and all of these other things are going to change the way bodies decompose.
I know you're an advocate for wanting to have facilities in different parts of the country and different parts of the world, because in the end, it's the local law enforcement that need this information when they're out there searching for missing persons.
Shari: Definitely. And yes, I am an advocate for more of these facilities.
I'm always giving advice to people who are looking to establish these facilities elsewhere. I've already made it kind of a mandate that I would open more facilities in Canada because, as you mentioned, on the West Coast your climate is very different to ours.
Again, we can't share our data with police in British Columbia. Some aspects might be helpful, but there's going to be many things that are different, particularly the amount of rainfall that you have and the levels of solar radiation. Those all change the rate of decomposition.
The risk, from our perspective, is if we provide an inaccurate estimation of time since death, that can really impact an investigation.
It gives the police a range that they're looking through the missing persons database. If that range is incorrect, then there's a risk that they may miss identifying that person who is actually outside that range.
So it's a fairly significant impact if we get it wrong. It's the reason we advocate for these facilities, just to make sure that that information is accurate.
Farha: So just getting and digging into a little bit more of the science, part of your expertise is what might be called the scent or the odour of death. It's something that you're fascinated with.
You've done a lot of work in trying to isolate the compounds that create odours and putting them into some kind of substrate for something like canines to find bodies.
It's not so simple, I imagine. Odours come and go.
What is the challenge with trying to do this research, taking what you're seeing in the field and bringing it back to the lab, and then trying to isolate something like smell?
Shari: It's very challenging. I often joke, or maybe not joke, it's probably serious, that I've chosen the worst part of decomposition to study.
Certainly the odour is what most people think of and really don't like about decomposition. But it does have that important application.
We're trying to understand which of the compounds in the enormous suite of compounds that come from decomposition, which of those the cadaver dogs, or human remains detection dogs as they're sometimes called, are using when they search for victims or human remains and locate human remains.
It's a challenge because odours can comprise hundreds, if not thousands, of compounds. Certainly decomposition odour can range from two to maybe 800, maybe more compounds at one time.
What we suspect, although it's not yet proven, is that the dogs don't memorise all of those compounds. Many of those compounds are just naturally present in the environment, or they may be unique to an individual, or they may vary. They come and go very quickly.
Dogs are very smart. I think what we believe is that they've just recognised which are the few compounds, maybe five, maybe 50, we're not sure. But they've recognised which ones get them their reward, because they're trained to locate decomposition odour.
When they do that, they get a reward. So they just associate those compounds with the reward. They already know the answer, I guess you could say.
Unfortunately for us, they don't talk.
So the other challenge with my work is, once I've identified 800 compounds in the lab, trying to isolate those few that the dogs detect. That means going to the dogs' training, collecting the odour from their training aids, looking at their responses, confirming when they do alert, when they don't alert, and even looking at when these compounds appear.
Because the dogs have the ability to locate every stage of decomposition. So we need to make sure that we are finding these compounds in all of those stages, in all of those processes of decomposition, and also in different environments.
We use them around the world. So we know they can find bodies in snow, in water, on the surface, buried in a grave.
I think I'm giving you a good idea of the many challenges that we face. But it's a great puzzle to try and solve, because I get to pair what I do in terms of studying human decomposition with working with the dogs and trying to understand a different biological specimen.
Farha: It must be really challenging too.
Shari: Absolutely. There are days that I question the sanity of this decision. And I do, honestly, admit I probably am not going to solve this problem before my career ends.
But that's research, that's science. It's an ongoing challenge. We constantly find some new things, but it raises more questions.
Then we try to answer those, and that raises more questions. So I wouldn't be doing research if I didn't love that kind of challenge.
But absolutely, we have to look at the environmental variables, even the physiological variables.
Our donors all come to us as unique individuals with their own unique odour and unique physiology. So that can change an odour as well.
And of course, there are times when odour is reduced and changes with wind and all of those kinds of things.
So it is probably one of the more complex problems I could have chosen. But as I said, I love doing it.
Farha: And all of this is trying to answer a very fundamental question in forensics, really the time since death, right? All of these things that you're looking for and trying to isolate are really trying to help get clearer answers about a body that could be found, let's say, in a forest in Quebec in the middle of winter, and maybe springtime police discover it, and it's just finding those answers.
Shari: Definitely. And that's the mandate of everything we do.
We always say that no matter what research topic we're focusing on, it needs to help in some way, whether that's estimating time since death or developing a new method for how we can search for bodies, how we can recover them, or new methods for identifying them.
At the moment we use fingerprints, DNA, dental records, but all of those have challenges as well. So we're constantly looking at new methods or advancing the current methods we have.
But ultimately, it is about assisting those who work in death investigations and providing some meaningful help to locating and identifying victims or human remains.
Farha: Now let's turn to what you call the sort of extrinsic factors in this area of forensics. So these environmental factors that affect decomposition.
When you're observing the bodies, it's a complete system that these bodies are entering.
And as we've discussed, it varies depending on the environment and the place. But water, soil, oxygen, local fauna and flora, and also fungi are big factors in the observations that you're seeing in the field at these facilities.
Shari: Definitely, yes.
Environmental variables are a key part of forensic taphonomy. Certainly understanding the environmental impact on the body, but equally understanding the impact of the body's decomposition process on the environment.
So it actually is a two-way process that we try to study in terms of how these factors can change.
We know that if a body is buried, for example, in soil, that will slow the rate of decomposition compared to one that may be discovered on the surface.
And then we know that, as you say, bacteria and fungi and other biological, or microbial I should say, specimens can also change the rate of decomposition.
But then equally with the vegetation, what we're interested in is that that process of decomposition almost acts like a fertilizer.
It's flushing nutrients into the soil, which is going to change the way the surrounding plants grow, the way they appear. And that's useful information, because we can use vegetation indexes or indicators when we're searching for a body.
So if we know a body is buried, we may look for an anomaly in terms of the vegetation that could be indicative of nutrients in that soil that may be coming from a body.
So as I said, it is very much a two-way process. Whether the environment acts on the body or vice versa, there's a lot of information we can take from that and that we can use if we're searching or if we're identifying.
We may not be able to say how long the person's been deceased, but we could say how long they've been in that environment. And that also can help an investigation, what we call time since deposition.
Farha: So forensic taphonomy really is interdisciplinary then. Some of the things that you're observing are of great interest to people in so many different areas, such as forensic pathology, anthropology, archaeology, entomology, botany, chemistry, microbiology.
So how are you bringing all of this new knowledge that you're gaining, bringing it to the lab? And then how are you able to share it with such a vast variety of different disciplines and areas?
Shari: I think the nice thing of forensic taphonomy is definitely a new discipline.
Really, it did start in the 1980s, much of it from that first facility at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
But because we're a small group, we're a very niche group. We're also a very collaborative group.
The limitation in terms of the number of these facilities means that actually each facility gets a large number of requests from interested researchers, which maybe wouldn't happen if we had a facility in every single city around the world.
So it's great because we all, as directors of these facilities, constantly have people, academics or police or forensic pathologists or anyone really, contacting us to say, "I have an interest in this research and I have a real need for it as well. And this is something I'd like to study."
So most of these people come to us, which is great. I don't have to go looking for collaborators.
Usually they come with these diverse ranges of expertise and disciplinary backgrounds.
So if I've noticed something interesting about a mushroom that's growing in our facility near one of our donors, I know I have a forensic mycologist who already does research there.
So I can just contact he or she and say, "Hey, I've seen this. This is really interesting. What does this mean?"
And that in itself becomes a research project usually.
So it's really a great collaborative network. We have a lot of contacts locally, but also internationally, because we all try to work together.
Every time a question comes up, usually we have somebody who studies that elsewhere and we can get in contact with them. And it usually leads to some type of research.
Even if it's in another part of the world, it still seems to work that way because there's so few of us, I guess.
Ultimately, we all want to know what the others are doing and benefit from each other's research, especially because the decomposition process is not isolated.
I can't just do my chemistry and think it's not being impacted by biology or by environmental science or by bacteria and microbiology.
So I need to work with all these people to really understand my own research. And that sort of develops that collaborative network for me.
Farha: Now, one of the persons you greatly admire is a woman named Ada Lovelace. She was an English mathematician and writer known for her work on Charles Babbage's analytical engine. And she was the first to recognise that the machine had applications beyond pure calculation.
Audio clip: Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, was an English mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine.
She was the first person to recognise that the machine could be applied to tasks beyond pure calculation. Her work on this led her to publish the first algorithm intended to be carried out by such a machine.
As a result, she is sometimes regarded as the first to recognise the full potential of a computing machine and one of the first computer programmers.
Ada Lovelace was born in 1815. She was the only legitimate child of poet Lord Byron and his wife Lady Byron.
He died of disease when Ada was only eight years old, and her mother promoted Ada's interest in mathematics and logic to prevent her from developing her father's perceived insanity.
Although often ill in her childhood, Ada was a student who loved her work. At the age of 20, she married William King in 1835.
King was made Earl of Lovelace in 1838, meaning Ada became the Countess of Lovelace.
Her bright intellect and deftly managed social life brought her into contact with scientists such as Andrew Crosse, Charles Babbage, Sir David Brewster, Charles Wheatstone and Michael Faraday, contacts who she used to further her education.
Ada described her approach to science as poetical.
Her mathematical talents led her to a long working relationship and friendship with fellow British mathematician Charles Babbage. She was particularly interested in Babbage's work on the analytical engine.
Between 1842 and 1843, Ada translated an article from an Italian engineer on Babbage's calculating machine, supplementing it with an elaborate set of her own notes.
These notes contain what many consider to be the first computer program, that is, an algorithm designed to be carried out by a machine.
Sadly, her work was cut short, as Ada died of cancer in 1852 at the age of 36.
Lovelace's notes were important in the early history of computers. She developed a vision of the capability of computers to go beyond mere calculation, while many others, including Babbage himself, focused only on those capabilities.
Her mindset of poetical science led her to ask questions about the analytical engine and examined how individuals and society relate to technology as a collaborative tool.
Farha: So Shari Forbes, you are an innovator in your field, just like Ada Lovelace was, and you were named as one of the top 50 women in analytical science.
How does it feel to be working in something that, as we said, is cutting edge?
Shari: I think for me it's just exciting. Every day is something new.
It's the reason I love my job, because I can actually prove myself wrong on a daily basis. Most people don't like to do that, but I do, because it means we're learning something new, we're learning something innovative. It's very much that visionary work.
Now, certainly Ada Lovelace is a visionary, but I don't correlate myself with her at all.
But it is just that interest in the unknown, that solving of puzzles, I guess, which is a very forensic science thing to say, but I do love doing that.
And I also like being a woman in STEM, I guess. My award for being one of the top women in analytical science was a recognition of that.
I think that links really nicely to Ada Lovelace, because even though she was considered one, well, if you read her history, she's considered the world's first computer programmer.
People will often say to me, "Oh my gosh, that's amazing, the first female computer programmer," and I'll say, "No, no, the world's first." It had nothing to do with being female.
But now actually she is seen as a visionary for women in STEM too. We do celebrate Ada Lovelace Day on October 12th every year.
And she's very closely linked now, whether she wanted to or not, with equity, diversity and inclusion, and gender equity in science.
So in that way, I think I can relate to her. As I said, not being a visionary myself, but definitely being somebody who's passionate about women in STEM, in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and even law, medicine and so on.
Being an advocate for that, I think, is where I relate best with Ada Lovelace.
Farha: Now, there are some downsides to working in your field. I'm sure you have experienced some difficult moments.
In the end, the aim of forensic taphonomy is to serve the justice system and the law.
And so there are some difficult moments where you would be helping the police, let's say, with a murder of a young child or something like that. And you would have to help the police with the knowledge that you and your colleagues have.
So how do you deal with that part of your job?
Shari: I think there's many ways of dealing with that.
As forensic scientists, and the same could be said for police or doctors, we're often told to desensitize.
To a degree, we can do that because we look at things scientifically. I'm a very analytical person. I try to be very pragmatic.
But for me, it's actually quite a fine line between desensitizing and becoming insensitive. That's certainly not something I want to do.
I still want to be able to feel empathy for the people I'm helping, particularly for families of missing loved ones.
So it's a challenge, I'll say that, certainly.
There are certainly cases that have stayed with me, particularly where we've been searching for children or child victims, particularly those where their death could have been avoided, where they simply did not deserve that.
And I guess that's when I could become emotional, and I certainly can become emotional.
But I just have to think about why I'm there and what the family needs me to do for them.
They need me to find, or help to find, that person and to give them that opportunity to grieve.
We often hear people say to provide them with closure. I don't honestly believe there's ever closure in these kinds of scenarios, perhaps not ever for when somebody dies.
But certainly having that knowledge and being able to grieve, I think, can help them in the long term, so that's what I focus on.
It's certainly not a positive that we can focus on, but it is just thinking about what I can do to help, I guess, in a way helps me cope as well.
Farha: And another way of looking at the research that you do, and particularly the facility, where in Quebec now you have five bodies, is that correct, at the facility?
Shari: Yeah.
Farha: So these five bodies, these donors that donated their bodies, you're also witnessing something maybe that a lot of people aren't thinking about.
You're actually witnessing something that's very natural. This is a process of life, of human decomposition. It could happen in a short period, it could happen in a long period, but it is a cycle of life.
Very similar to, let's say, the salmon runs that we see in British Columbia, where the salmon will go back to their original birthplace, their little streams that they came from.
And then you actually see this sort of mass movement of death, really, because they're dying there.
And we know that when they die, they leach all of these nutrients back into the environment, and especially back into some of our rainforests that we have in British Columbia.
And so at the same time, in your forensic studies, you're also witnessing something that is quite phenomenal. It's this phenomenon of death and how our bodies decompose, and how, just like animals, we are very similar.
Shari: It is a very nice way of thinking about it, absolutely.
It's something I also think about, that sort of natural process from life through death.
And we like to think it's certainly a cycle, as you mentioned with the salmon.
But absolutely, we see that process of decomposition, and some people could consider that grotesque or uncomfortable or shocking, but it is so natural.
It is unavoidable, and it is so natural.
I think being able to see what impact the process of decomposition has on the surrounding environment helps us to understand that cycle.
As I mentioned earlier, if I see a mushroom growing near a donor, scientifically I think, "Oh, this is interesting. What is that?"
But what that is, is a result of those nutrients from the body going into the soil and essentially giving birth to a new life form.
So it is a cycle, because death does produce life. The nutrients from that decomposition process definitely produce life.
So it is a really nice way of thinking of it. It's certainly how I think about it.
I was asked once, actually, I was not prepared for the question, but I was asked, "Do I believe in the afterlife?"
I'm not a religious person and I don't per se believe in the afterlife, but to me, when you can see death and decomposition produce life, I guess it is a form of that, in a way.
And it's nice that I actually get to visualise that and to see it happen on a daily basis.
Farha: So we can think of death as something quite beautiful.
And also even what's going inside the body, even though many of us think of it as a permanent sort of end, there is, at the moment of death, all of these things that are happening chemically inside.
There is really a continuum, isn't it?
And even arguably a person that's cremated, their ashes are still coming back into the earth, right? There's really no end. There's no way that we can stop this cycle.
Shari: No, there's not.
Lots of people have tried different preservation forms. I can say a hundred percent there is not one that stops the process of decomposition.
It may slow that down, but there's no way that we know of to preserve a body indefinitely.
So it is that continuum. It is that cycling through life and then through death and cycling back to life again.
I actually had a colleague tell me once that when they had scattered the ashes of somebody, they'd done so at the base of a tree, and they felt like every time they looked at that tree, they could see this, not visually see it, but it brought that memory of that person.
And again, I think that's a really nice way of seeing that, because as you said, those cremains would still be nutrients. They actually would have helped that tree to grow.
So it's a great way to see that process and see the positive and the beauty in what sometimes is considered something quite grotesque.
Farha: People still, especially I would say in Western culture, as we heard you saying at the start, often don't really understand what actually happens after we die.
Shari: That's right. And it's a shame, in my opinion, that it is still such a taboo topic to talk about death and particularly decomposition.
In Western culture, it is so sanitized. I know the history behind it, but I can't always understand it, because if we look to other cultures, they celebrate death and they celebrate that process.
There's many cultures that will leave bodies outside, or they might burn them on a fire, they might put them up on a ledge in a cave, but they'll visit those loved ones every day and they don't see that as a grotesque process at all.
They actually celebrate that person, and they see that burial process as something very meaningful.
So it is a shame that we're so sanitized about decomposition here, but of course I completely understand it.
As I mentioned, the odour is probably one of the things that people really think about and that they find really uncomfortable and shocking.
But for me, I think I'm lucky. I can see the benefits, I can see the positives, I can think about different cultures and how they view this, and we can start to apply some of that same knowledge to what we're seeing as well.
In fact, during the summer in Quebec, we have very hot and warm temperatures, and so the process of decomposition actually turns into mummification.
There's plenty of examples, historical and archaeological, of bodies that have mummified in South America, Papua New Guinea, and sometimes where the cultures have intentionally allowed that process to happen because it is part of their ritual.
So I can draw from all of that knowledge, even though it's 3,000 years old, and see it happening right here in Quebec and understand that.
That's something I really like to be able to relate to as well.
Farha: So I'm going to end our show with bringing you back to the place where you grew up, on that farm in Brewarrina, a rural town located in New South Wales, Australia.
And let's listen to the sound of the Barwon River from a documentary about the Brewarrina Fish Traps, one of Australia's most ancient sites.
Audio clip: That's people, people coming and going, going along the river, as people have done for thousands and thousands of years.
Somebody might be going to fish. Somebody might be just going to sit there quietly. Somebody might be going to swim.
Animals coming down to drink.
It's about how we come and go. Our knowledge comes and goes.
Our knowledge is brought in and then taken away.
The taking, and the bringing, and the giving, the returning, to be given again.
Shari: It's beautiful. It's amazing.
Actually, the sound brings back a lot of memories too. Just the flowing creek and river.
Wow, well done finding that.
Farha: I think it sums up, in a way, the kind of research that you're doing.
There's this cycle that we spoke about, right?
And also, even on the level of forensics, this is what we need to do as a society. We need to find answers to these questions, these difficult questions. And it's really a societal responsibility as well.
Shari: It is.
And definitely, we get a lot of interest from society, from our communities, because I think for the majority of people, they understand, no matter how grotesque this work might be considered, they understand the value and they understand why we need it.
And most people want to help.
We've been so fortunate with our donors that we have had so many people request to donate. That was the case in Australia as well.
I think that reflects that recognition by our community that this is really important work and it helps so many people, and that they can help us as well in terms of being scientists themselves.
They are our teachers at the end of the day. It's them that I learn from on a daily basis.
So I am really indebted, actually, to our communities and society for being so involved in what we do.
And I truly love my job. It's not even a job. I don't even think of it like that.
I wouldn't change it for the world.
And people find that a bit bizarre. You work with the dead and you wouldn't change that.
But no, absolutely. It's truly fascinating.
Farha: You have been tuned into an episode of The Blue Hour on CiTR, the broadcasting voice of the University of British Columbia.
CiTR began as a student club in 1937 and gained a place on the FM dial in 1982.
My name is Farha Guerrero. I'm the volunteer host and producer of The Blue Hour. You can download The Blue Hour podcast on CiTR and also subscribe on Spotify and iTunes.
My guest tonight was Shari Forbes. You can learn more about her research on forensic thanatology on her website at shariforbes.com.
We're going to end tonight's show with another favourite song of hers. This one by Lizzo, titled Good as Hell.
Thank you for listening tonight.
[Music: "Good as Hell" by Lizzo]
Further Reading and Research
Shari Forbes - research, publications and further information on her work in forensic taphonomy and decomposition chemistry.