Ethics Challenges for Presenting Genetic Data in Forensic Settings.

Advances in psychiatric science and technology such as genetic testing hold great promise in enhancing care in treatment settings and improving truth-telling in forensic settings. Despite this promise, these emerging technological advances present considerable ethics dilemmas to forensic practitioners because of risks related to coercing evaluees to consent to testing, and not adequately informing people of forensic risks associated with these tests, as well as important prejudicial effects (e.g., the significance of the tests being overvalued by the trier of fact and introducing racial and socioeconomic biases). Ethics theories from Stone, Appelbaum, Griffith, Norko, as well as Weinstock and Darby, are reviewed and applied to the specific challenge of presenting genetic data in parental rights termination proceedings. Dialectical principlism is utilized as a framework to analyze the competing duty considerations in these situations to help guide ethics-based decision-making for forensic experts in these scenarios.