This is in reaction to former Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban?s March 15 column.

We are inviting readers, who are curious to find out why the nature of a bone in the skull figures prominently in the Aquino-Galman ?double murder,? to read our forensic review of the case: ?Death on the Tarmac: The Credible View.? In that report, we painstakingly proved that only Rolando Galman (not any one of the military escorts on the stairway) could have fired, on the tarmac, the shot that killed Ninoy Aquino.

The bone in question is the ?Petrous part of the temporal bone.? The bone is so named because it is a hard compact bone, in fact the densest bone of the skull. (?Petrous? as in Peter the Rock, or petrified.)

It is understandable for the former chief justice to defend the Court that blocked the reopening of the case during his tenure as chief justice. He also happens to be the ?author? of (or, more correctly, the compiler of essays in) a book titled ?The Bio-age Dawns on the Judiciary,? which pompously trumpets to the world that the Philippine judiciary has entered the Modern Age of Science.

But for him and his scientifically uninformed/ misinformed Supreme Court colleagues to insist that what Justice Regino Hermosisima Jr. pontificated on about the Petrous bone (that ?it is in fact a mere spongy bone akin to cartilage?), even after the error had been pointed out in our forensic report (copies of which were submitted to and hopefully read by the Supreme Court justices), betrays an obdurate and unforgivable ignorance or irremediable idiocy.

Instead of conferring with Hermosisima, Panganiban could have consulted a standard anatomy textbook or a reputable anatomy professor from a respected medical institution (even from the school where he finished his law degree) for a true enlightenment on the subject. Or more directly, he could have used his fingers to fully measure and feel this bone to find out if it had the consistency, softness and texture of a spongy substance or cartilage.

If Panganiban can cite a textbook or an anatomy professor that describes this bone as a ?mere spongy substance, akin to cartilage,? we are willing to have all copies of our report burned.

In every forensic training seminar that we participate in, we never fail to point out that one of the weak pillars of our criminal justice system are judges (at all levels of the judiciary) who are either scientifically uninformed and cannot, or won?t?for (only God knows!) whatever non-judiciary considerations?appreciate the earnest efforts of forensic scientists.

?JEROME B. BAILEN,
UP associate professor (ret.),
forensic anthropologist;
BENITO E. MOLINO, MD,
International Human Rights
forensic consultant