This is something I find extremely scary, because an unusual series of events (accidental fire, accidental drowning, suicide) could be framed to look like something entirely different (arson, murder), which could drag any one of us into a nightmare. If you don't have the money to hire your own experts and a strong legal team, potentially bankrupting yourself, you are at the mercy of a motivated prosecutor with nearly unlimited resources.
In 2009 a scathing report was released by the National Academy of Sciences that essentially says that blood spatter, handwriting, hair, fingerprints, and bite mark analysis are all junk science[0]. If two "experts" can look at the same evidence and come to entirely different conclusions, how is this science? It's opinion wrapped up as scientific fact. Who knows how many people are innocently convicted. It's terrifying.
An excerpt from WikiPedia about hair analysis:
The outcry from defense attorneys has forced the FBI to open up on disputed hair analysis matches since 2012. The Justice department began an "unprecedented" review of old cases involving hair analysis in July 2013, examining more than 21,000 cases referred to the FBI Lab's hair unit from 1982 through 1999, and including as many as 27 death penalty convictions in which FBI experts may have exaggerated the reliability of hair analysis in their testimony. The review is still in progress, but in 2015, it released findings on 268 trials examined so far in which hair analysis was used. The review concluded that in 257 of these 268 trials, the analysts gave flawed testimony that overstated the accuracy of the findings in favor of the prosecution. About 1200 cases remain to be examined.[1]
Something I really don't understand about the American system (I'm British) is why anyone could possibly think it's a good idea to make Prosecutors and Judges elected offices!
The whole "tough on crime" narrative is toxic when it plays into electoral politics because it gives prosecutors an incentive to pick fights they know they can win (targeting vulnerable people with limited resources to hire an effective defense) and it rewards judges for portraying themselves as the vengeful defenders of the wronged by imposing unduly harsh sentences.
Seriously? Other countries do just fine with prosecutors and judges who are unelected civil servants, and don't seem to have quite the same track record of excessive victimization of the vulnerable.
>If two "experts" can look at the same evidence and come to entirely different conclusions, how is this science?
Scientism is a mental disease perpetuated by people who seek social persuasion through whatever means convinces a person/the public rather than objective epidemiologically derived truth. It's easier to appear smart by accepting dubious "science" than rebuking it with skepticism.
Even DNA is suspect, if not because the base science is junk but simply because keeping some semblance of an "evidence chain" requires much more care than is presently taken.
German police was chasing the "phantom of Heilbronn" until it turned out that all the found DNA was actually of some laboratory assistant:
"Opinion" is a subjective judgment based on personal weighing of facts by priority and probability. We must rely on judges and juries and expert opinions to form opinions.
This junk forensics is just "guessing" and "prejudice".
Also with the other, it seems to me they are not 'junk science'. More they are indicators, not absolutes. So people are using them incorrectly, not they shouldn't be used.
This is one of my biggest fears about living in Texas. I've seen the justice system at work up close and it's just a mindless life crushing beast.
Furthermore in many counties there's two prosecutors in the courtroom, meaning the republican "tough on crime" judge is no more than additional help for the prosecution.
> In an exceptional move by the notoriously conservative panel, the BPP agreed that Cacy should be paroled, just six years after she was convicted.
She served 6 years before parole, not 25 years behind bars
I'm far more concerned with Cameron Todd Willingham. Governor Perry had this evidence, that much of the state evidence being used was junk science, and did nothing while an innocent man was put to death. Shameful.
"Expert" witnesses for US courtrooms is a special kind of a parallel voodoo-science world. Especially when it comes to arson.
Prosecutors like to pick the same people to testify as "experts" and their top qualification is that they have testified before as "experts". I imagine many have optimized putting up an act and throwing around fancy terms to make it seems really precise and scientific. Their future employment depends on that.
In civil cases, where both parties often have a significant budget for hiring experts, the experts often actually are top people from their fields but who are retired.
I watched a patent trial, and an important part of one of the claims was that certain data from a hard disk was cached in a RAM cache.
The side that wanted to see the patent invalidated brought up some earlier patent that involved caching some data on a hard disk, and claimed it was prior art that should have been considered. Their expert said that "RAM" stands for "random access memory", and a disk is random access and it is memory, so that any programmer or engineer who read the patent that called for using a RAM cache would understand that caching that data on a hard disk would count.
That, of course, was one of the most ridiculous things I'd ever heard. However, the expert certainly was a real expert. He was a professor emeritus and former head of the computer science department of a top CS school. In fact, he had been the one who started the CS program there and brought it to its position as a top program. He was a fellow of the IEEE, and his published papers back from when he was an active researcher were some of the seminal papers from the beginning of the modern semiconductor and VLSI era.
So how the hell did this guy think that "RAM cache" is commonly understood to include a cache stored on a hard disk?
I asked the lawyers for the side that was defending the patent, and their expert (another retired professor emeritus, IEEE fellow, yadda yadda...) about that. They explained to me that experts in a trial like this will get paid $50-100k or more to testify in this kind of trial. They basically have to just spend a few hours reading a patent, and then come up with an argument for the side that is paying them that will sound good to a jury and that is not provably a lie. Then they have to come and spend maybe a week at the trial location, being there to help the lawyers out and to spend maybe an hour on the stand. So basically $100k for a couple of weeks of not too strenuous work, two plane trips, and a week in a hotel.
They don't have to worry that colleagues will find out about the dumb things they said at trial and hold it against them or that it might tarnish their legacy or reputation, because everyone in the field knows about these expert witness gigs. When they hear that Professor Soandso said something really stupid about RAM cache at a trial, they just think, "Oh...I guess Professor Soandso wanted a new RV" or "Professor Soandso wanted a new boat". (In the case of the expert for the patent owner, it was to be one of the earliest to own a Tesla).
Similar junk in the UK has put many innocent parents away for "shaking baby syndrome" just based on a theory, not proven by scientific evidence.
Expert witnesses who don't agree with the consensus establishment, have even been banned from practicing medicine, thus most now refuse to testify.
You might want to read the papers those banned doctors refer to, because the doctors often mangle the science.
Here's one case of a doctor who had been struck off by the GMC. The judge overturned that decision, but has maintained the ban on her acting as an expert witness because she mangles the science so badly.
The nightmare is also that in some countries, when the police knocks on the door to arrest you, you might get killed in a gruel archaic ritual called "execution" at the end, even if you did nothing wrong, just the odds were against you. Here in Germany I do not have to fear the police. If if the judges wrongly sent me to jail "for life", at least I'd have some hope that one day I can convince them they were wrong and get to freedom again.
After two or three decades behind bars, you don't care about your freedom anymore. (Watch "The Shawshank Redemption" and see what happens to Brooks, if you don't get what I mean.)
I really don't get where this ridiculous focus of human rights activists on the death penalty come from. Sure, death is irreversible, but so is locking someone away for decades. I actually think decades behind bars is more cruel than a swift death.
Which reminds me... why aren't the false experts who caused the convictions of innocents locked away themselves? How is killing a man by lying about evidence not murder?
> If if the judges wrongly sent me to jail "for life", at least I'd have some hope that one day I can convince them they were wrong and get to freedom again.
Is your German government any more able to restore your lost decades than my government is able to restore lost life?
For some crimes execution is unjust; for others it is just. It is just as unjust to allow someone who deserves death to live as it is unjust to execute someone who deserves life.
The other case mentioned, the Willingham case is even more horrifying. A man was convicted of murdering his children and sentenced to death on bogus evidence. When presented with evidence to the contrary, the state of Texas under Rick Perry ignored it and allowed the man to be executed. This is state sanctioned murder of an innocent man. Why is the Governor not on trial for this?
We need a pretext for what we want to do, which in America is to lock people up. If we can fool ourselves with something that sorta looks and smells like science, that fits the bill perfectly.
I don't think it's fair to say we "want to lock people up". We need to believe that we can make ourselves safe from criminals. We need to believe can do some science magic and tell the difference between the criminals and the regular people so we can sleep at night. Admitting we can't calls in to question the whole premise of locking the bad people up. A judge or politician can't come out and say, "we have no reliable way of deciding guilt or innocence." That is reality but we can't allow ourselves to admit it.
I always despite this question so much; mainly because everything is a cause of something and a symptom of something at the same time; there is nothing isolated in this world. So you have to give a lot of context to see if -in that context- it is a cause or an effect.
I'm this particular case you could say stupidity is the root cause, but saying so it's too abstract to be usefu/actionable.
Wow. 27 years for burning down your business and claiming insurance, even when it doesn't kill or seriously injure anyone, and the value is only ~$200,000. Guilty or innocent, that's a completely obscene sentence!
How can anyone in Texas safely make an insurance claim for fire when the risk of misunderstanding is so great?
In this particular case, it all seems to hinge on people's opinions of whether a flying can could have jumped over some barrier or shot a plume of flame in some direction and other subtle details about the scene that can't possibly be known without actually reconstructing or simulating the whole thing.
Somethings the main qualification of some so-called experts is a certification from a 6-hour or 6-week class. From then on, they are eligible to testify as an expert in serious criminal cases.
Anti-discrimination laws are even worse in that discrimination can happen with no evidence at all. One of the methods used to enforce them (particularly in things like hiring) is statistics, most of which assumes employees are interchangeable commodities. They were designed back in the 1960s for things like manual labor jobs. I am willing to suggest a compromise to limit them to these kinds of jobs.
[+] [-] seibelj|9 years ago|reply
In 2009 a scathing report was released by the National Academy of Sciences that essentially says that blood spatter, handwriting, hair, fingerprints, and bite mark analysis are all junk science[0]. If two "experts" can look at the same evidence and come to entirely different conclusions, how is this science? It's opinion wrapped up as scientific fact. Who knows how many people are innocently convicted. It's terrifying.
An excerpt from WikiPedia about hair analysis:
The outcry from defense attorneys has forced the FBI to open up on disputed hair analysis matches since 2012. The Justice department began an "unprecedented" review of old cases involving hair analysis in July 2013, examining more than 21,000 cases referred to the FBI Lab's hair unit from 1982 through 1999, and including as many as 27 death penalty convictions in which FBI experts may have exaggerated the reliability of hair analysis in their testimony. The review is still in progress, but in 2015, it released findings on 268 trials examined so far in which hair analysis was used. The review concluded that in 257 of these 268 trials, the analysts gave flawed testimony that overstated the accuracy of the findings in favor of the prosecution. About 1200 cases remain to be examined.[1]
[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/us/05forensics.html?pagewa...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair_analysis#Microscopic_hair...
[+] [-] cstross|9 years ago|reply
The whole "tough on crime" narrative is toxic when it plays into electoral politics because it gives prosecutors an incentive to pick fights they know they can win (targeting vulnerable people with limited resources to hire an effective defense) and it rewards judges for portraying themselves as the vengeful defenders of the wronged by imposing unduly harsh sentences.
Seriously? Other countries do just fine with prosecutors and judges who are unelected civil servants, and don't seem to have quite the same track record of excessive victimization of the vulnerable.
[+] [-] pmarreck|9 years ago|reply
They've already exonerated about 340 people, which likely amounts to many lifetimes of innocents' jail time avoided
[+] [-] DINKDINK|9 years ago|reply
Scientism is a mental disease perpetuated by people who seek social persuasion through whatever means convinces a person/the public rather than objective epidemiologically derived truth. It's easier to appear smart by accepting dubious "science" than rebuking it with skepticism.
[+] [-] revelation|9 years ago|reply
German police was chasing the "phantom of Heilbronn" until it turned out that all the found DNA was actually of some laboratory assistant:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_of_Heilbronn
Just recently there was another highly dubious report of some DNA link between one high profile case and another:
http://www.dw.com/en/thuringia-to-check-potential-neo-nazi-c...
[+] [-] gohrt|9 years ago|reply
This junk forensics is just "guessing" and "prejudice".
[+] [-] Gustomaximus|9 years ago|reply
Really? The seem to be fairly reliable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerprint
Also with the other, it seems to me they are not 'junk science'. More they are indicators, not absolutes. So people are using them incorrectly, not they shouldn't be used.
[+] [-] manachar|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ryanmarsh|9 years ago|reply
Furthermore in many counties there's two prosecutors in the courtroom, meaning the republican "tough on crime" judge is no more than additional help for the prosecution.
[+] [-] ryuker16|9 years ago|reply
For example.... Finger prints match, DNA matches, hair sample match.... Likelyhood of three experts being wrong is statisticly extremely low....
[+] [-] vacri|9 years ago|reply
Happens all the time in science. You might be thinking of engineering, where opinions vary much less.
[+] [-] cloudjacker|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ihaveahadron|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mabbo|9 years ago|reply
She served 6 years before parole, not 25 years behind bars
I'm far more concerned with Cameron Todd Willingham. Governor Perry had this evidence, that much of the state evidence being used was junk science, and did nothing while an innocent man was put to death. Shameful.
[+] [-] rdtsc|9 years ago|reply
Prosecutors like to pick the same people to testify as "experts" and their top qualification is that they have testified before as "experts". I imagine many have optimized putting up an act and throwing around fancy terms to make it seems really precise and scientific. Their future employment depends on that.
[+] [-] cven714|9 years ago|reply
Reminds me of this guy. Painful to watch, scary to imagine him in a courtroom.
[+] [-] tzs|9 years ago|reply
I watched a patent trial, and an important part of one of the claims was that certain data from a hard disk was cached in a RAM cache.
The side that wanted to see the patent invalidated brought up some earlier patent that involved caching some data on a hard disk, and claimed it was prior art that should have been considered. Their expert said that "RAM" stands for "random access memory", and a disk is random access and it is memory, so that any programmer or engineer who read the patent that called for using a RAM cache would understand that caching that data on a hard disk would count.
That, of course, was one of the most ridiculous things I'd ever heard. However, the expert certainly was a real expert. He was a professor emeritus and former head of the computer science department of a top CS school. In fact, he had been the one who started the CS program there and brought it to its position as a top program. He was a fellow of the IEEE, and his published papers back from when he was an active researcher were some of the seminal papers from the beginning of the modern semiconductor and VLSI era.
So how the hell did this guy think that "RAM cache" is commonly understood to include a cache stored on a hard disk?
I asked the lawyers for the side that was defending the patent, and their expert (another retired professor emeritus, IEEE fellow, yadda yadda...) about that. They explained to me that experts in a trial like this will get paid $50-100k or more to testify in this kind of trial. They basically have to just spend a few hours reading a patent, and then come up with an argument for the side that is paying them that will sound good to a jury and that is not provably a lie. Then they have to come and spend maybe a week at the trial location, being there to help the lawyers out and to spend maybe an hour on the stand. So basically $100k for a couple of weeks of not too strenuous work, two plane trips, and a week in a hotel.
They don't have to worry that colleagues will find out about the dumb things they said at trial and hold it against them or that it might tarnish their legacy or reputation, because everyone in the field knows about these expert witness gigs. When they hear that Professor Soandso said something really stupid about RAM cache at a trial, they just think, "Oh...I guess Professor Soandso wanted a new RV" or "Professor Soandso wanted a new boat". (In the case of the expert for the patent owner, it was to be one of the earliest to own a Tesla).
[+] [-] api|9 years ago|reply
It's a socially distributed form of confirmation bias.
[+] [-] garyclarke27|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanBC|9 years ago|reply
Here's one case of a doctor who had been struck off by the GMC. The judge overturned that decision, but has maintained the ban on her acting as an expert witness because she mangles the science so badly.
https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/squi...
[+] [-] geff82|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 08-15|9 years ago|reply
I really don't get where this ridiculous focus of human rights activists on the death penalty come from. Sure, death is irreversible, but so is locking someone away for decades. I actually think decades behind bars is more cruel than a swift death.
Which reminds me... why aren't the false experts who caused the convictions of innocents locked away themselves? How is killing a man by lying about evidence not murder?
[+] [-] zeveb|9 years ago|reply
Is your German government any more able to restore your lost decades than my government is able to restore lost life?
For some crimes execution is unjust; for others it is just. It is just as unjust to allow someone who deserves death to live as it is unjust to execute someone who deserves life.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ransom1538|9 years ago|reply
Really? That lesson didn't stick.
[+] [-] rmchugh|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] draw_down|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aero142|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] metafunctor|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notgood|9 years ago|reply
I'm this particular case you could say stupidity is the root cause, but saying so it's too abstract to be usefu/actionable.
[+] [-] TillE|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tloewald|9 years ago|reply
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/07/trial-by-fire
[+] [-] johnhattan|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Hondor|9 years ago|reply
How can anyone in Texas safely make an insurance claim for fire when the risk of misunderstanding is so great?
In this particular case, it all seems to hinge on people's opinions of whether a flying can could have jumped over some barrier or shot a plume of flame in some direction and other subtle details about the scene that can't possibly be known without actually reconstructing or simulating the whole thing.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] finid|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edblarney|9 years ago|reply
Because I'm sure we are using some 'junk science' we just don't understand at the present time.
[+] [-] lanius|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GirlsCanCode|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ihaveahadron|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] gourou|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mason240|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yuhong|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] charonn0|9 years ago|reply