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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Trump DOJ Snuck In One Last Effort to Push Junk Science in Court
With just days left before Joe Bidens inauguration, the DOJ abruptly responded to a milestone report on forensic science published years ago. In 2016, Barack Obamas Presidents Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, or PCAST, composed of renowned scientists, pulled the curtain back on the misuse of forensic science in American courts. The councils report concluded that methods frequently relied upon by prosecutors to convict people, like firearms and bitemark analysis, lack basic scientific validity.
Just days before Joe Biden took office, however, Trumps DOJ issued an unsigned 26-page statement designed to undermine those findings. It was a smoke-and-mirrors attempt to use the credibility of the federal government to prop up the uncritical use of flawed forensic evidence that has contributed to hundreds of wrongful convictions. Like the Trump administrations last-minute execution spree, the statement seems calculated to advance a regressive, reactionary, and cruel system of criminal prosecution.
The science part of forensic science is much murkier than crime shows like Law & Order or NCIS suggest. On TV, we might see a white-coated scientist gravely study a bullet mark on a computer screen as an algorithm scans a database for matches, ultimately landing on the culprits gun and cracking the case. But these TV depictions bear little resemblance to actual forensics. In the 2016 report, PCAST cautioned that several pattern-matching disciplines, like firearms, bite mark, and hair comparison, are highly subjective, involve circular reasoning, and have been insufficiently tested. They rely on subjective comparisonsessentially, eyeballing itdressed up with the gloss of seemingly scientific language.
PCAST also offered several practical recommendations for improvement. The council called for judges to carefully assess the scientific validity of forensics methods before admitting them in court and recommended scientists conduct more research and improve the standards of each science, among other things. A core conclusion of the report is that these methods need to undergo well-designed, empirical testing that reflects real-life cases. This testing is necessary to determine which disciplines are scientifically valid and which are essentially junk science.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/02/trump-doj-forensic-science-pcast.amp?__twitter_impression=true
SunSeeker
(51,545 posts)Hermit-The-Prog
(33,309 posts)trumPutin scattered so much garbage everywhere that it might take all of us to clean it up.