The arson example is an interesting one. As far as I can tell, pretty much all of arson science was fundamentally broken for at least 30 years. What were the b

The arson example is an interesting one. As far as I can tell, pretty much all of arson science was fundamentally broken for at least 30 years. What were the basic principles of the field - that arson fires burned hotter than others, that puddle marks indicated accelerants, that multiple-origin burns indicate arson - are all wrong. Multiple people were executed for arson homicides on this evidence. Some were executed or even convicted after these principles were rejected. Nor was this a "science marches on" thing. The assumptions had simply been made based on observation and intuition, with no formal testing ever. So this is the sort of thing I mean. It's not a poor expert who can be cross-examined. It's an entire field producing entirely broken results for decades using unquestioned best practices. You can't cross-examine "are even textbooks in your field a complete pack of lies?" and win. I understand the concern, I'm not comfortable with this, but I'm also not convinced that black box software is actually much different from what we have now. The grounds for conviction and sentencing are often completely opaque to the defense already. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/07/trial-by-fire http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/07/trial-by-fire https://books.google.com/books?id=GSJ7Ja95oegC&pg=PA382&lpg=PA382 https://books.google.com/books?id=GSJ7Ja95oegC&pg=PA382&lpg=...