i'm more involved in forensics than, uh, apparently the rest of you. i suggest that when thinking about the various forensic "sciences", a good way to think ab

i'm more involved in forensics than, uh, apparently the rest of you. i suggest that when thinking about the various forensic "sciences", a good way to think about their reliability is "was this concocted for purely legal reasons, or is this a bunch of normal scientific/medical techniques bent to forensic purposes?" that will quickly let you divide things up into "bullshit" and "not bullshit". bite marks, tool marks, firearm testing? all concocted to generate convictions; bullshit. nobody uses any of those things for anything except legal cases. forensic toxicology, drug chemistry, dna? normal science bent to forensic purposes; not bullshit. those were all developed elsewhere, by scientists doing real science, and then later applied to legal cases. can the folks doing the testing go bad? yes. the best and only way to address that is for the defense in cases to bring in their own independent experts, and do their own testing if enough sample remains. at least in the US, the best way to make that happen is to fund public defenders better, which solves all sorts of other problems, too.