11 ms·

Are courts keeping “junk science” out of the courtroom?

83 points by EndXA 7y ago

raxxorrax 7y ago
That has probably never been the case for psychological evaluation. As the article hints at, the assessments should be under strong scrutiny. Not only in the courtroom for that matter. While I do think it preferable to get an opinion about criminal responsibility, it should be considered as an educated guess.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  Are these the same psychological evaluations that psychiatrists do to determine if somebody can be involuntarily committed? Because that sounds like an even bigger problem than this being abused in the criminal justice system. At least in the latter you tend to have rights afforded to you, whereas in the case of the former in some places they can literally even bar you from speaking to an attorney.
  - openasocket 7y ago
    There are two situations in the US in which a person can be committed against their will. The first is if the person is considered a threat to themselves or others. I don't believe there's a standard evaluation for that. But the threat needs to be immediate and explicit. A homeless person wandering through a park shouting he's going to kill the president isn't going to cut it. However, that person could wind up arrested, which brings us to the second reason a person could be involuntarily committed: being mentally unfit to stand trial. And for that there are standardized evaluations. Keep in mind the bar for being mentally fit to stand trial is pretty low. It basically means you understand what a judge is, what a jury is, what the lawyers do, being able to communicate with and understand your lawyer, etc. If you are found unfit to stand trial, you will be involuntarily committed until such a time as you are considered fit to stand trial.
    - Mirioron 7y ago
      >If you are found unfit to stand trial, you will be involuntarily committed until such a time as you are considered fit to stand trial. So, indefinite incarceration without being able to see an attorney or even a judge? Any system will have cracks and people do fall through those.
      - openasocket 7y ago
        You can still see an attorney while committed, and you will be periodically re-evaluated and that goes before a judge. As for cracks, I'm aware of cases where a person has been put on a 72 hour hold inappropriately, but one bigger issue is declaring people mentally fit for trial who really aren't. I know institutions in Florida have been criticized for basically doing the bare minimum to make people appear to be just barely mentally fit. You are correct that people found mentally unfit to stand trial can remain committed for years, particularly those with drug-resistant schizophrenia. Tragically, for some of the most vulnerable members of society this is the best case scenario. People with severe schizophrenia who can't function often end up on the street, suffering hardships and victimized. There are parents who's child is on the street, getting frostbite and being assaulted, who go to any psychologist they can find to try to find someone to declare their child a threat to themselves or others so they can get into treatment. But they rarely are. Often they just have to hope their child commits some minor infraction like shop lifting and wind up declared unfit to stand trial so they can get the treatment they need.
        Mirioron 7y ago
        Then there are people like Gustl Mollath: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustl_Mollath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustl_Mollath You make it sound like this is only used for good and that nothing can ever go wrong with this system. That's not true. While you do get reevaluated, you get reevaluated by colleagues of the person (or the same person) who initially committed you. Furthermore, you're forced to take mind altering substances at their say-so and are imprisoned in a place, where any sign of fear or anxiety is counted against you. Also, in some places it's possible for the psychiatrist to determine that contact with an attorney would "exacerbate your condition" and can bar you from seeing one. I would much rather be on the street and free than indefinitely locked up and treated as poorly as people in mental institutions are.
plopz 7y ago
Related video of Last Week Tonight on different kinds of junk science: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScmJvmzDcG0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScmJvmzDcG0 There does seem to be some issues with how the court system has failed to keep up with the modern day. Issues with scalability, accessibility and science literacy are leading to a general distrust of the system.
gumby 7y ago
As fingerprints and “lie detectors” are still generally accepted it seems the answer is “no”
- zchrykng 7y ago
  Fingerprints are actually pretty accurate, though no perfect. Polygraphs are generally not admissible it court so I don't know what you are talking about.
  - fenomas 7y ago
    When last I read up on fingerprinting it was pretty dodgy - the problem being not that it's inaccurate, but that nobody really knows how accurate it is. Apparently the professional society that analysts all belong to forbids its members from participating in studies, taking the position that it's "100% accurate when done properly" (which is clearly meaningless). It's probably 4-5 years since I read about this, it'd be nice if things have changed.
    - staticautomatic 7y ago
      I work in a consulting field where the professional society forbids its members from publishing statistics on client success. There are some good reasons it's generally frowned upon but it's also the only remotely objective measure of whether anyone actually benefits from your work.
    - phkahler 7y ago
      >> Apparently the professional society that analysts all belong to forbids its members from participating in studies, taking the position that it's "100% accurate when done properly" Refusal to run a gauge R&R while insisting errors are due to the operator is a sure sign of a problem. If it hasn't been done, that's one thing but refusing to allow it is quite another.
      - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
        It's the same problem as it is with most anything. They want to use huge databases, but to do that usefully you need an unrealistically low false positive rate. Even if the rate was actually really good -- something like 99.9% accuracy -- if you apply that to a database with a ten million people in it, you get ten thousand false positives, which is crap. If you pick one of the matches at random, they want to be able to claim that it's a 99.9% chance that it's them, but it's really a 99.99% chance that it isn't. Or worse, since it's possible the true perpetrator wasn't in the database. Even for things like DNA that theoretically can do better than 99.9%, you can't get much better than that in practice because before you can, the error rate starts to be dominated by human error rather than coincident matches.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
tyingq 7y ago
Aside from courts, the constant use of garbage like polygraphs by the police, employers, and others is regrettable.
- astura 7y ago
  Interestingly, in the US most private employers are not allowed to polygraph their employees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_Polygraph_Protection_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_Polygraph_Protection_... >However, the act does permit polygraph tests to be administered to certain applicants for job with security firms (such as armored car, alarm, and guard companies) and of pharmaceutical manufacturers, distributors, and dispensers. The law does not cover federal, state, and local government agencies. Since doesn't apply to any governments (local, state, federal) so so government employees are subjected to polygraphs. Interestingly, it can be argued that polygraphs may have their place in a limited amount of employment situations as long as the lying/truthful results are thrown out as the test may work as a "placebo" for the interviewee to admit to serious skeletons in their closet. https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/23/16511732/border-patrol-polygraph-trump-boots-on-border https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/23/16511732/border-patrol-p... >Polygraph results are of questionable scientific value, but the interviews have an unexpected benefit apart from their dubious powers of detection: under pressure from interviewers, applicants frequently admit to wrongdoing. To be clear I personally lean towards not using polygraphs at all for employment situations.
  - himinlomax 7y ago
    Polygraphs should not be used at all, for anything except maybe research.
  - staticautomatic 7y ago
    "it can be argued that polygraphs may have their place in a limited amount of employment situations as long as the lying/truthful results are thrown out as the test may work as a "placebo" for the interviewee to admit to serious skeletons in their closet." If the test cannot distinguish between true and false, then any purported "skeleton" is as likely to be false as it is to be true.
alistairSH 7y ago
It isn't news that the courts allow whatever junk science leads to convictions. Courts have allowed drug-sniffing dogs as evidence for ages. They're barely more accurate than a coin toss and easily persuaded to give false "testimony" by their handlers.
- mjevans 7y ago
  A coin toss with little false negatives might be a good filter for a more annoying or expensive test. I think that would be a fine use of the tool even if I agree that as primary evidence it might be lacking.
  - jariel 7y ago
    Yes, that's just it, proportionality. Dogs might be good to sniff out contraband or whatever to flag searches, but perhaps not as incontrovertible evidence of something.
    - notahacker 7y ago
      How often do cases rely on dogs as 'incontrovertible evidence of something though'. It's not like they testify! If the dog's mentioned at all, surely normally it's background context to why the person was searched and the drug found [and if the police are lying about the finding, it's not the dog's fault!]
      - liability 7y ago
        Nothing is the dog's fault, because the dog is a dog. But that's beyond the point.
        notahacker 7y ago
        The point is that if a law enforcement person lies about finding something due to their dog, the problem is juries [reasonably] trust the law enforcement personnel are telling the truth about what they find afterwards, not that they trust the dog's instincts. Indeed your average jury is almost guaranteed to have someone with enough interest in dogs to know they sometimes react to things other than suspicious substances.
geophile 7y ago
The New Yorker had a really interesting article about arson forensics, a few years ago. It interleaved the case of someone being executed for arson, with a thorough debunking of the science behind his conviction. And then fiber analysis has been debunked too. And the list goes one: hysteria over child abuse combined with well-meaning but incompetent interviewers creating false memories in supposed victims. The problems with coerced confessions. It's all quite terrifying.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Forensic "science" is full of pseudoscience that charlatans use to put innocent people in jail for money. https://youtu.be/ScmJvmzDcG0 https://youtu.be/ScmJvmzDcG0
- fsh 7y ago
  Link to the article (which is definitely worth a read): https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/07/trial-by-fire https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/07/trial-by-fire
- djsumdog 7y ago
  There was a Citations Needed podcast about pseudoscience in the criminal justice system: https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-94-the-goofy-pseudoscience-copaganda-of-tv-forensics https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-94-the-goofy-pseu... It's an interesting podcast, but their interviewee sucked and she didn't really cite any actual science; just hand waved away things. I've found the studies they cite on fingerprints (your fingerprint could match up with 1 in ~300 people; they're not as unique as once though -- the study that's often cited is from the FBI) but I can't find anything on gun/bullet print identification. Supposedly you can't match a bullet to a gun, especially with more modern firearms with precise milling. Yet all the sourced I've found should photos of bullets with distinct patterns that seem to match a particular firearm.
  - manicdee 7y ago
    Then we find that all these photos are stock photos from the depths of FBI labs and none of the photographs show an actual slug collected from a crime scene.
tyingq 7y ago
I heard an interesting one on a Dateline. Cops had some DNA they could not match. So they did phenotyping and turned the info (hair color, eye color, etc) into a sketch. And that was enough to get court orders for people that matched the sketch to submit DNA samples. There was a video of the police department announcing it, and even endorsing the company (Parabon) in the announcement. Maybe not complete junk science, but sketchy legal ground to me.
- SQueeeeeL 7y ago
  It's sketchy legal ground. Basically they could say "everyone with blonde hair and brown eyes must submit", and through other extralegal means have found out the culprit had blonde hair and brown eyes. They manufactured a way to search and arrest them.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    And then all that data sits in a database forever.
  - rtkwe 7y ago
    My question is was this everyone over a large area or were they going to a pool of people they already had some suspicion on. If they have a group of suspects and are using this to narrow down who to actually have submit samples it's more ok to me.
    - tyingq 7y ago
      From an existing pool.
turk73 7y ago
Several major things bother me and junk science isn't even in my top 3. 1) Big shots don't get indicted at all. We have a 2-tier system of justice where only "little people" are hanging out in the breeze. The real law breakers are tolerated and even encouraged. When Barr, when? 2) Crimes such as voter fraud are set at the lowest possible priority and given to junior prosecutors who are expected to fuck up the cases so they get dropped. Thus, voter fraud is never aggressively pursued and it's joked about (I know this second hand because a close relative is a prosecutor). Voter fraud is a massive problem in the US, massive, and yet the fake statistics indicate the exact opposite. 3) People committing serious felonies are back on the street in record time because "muh racism," able to continue their crime waves (see: NY). If the system isn't going to take serious crimes seriously, then let's repeal all those laws and just get on with the anarchy so we can at least put down the worst individuals ourselves. If the system won't function, someone else will take care of it.
dontbenebby 7y ago
Betteridge's law of headlines strikes again >Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no". It is named after Ian Betteridge, a British technology journalist who wrote about it in 2009 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
openasocket 7y ago
My parents are both clinical psychologists, and my father used to do some evaluations for the courts. If I remember correctly, he would do evaluations to see if a person is mentally fit to stand trial, and would recommend to the judge if the person would be better served with psychological help than prison time. Some context: - Being mentally fit to stand trial is an very low bar to pass. You just need to understand what a judge is, what a jury is, etc. Generally people who don't pass either have some sort of intellectual disability or severe schizophrenia. - The article lists a ton of different situations where psychologists are involved in the legal system, and I don't see a breakdown on what the psychologist is attempting to do. I know my Dad didn't use much more than an IQ test and some basic questions to try and diagnose a couple of clinical conditions. I'd expect some amount of pseudoscience if one side in a messy divorce hires a psychologist to try and show the other side is a bad parent, or the defense in a criminal case trying to show the defendant was in a fragile emotional state and deserves a reduced sentence.
ci5er 7y ago
Of course they can't. Most Americans believe in some junk or another.
hackermailman 7y ago
They still use blood splatter experts which when I heard it as a juror seemed like pseudoscience, extracting all kinds of assumptions.
cmhnn 7y ago
First of all something called "Psychological Science" already raises my hackles. Science in general has become so corrupt and politically oriented it makes killing elephants to vilify your technical rival's creation look understated. We have so much useless "science" being funded and won by professional grant hounds that garbage is inevitable. The US has a legal system not a justice system. I suspect that is true of many countries. Once you are caught up in it then you will realize it isn't personal and it has nothing to do with the truth or justice. We have incentivized "winning" of trials and have blindly gone along with the idea that having both sides behave horribly ensures fairness because well..What else can you do? Might be time to step back and think if a bunch of premises are working out. Does giving some wannabe tyrant a lifetime job really result in good decision making because they are "free" of political influence? Is it cool to allow for things like fine print and to allow lawyers to be immunized from many bad behaviors because lawyers keep writing rules in such a way to keep lawyers employed? Is it really cool that a prosecutor can lock someone up for 20 years who was innocent but that the recourse is some lawsuit where everyone pays for the settlement and they get to basically get away with "oops"? Is it cool a defense lawyer can "win" a case where they know their client is a child molesting cannibal? Philosophy and big questions may seem quaint and are often the target of people who claim they are some form of scientist but for some reason my non scientist self and many average people seem to be able to suspect that the legal system is a bit fucked up, paying someone to publish papers on the implications of tyrannosaurus rex having created a vegan matriarchy might also be fucked up and if you let those things near each other some really bad stuff happens unless you get serious about fixing the core of problems both of them have.

83 points by EndXA 7y ago

That has probably never been the case for psychological evaluation. As the article hints at, the assessments should be under strong scrutiny. Not only in the courtroom for that matter. While I do think it preferable to get an opinion about criminal responsibility, it should be considered as an educated guess.

Mirioron 7y ago
Are these the same psychological evaluations that psychiatrists do to determine if somebody can be involuntarily committed? Because that sounds like an even bigger problem than this being abused in the criminal justice system. At least in the latter you tend to have rights afforded to you, whereas in the case of the former in some places they can literally even bar you from speaking to an attorney.
- openasocket 7y ago
  There are two situations in the US in which a person can be committed against their will. The first is if the person is considered a threat to themselves or others. I don't believe there's a standard evaluation for that. But the threat needs to be immediate and explicit. A homeless person wandering through a park shouting he's going to kill the president isn't going to cut it. However, that person could wind up arrested, which brings us to the second reason a person could be involuntarily committed: being mentally unfit to stand trial. And for that there are standardized evaluations. Keep in mind the bar for being mentally fit to stand trial is pretty low. It basically means you understand what a judge is, what a jury is, what the lawyers do, being able to communicate with and understand your lawyer, etc. If you are found unfit to stand trial, you will be involuntarily committed until such a time as you are considered fit to stand trial.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    >If you are found unfit to stand trial, you will be involuntarily committed until such a time as you are considered fit to stand trial. So, indefinite incarceration without being able to see an attorney or even a judge? Any system will have cracks and people do fall through those.
    - openasocket 7y ago
      You can still see an attorney while committed, and you will be periodically re-evaluated and that goes before a judge. As for cracks, I'm aware of cases where a person has been put on a 72 hour hold inappropriately, but one bigger issue is declaring people mentally fit for trial who really aren't. I know institutions in Florida have been criticized for basically doing the bare minimum to make people appear to be just barely mentally fit. You are correct that people found mentally unfit to stand trial can remain committed for years, particularly those with drug-resistant schizophrenia. Tragically, for some of the most vulnerable members of society this is the best case scenario. People with severe schizophrenia who can't function often end up on the street, suffering hardships and victimized. There are parents who's child is on the street, getting frostbite and being assaulted, who go to any psychologist they can find to try to find someone to declare their child a threat to themselves or others so they can get into treatment. But they rarely are. Often they just have to hope their child commits some minor infraction like shop lifting and wind up declared unfit to stand trial so they can get the treatment they need.
      - Mirioron 7y ago
        Then there are people like Gustl Mollath: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustl_Mollath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustl_Mollath You make it sound like this is only used for good and that nothing can ever go wrong with this system. That's not true. While you do get reevaluated, you get reevaluated by colleagues of the person (or the same person) who initially committed you. Furthermore, you're forced to take mind altering substances at their say-so and are imprisoned in a place, where any sign of fear or anxiety is counted against you. Also, in some places it's possible for the psychiatrist to determine that contact with an attorney would "exacerbate your condition" and can bar you from seeing one. I would much rather be on the street and free than indefinitely locked up and treated as poorly as people in mental institutions are.

plopz 7y ago

Related video of Last Week Tonight on different kinds of junk science: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScmJvmzDcG0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScmJvmzDcG0 There does seem to be some issues with how the court system has failed to keep up with the modern day. Issues with scalability, accessibility and science literacy are leading to a general distrust of the system.

gumby 7y ago

As fingerprints and “lie detectors” are still generally accepted it seems the answer is “no”

zchrykng 7y ago
Fingerprints are actually pretty accurate, though no perfect. Polygraphs are generally not admissible it court so I don't know what you are talking about.
- fenomas 7y ago
  When last I read up on fingerprinting it was pretty dodgy - the problem being not that it's inaccurate, but that nobody really knows how accurate it is. Apparently the professional society that analysts all belong to forbids its members from participating in studies, taking the position that it's "100% accurate when done properly" (which is clearly meaningless). It's probably 4-5 years since I read about this, it'd be nice if things have changed.
  - staticautomatic 7y ago
    I work in a consulting field where the professional society forbids its members from publishing statistics on client success. There are some good reasons it's generally frowned upon but it's also the only remotely objective measure of whether anyone actually benefits from your work.
  - phkahler 7y ago
    >> Apparently the professional society that analysts all belong to forbids its members from participating in studies, taking the position that it's "100% accurate when done properly" Refusal to run a gauge R&R while insisting errors are due to the operator is a sure sign of a problem. If it hasn't been done, that's one thing but refusing to allow it is quite another.
    - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
      It's the same problem as it is with most anything. They want to use huge databases, but to do that usefully you need an unrealistically low false positive rate. Even if the rate was actually really good -- something like 99.9% accuracy -- if you apply that to a database with a ten million people in it, you get ten thousand false positives, which is crap. If you pick one of the matches at random, they want to be able to claim that it's a 99.9% chance that it's them, but it's really a 99.99% chance that it isn't. Or worse, since it's possible the true perpetrator wasn't in the database. Even for things like DNA that theoretically can do better than 99.9%, you can't get much better than that in practice because before you can, the error rate starts to be dominated by human error rather than coincident matches.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

tyingq 7y ago

Aside from courts, the constant use of garbage like polygraphs by the police, employers, and others is regrettable.

astura 7y ago
Interestingly, in the US most private employers are not allowed to polygraph their employees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_Polygraph_Protection_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_Polygraph_Protection_... >However, the act does permit polygraph tests to be administered to certain applicants for job with security firms (such as armored car, alarm, and guard companies) and of pharmaceutical manufacturers, distributors, and dispensers. The law does not cover federal, state, and local government agencies. Since doesn't apply to any governments (local, state, federal) so so government employees are subjected to polygraphs. Interestingly, it can be argued that polygraphs may have their place in a limited amount of employment situations as long as the lying/truthful results are thrown out as the test may work as a "placebo" for the interviewee to admit to serious skeletons in their closet. https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/23/16511732/border-patrol-polygraph-trump-boots-on-border https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/23/16511732/border-patrol-p... >Polygraph results are of questionable scientific value, but the interviews have an unexpected benefit apart from their dubious powers of detection: under pressure from interviewers, applicants frequently admit to wrongdoing. To be clear I personally lean towards not using polygraphs at all for employment situations.
- himinlomax 7y ago
  Polygraphs should not be used at all, for anything except maybe research.
- staticautomatic 7y ago
  "it can be argued that polygraphs may have their place in a limited amount of employment situations as long as the lying/truthful results are thrown out as the test may work as a "placebo" for the interviewee to admit to serious skeletons in their closet." If the test cannot distinguish between true and false, then any purported "skeleton" is as likely to be false as it is to be true.

alistairSH 7y ago

It isn't news that the courts allow whatever junk science leads to convictions. Courts have allowed drug-sniffing dogs as evidence for ages. They're barely more accurate than a coin toss and easily persuaded to give false "testimony" by their handlers.

mjevans 7y ago
A coin toss with little false negatives might be a good filter for a more annoying or expensive test. I think that would be a fine use of the tool even if I agree that as primary evidence it might be lacking.
- jariel 7y ago
  Yes, that's just it, proportionality. Dogs might be good to sniff out contraband or whatever to flag searches, but perhaps not as incontrovertible evidence of something.
  - notahacker 7y ago
    How often do cases rely on dogs as 'incontrovertible evidence of something though'. It's not like they testify! If the dog's mentioned at all, surely normally it's background context to why the person was searched and the drug found [and if the police are lying about the finding, it's not the dog's fault!]
    - liability 7y ago
      Nothing is the dog's fault, because the dog is a dog. But that's beyond the point.
      - notahacker 7y ago
        The point is that if a law enforcement person lies about finding something due to their dog, the problem is juries [reasonably] trust the law enforcement personnel are telling the truth about what they find afterwards, not that they trust the dog's instincts. Indeed your average jury is almost guaranteed to have someone with enough interest in dogs to know they sometimes react to things other than suspicious substances.

geophile 7y ago

The New Yorker had a really interesting article about arson forensics, a few years ago. It interleaved the case of someone being executed for arson, with a thorough debunking of the science behind his conviction. And then fiber analysis has been debunked too. And the list goes one: hysteria over child abuse combined with well-meaning but incompetent interviewers creating false memories in supposed victims. The problems with coerced confessions. It's all quite terrifying.

lonelappde 7y ago
Forensic "science" is full of pseudoscience that charlatans use to put innocent people in jail for money. https://youtu.be/ScmJvmzDcG0 https://youtu.be/ScmJvmzDcG0
fsh 7y ago
Link to the article (which is definitely worth a read): https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/07/trial-by-fire https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/07/trial-by-fire
djsumdog 7y ago
There was a Citations Needed podcast about pseudoscience in the criminal justice system: https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-94-the-goofy-pseudoscience-copaganda-of-tv-forensics https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-94-the-goofy-pseu... It's an interesting podcast, but their interviewee sucked and she didn't really cite any actual science; just hand waved away things. I've found the studies they cite on fingerprints (your fingerprint could match up with 1 in ~300 people; they're not as unique as once though -- the study that's often cited is from the FBI) but I can't find anything on gun/bullet print identification. Supposedly you can't match a bullet to a gun, especially with more modern firearms with precise milling. Yet all the sourced I've found should photos of bullets with distinct patterns that seem to match a particular firearm.
- manicdee 7y ago
  Then we find that all these photos are stock photos from the depths of FBI labs and none of the photographs show an actual slug collected from a crime scene.

tyingq 7y ago

I heard an interesting one on a Dateline. Cops had some DNA they could not match. So they did phenotyping and turned the info (hair color, eye color, etc) into a sketch. And that was enough to get court orders for people that matched the sketch to submit DNA samples. There was a video of the police department announcing it, and even endorsing the company (Parabon) in the announcement. Maybe not complete junk science, but sketchy legal ground to me.

SQueeeeeL 7y ago
It's sketchy legal ground. Basically they could say "everyone with blonde hair and brown eyes must submit", and through other extralegal means have found out the culprit had blonde hair and brown eyes. They manufactured a way to search and arrest them.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  And then all that data sits in a database forever.
- rtkwe 7y ago
  My question is was this everyone over a large area or were they going to a pool of people they already had some suspicion on. If they have a group of suspects and are using this to narrow down who to actually have submit samples it's more ok to me.
  - tyingq 7y ago
    From an existing pool.

turk73 7y ago

Several major things bother me and junk science isn't even in my top 3. 1) Big shots don't get indicted at all. We have a 2-tier system of justice where only "little people" are hanging out in the breeze. The real law breakers are tolerated and even encouraged. When Barr, when? 2) Crimes such as voter fraud are set at the lowest possible priority and given to junior prosecutors who are expected to fuck up the cases so they get dropped. Thus, voter fraud is never aggressively pursued and it's joked about (I know this second hand because a close relative is a prosecutor). Voter fraud is a massive problem in the US, massive, and yet the fake statistics indicate the exact opposite. 3) People committing serious felonies are back on the street in record time because "muh racism," able to continue their crime waves (see: NY). If the system isn't going to take serious crimes seriously, then let's repeal all those laws and just get on with the anarchy so we can at least put down the worst individuals ourselves. If the system won't function, someone else will take care of it.

dontbenebby 7y ago

Betteridge's law of headlines strikes again >Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no". It is named after Ian Betteridge, a British technology journalist who wrote about it in 2009 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines

openasocket 7y ago

My parents are both clinical psychologists, and my father used to do some evaluations for the courts. If I remember correctly, he would do evaluations to see if a person is mentally fit to stand trial, and would recommend to the judge if the person would be better served with psychological help than prison time. Some context: - Being mentally fit to stand trial is an very low bar to pass. You just need to understand what a judge is, what a jury is, etc. Generally people who don't pass either have some sort of intellectual disability or severe schizophrenia. - The article lists a ton of different situations where psychologists are involved in the legal system, and I don't see a breakdown on what the psychologist is attempting to do. I know my Dad didn't use much more than an IQ test and some basic questions to try and diagnose a couple of clinical conditions. I'd expect some amount of pseudoscience if one side in a messy divorce hires a psychologist to try and show the other side is a bad parent, or the defense in a criminal case trying to show the defendant was in a fragile emotional state and deserves a reduced sentence.

ci5er 7y ago

Of course they can't. Most Americans believe in some junk or another.

hackermailman 7y ago

They still use blood splatter experts which when I heard it as a juror seemed like pseudoscience, extracting all kinds of assumptions.

cmhnn 7y ago

First of all something called "Psychological Science" already raises my hackles. Science in general has become so corrupt and politically oriented it makes killing elephants to vilify your technical rival's creation look understated. We have so much useless "science" being funded and won by professional grant hounds that garbage is inevitable. The US has a legal system not a justice system. I suspect that is true of many countries. Once you are caught up in it then you will realize it isn't personal and it has nothing to do with the truth or justice. We have incentivized "winning" of trials and have blindly gone along with the idea that having both sides behave horribly ensures fairness because well..What else can you do? Might be time to step back and think if a bunch of premises are working out. Does giving some wannabe tyrant a lifetime job really result in good decision making because they are "free" of political influence? Is it cool to allow for things like fine print and to allow lawyers to be immunized from many bad behaviors because lawyers keep writing rules in such a way to keep lawyers employed? Is it really cool that a prosecutor can lock someone up for 20 years who was innocent but that the recourse is some lawsuit where everyone pays for the settlement and they get to basically get away with "oops"? Is it cool a defense lawyer can "win" a case where they know their client is a child molesting cannibal? Philosophy and big questions may seem quaint and are often the target of people who claim they are some form of scientist but for some reason my non scientist self and many average people seem to be able to suspect that the legal system is a bit fucked up, paying someone to publish papers on the implications of tyrannosaurus rex having created a vegan matriarchy might also be fucked up and if you let those things near each other some really bad stuff happens unless you get serious about fixing the core of problems both of them have.