4 ms·

I wonder how something like this would hold up in a court case though, surely it would be torn to shreds?

by scanny 5y ago

ceejayoz 5y ago
> In particular, some experts are distressed that a Vass trainee recently got witching results admitted as evidence in a Georgia murder trial. As with most of these bits of pseudoscience, it's a probable cause generator. > Vass tells him it’s about a quarter mile. “The advantage of this is you don’t have to be on a property to scan it,” he says. “You can be on a public street and scan your suspect’s yard.” Oh, and while it can magically find missing people "as far as 75 miles" away, you can't get one. > One student asks, “Do you mean if you have a missing child, you can take that child’s DNA and put it in that and go to work?” > “Yeah, absolutely,” Vass says. “It doesn’t take long to find them.” > “How much does one of those things cost?” another student asks. “I’ll write a check right now.” > “I’m not selling them right now,” Vass says. “I’m just kind of assisting law enforcement when needed.” He says the device isn’t for sale because he’s concerned about national security issues. “I can tell you what room the president’s in in the White House,” he says. “ I can tell you which house has gold in it.” And, if it doesn't work when Vass is doing it, it's because a mouse died there. (Which probably describes... everywhere.) > With the excavation complete, Vass wants to discuss one last thing: the divining rods. “From the holes, it appeared to me that maybe an animal had burrowed down in there,” he tells Ponce. “If an animal like a little mouse died there, you’ll get a false positive. So just pay attention to that in the future.”
spacemanmatt 5y ago
Courts are shockingly slow to adopt the conclusions of science, especially when such conclusions would have wide-ranging exclusionary effects on rules of evidence. For more background, search for scandals related to FBI "bite mark" experts or disgraced former Texas detective Tom Coleman.
- LanceH 5y ago
  Courts work on procedure and appeal to authority, not science. Hopefully there is an overlap, but it's not required. Diligent application of appeal to authority by the more well funded party results in better outcomes.
  - spacemanmatt 5y ago
    Science basically has to enter courts through consensus, which means only the most sensational and visible conclusions of science will reach the legal system. Seems like a bit of a bottleneck for a developing civilization.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  And shockingly slow to accept that the pseudoscience they’ve been allowing is bunk. See, e.g., shaken baby syndrome, and fire burn patterns supposedly indicative of arson. Heck, we’ve even know for years that breathalyzers are crazy unreliable and yet we constantly convict people based on the reading.
GaelFG 5y ago
I would assume because the technic is absurd but it was not important during the trial. The important fact was they did find a human corpse where they were looking. You probably need to say how you found the corpse, if was probably labelled 'vaguely' like 'using the technic "n#13" teached by the National Forensic Academy'and I assume no one really looked at it. (or they did but didn't care because they did'n wanted the culprit to get away with having a corpse in his backgarden or wathever happened. Total speculation of course.
- spacemanmatt 5y ago
  It is an open invitation to "parallel construction" which is a practice the government is already 100% known to use.
josefx 5y ago
They will get an "expert" with 40 hours of training to vouch for it. There are quite a few pseudo sciences in use that either have little to no proof or have been outright shown to be wrong most of the time. I think the supreme court even found that lie detector tests are barely above flipping a coin and still left their use up to other courts. Facts don't matter, legal concepts do.
- lupire 5y ago
  Polygraph data is almost never allowed in court without the consent of the victim/examinee. But it is often a permitted investigative/intimidation tactic.
  - BoxOfRain 5y ago
    I don't think they should even be permitted for that, it's essentially preying on society at large's poor knowledge of science to falsely present polygraphs as something they're not. They're in the same category of woo as dowsing rods and earthed bedsheets, I think it's unreasonable for them to be used in any official context.

I wonder how something like this would hold up in a court case though, surely it would be torn to shreds?

by scanny 5y ago

I wonder how something like this would hold up in a court case though, surely it would be torn to shreds?

> In particular, some experts are distressed that a Vass trainee recently got witching results admitted as evidence in a Georgia murder trial. As with most of these bits of pseudoscience, it's a probable cause generator. > Vass tells him it’s about a quarter mile. “The advantage of this is you don’t have to be on a property to scan it,” he says. “You can be on a public street and scan your suspect’s yard.” Oh, and while it can magically find missing people "as far as 75 miles" away, you can't get one. > One student asks, “Do you mean if you have a missing child, you can take that child’s DNA and put it in that and go to work?” > “Yeah, absolutely,” Vass says. “It doesn’t take long to find them.” > “How much does one of those things cost?” another student asks. “I’ll write a check right now.” > “I’m not selling them right now,” Vass says. “I’m just kind of assisting law enforcement when needed.” He says the device isn’t for sale because he’s concerned about national security issues. “I can tell you what room the president’s in in the White House,” he says. “ I can tell you which house has gold in it.” And, if it doesn't work when Vass is doing it, it's because a mouse died there. (Which probably describes... everywhere.) > With the excavation complete, Vass wants to discuss one last thing: the divining rods. “From the holes, it appeared to me that maybe an animal had burrowed down in there,” he tells Ponce. “If an animal like a little mouse died there, you’ll get a false positive. So just pay attention to that in the future.”

spacemanmatt 5y ago

Courts are shockingly slow to adopt the conclusions of science, especially when such conclusions would have wide-ranging exclusionary effects on rules of evidence. For more background, search for scandals related to FBI "bite mark" experts or disgraced former Texas detective Tom Coleman.

LanceH 5y ago
Courts work on procedure and appeal to authority, not science. Hopefully there is an overlap, but it's not required. Diligent application of appeal to authority by the more well funded party results in better outcomes.
- spacemanmatt 5y ago
  Science basically has to enter courts through consensus, which means only the most sensational and visible conclusions of science will reach the legal system. Seems like a bit of a bottleneck for a developing civilization.
elliekelly 5y ago
And shockingly slow to accept that the pseudoscience they’ve been allowing is bunk. See, e.g., shaken baby syndrome, and fire burn patterns supposedly indicative of arson. Heck, we’ve even know for years that breathalyzers are crazy unreliable and yet we constantly convict people based on the reading.

GaelFG 5y ago

I would assume because the technic is absurd but it was not important during the trial. The important fact was they did find a human corpse where they were looking. You probably need to say how you found the corpse, if was probably labelled 'vaguely' like 'using the technic "n#13" teached by the National Forensic Academy'and I assume no one really looked at it. (or they did but didn't care because they did'n wanted the culprit to get away with having a corpse in his backgarden or wathever happened. Total speculation of course.

spacemanmatt 5y ago
It is an open invitation to "parallel construction" which is a practice the government is already 100% known to use.

josefx 5y ago

They will get an "expert" with 40 hours of training to vouch for it. There are quite a few pseudo sciences in use that either have little to no proof or have been outright shown to be wrong most of the time. I think the supreme court even found that lie detector tests are barely above flipping a coin and still left their use up to other courts. Facts don't matter, legal concepts do.

lupire 5y ago
Polygraph data is almost never allowed in court without the consent of the victim/examinee. But it is often a permitted investigative/intimidation tactic.
- BoxOfRain 5y ago
  I don't think they should even be permitted for that, it's essentially preying on society at large's poor knowledge of science to falsely present polygraphs as something they're not. They're in the same category of woo as dowsing rods and earthed bedsheets, I think it's unreasonable for them to be used in any official context.