<\/p>\nInstead, to judge by the most comprehensive study on the reliability of forensic evidence to date, the error rate is more than 10% in five categories of analysis, including fiber, paint and body fluids. (Meaning: When the expert says specimen X matches source Y, there’s a 10% probability he’s wrong.) DNA and fingerprints are more reliable but still not foolproof. The 1995 study, in the Journal of Forensic Sciences<\/i>, looked at proficiency tests labs take to see whether their work is sound.<\/p>\n
More recent studies have also shown problems. Though a 2005 study in the Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology<\/i> suggests a fingerprint false-positive rate a bit below 1%, a widely read 2006 experiment shows an alarming 4% false-positive rate.<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The article recommends lab competition and privatization. I’m not sure that’s quite the right way to go — but I do recall from my environmental remediation days that we had a wide array of lab validation techniques: splitting samples for separate testing, sending in dummy samples of known quantities, using secondary labs for confirmation, etc. <\/p>\n
Granted, crime scene evidence isn’t exactly like soil samples, and some evidence is so scant or unitary that it wouldn’t allow for easy splitting or reconfirmation. But there’s a lot you could do to test in a lot of cases, and to improve the quality of the results. Lives — innocent and guilty alike — can be at stake.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Everyone knows that eye-witness testimony is highly dubious in court, and what you really want is some hard and fast forensic evidence, tested at the police lab, demonstrating with scientific…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-law","category-science"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5870,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/07\/07\/busted.html","url_meta":{"origin":12332,"position":0},"title":"Busted","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 7-Jul-04 6:32pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The mills of the gods grind slowly -- especially in cases that require forensic accounting and nailing folks at a lower level who can turn state's evidence -- but the...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":27424,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/04\/17\/lets-enhance.html","url_meta":{"origin":12332,"position":1},"title":""Let's enhance …"","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 17-Apr-12 9:03am","format":false,"excerpt":"While forensic evidence tends to be much more reliable than eyewitness testimony (really), it's still subject to an array of variables, both human (who measured things and how, who interpreted the results and with what expectations) and non- (actual technical limitations of equipment and the tests themselves). Not to provoke\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/images0-focus-opensocial.googleusercontent.com\/gadgets\/proxy?container=focus&gadget=a&resize_h=100&url=http%3A%2F%2Fboingboing.net%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F04%2Ffingerprint-300x300.jpg","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":128665,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/11\/10\/forensic-fakery-biased-science-false-convictions-and-yeah-some-folk-who-died.html","url_meta":{"origin":12332,"position":2},"title":"Forensic fakery, biased science, false convictions, and, yeah, some folk who died","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 10-Nov-15 5:18am","format":false,"excerpt":"But, hey, we gotta have the death penalty to show people we are tough on crime![1][1] Except the crime of incenting forensic labs to fabricate convicting evidence, misleading testimony, and sloppy conclusions that result in people getting the death penalty for crimes they may not have committed. But who cares\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":130508,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/28\/justice-is-blind-when-the-wool-is-pulled-over-her-eyes.html","url_meta":{"origin":12332,"position":3},"title":"Justice is blind when the wool is pulled over her eyes","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 28-Apr-16 11:24am","format":false,"excerpt":"The headline below is practically a crime itself. The issue is not \"flaws in hair analysis,\" but flaws (exaggerations and lies) in FBI crime lab testimony about hair analysis for many, many years, overstating conclusions and certainty rates in a huge number of cases..We all expect, from decades of Law\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":42114,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/21\/the-evidence-speaks.html","url_meta":{"origin":12332,"position":4},"title":"The Evidence Speaks","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 21-May-14 7:31am","format":false,"excerpt":"But it often speaks with slurred tones, or whispers something that the prosecutors claim is something altogether different.Not that evidence analysis, or forensics labs, or even witnesses, are always or even usually wrong. They're just wrong often enough to give one pause about the justice system in general, and capital\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7539,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/02\/08\/evil.html","url_meta":{"origin":12332,"position":5},"title":"Evil","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 8-Feb-05 2:48pm","format":false,"excerpt":"An interesting article on some of the debates within psychology, forensics, and criminal law over the value of the term \"evil\" -- can it be used, should it be used,...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12332\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}