Don't fall into The Serious Trap.
Forensic science often isn't. DNA Analysis Exposes Flaws in an Inexact Forensic Science - NYTimes.com:
"This week’s offering from Retro Report, a series of video documentaries that re-examine major stories from the past, zeros in on microscopic hair analysis, a staple of forensics for generations. It was long accepted as a virtually unerring technique to prove that this suspect — without a doubt, Your Honor — was the criminal. Wasn’t a hair found at the scene? But with the advent of DNA analysis in the late 1980s, apparent matches of hair samples ultimately proved to be not quite as flawless as people had been led to believe. Instances of wrongful imprisonment make that clear. Retro Report focuses on one such case, that of Kirk Odom, a Washington man who was found guilty of rape in 1981 and spent two decades behind bars. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s vaunted crime lab had asserted that hairs taken from his head were microscopically like — meaning virtually indistinguishable from — one found on the victim’s nightgown. In time, however, DNA testing established that Mr. Odom was not the rapist, as he had asserted all along. Unfortunately for him, that official conclusion came late. By then, he had completed his prison sentence, a man done in by discredited forensic testimony...
Other lab techniques have had their reliability in the courtroom called into question. A 2009 report by a committee of the National Academy of Sciences found “serious problems” with an assortment of methods routinely relied on by prosecutors and the police. They included fingerprinting, blood typing, weapons identification, shoe print comparisons, handwriting, bite marks and — yes — hair testing. DNA was the game changer. The 2009 report said that, with the exception of nuclear DNA analysis, “no forensic method has been rigorously shown to have the capacity to consistently, and with a high degree of certainty, demonstrate a connection between evidence and a specific individual or source.”"
"Now Ridley gives lectures about why he's an optimist. It's not just an attitude; it's an accurate assessment of how well the human race has fared over the past several hundred years. "I discovered that almost everything is getting better, even the things that people thought were getting worse," says Ridley. He was taught to think the future was bleak. "The population explosion was unstoppable. Famine was inevitable. Pesticides were going to shorten our lives. The Ice Age was coming back. Acid rain was killing forests ... All these things were going to go wrong." Yet time and again, humanity survived doomsday. Not just survived, we flourish. Population increases, yet famine becomes rarer. More energy is used, yet the environment gets cleaner. Innovation and trade keep improving our lives...
Our brains just aren't very good at keeping track of the good news. Evolution programmed us to pay attention to problems. Good news often happens slowly. The media miss it."
Be Walt Simonson.
Nathan Fillion is the best.
No comments:
Post a Comment