[HN Gopher] Another scientific body has debunked bitemark analysis
___________________________________________________________________
Another scientific body has debunked bitemark analysis
Author : colinprince
Score : 388 points
Date : 2022-10-20 18:26 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (radleybalko.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (radleybalko.substack.com)
| luxuryballs wrote:
| I'm surprised that this even needed a study, which also makes it
| an little alarming.
| joering2 wrote:
| The ultimate downfall of a society.. when justice system simply
| becomes just a system, out of convenience.
| boxed wrote:
| Found a spelling/grammar/idiom error ("little to know" -> "little
| to no"). Tried to commend, but I have to pay for that. Tried to
| click to that persons profile. Have to create an account. This
| seems like a bad idea...
| cobaltoxide wrote:
| > Tried to commend
|
| ironic
| jobigoud wrote:
| Muphry's law at play.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| This seems like a really straightforward thing to test. If I get
| a thousand people together, have them each bite 10 human skin
| analogues, identify the participants and each of their bite
| records with a GUID, can bite mark analysts map bite records to
| biters and with what accuracy?
|
| If they can't, why did the courts think they could? Why are we
| doing the tests for whether or not a method works _after_ making
| use of that method?
|
| After skimming one of the papers linked in the NIST analysis - it
| seems bite mark analysis is far below this standard. The analysts
| being tested had substantial disagreements over whether something
| was a bite mark and whether it was caused by adult or child
| teeth. Matching bite marks to a reference mark seems well out of
| reach.
| chmod775 wrote:
| > This seems like a really straightforward thing to test. If I
| get a thousand people together, have them each bite 10 human
| skin analogues, identify the participants and each of their
| bite records with a GUID, can bite mark analysts map bite
| records to biters and with what accuracy?
|
| Not quite the same thing. Because that assumes you already know
| it was one of those people.
|
| More appropriately you should ask the labs "does this bite mark
| fit any of these 100 people", where none of those people
| actually caused the bite mark.
|
| Will the lab recognize it was none of them? If they just
| falsely identify one out of the hundred, that extrapolates to
| millions of people.
| umvi wrote:
| > The field has a horrendous track record: More than two dozen
| people arrested or convicted with bitemark evidence have since
| been exonerated.
|
| It's probably true that bitemark analysis is ineffective at
| identifying biters, but I would appreciate it if the full data
| picture were painted. 2 dozen people out of how many total?
|
| It's like saying "X vaccine has a horrendous track record: more
| than 50 people have died after receiving it". 50 out of how many?
| If 200, that is indeed horrendous (25% death rate), but if 50
| million, then it's not horrendous (0.0001% death rate). Let me be
| the judge of what is horrendous or not by giving me full context.
| PebblesRox wrote:
| From the article, seems like only a few hundred cases:
|
| "Bitemark analysis has been used only in a small percentage of
| criminal convictions...At worst, it would require the re-
| opening and reinvestigation of a few hundred cases.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| Good. I am not saying forensic ballistics is just as pseudo-
| science, but it also needs a hard look to re-validate the
| deductions and now-accepted methodologies.
| gubernation wrote:
| the_doctah wrote:
| What? Are you saying Ted Bundy was innocent? The guy who
| escaped police custody and proceeded to the nearest sorority
| house to bludgeon three girls to death in their sleep?
| nova22033 wrote:
| Proves the main thesis of his excellent book
|
| The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: A True Story of
| Injustice in the American South
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Cadaver-King-Country-Dentist-Injustic...
| helloSirMan wrote:
| So no way to be sure if I bought Jon Voights car?
| semilattice wrote:
| Lack of incentives for scientific skepticism as a normalized,
| institutionalized form of academic discourse -- is the problem.
|
| The are a lot of incentives to get 'published' or to get
| 'sponsored. And there are no incentives to question validity of
| methods or results (unless these are 'sponsored').
|
| Formalized methodology underpinning scientific skepticism, should
| be taught as part of first 4 years of college (or even
| specialized vocational schools).
|
| There are should magazines in every field, dedicated to
| skepticism, the recent discoveries, methods of analysis, etc.
| There are should be commercial and tax-payer funded sponsorships
| available to do just that.
|
| May be, there should be advanced degrees in statistical claim
| validation methods, and so on.
| 2devnull wrote:
| I sometimes worry that we don't have a culture of science, but
| a culture of scientists. Very different things in terms of
| aggregate output.
| skc wrote:
| Heh, I used to watch true crime documentaries pretty religiously
| at one point.
|
| But the more I read about just how flimsy the science behind some
| of these forensic techniques was the less comfortable I felt
| until I pretty much stopped watching altogether.
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| I'd be curious to see a list of all of the classic cinema police
| cliche's that have no basis in evidence. So far there's the lie
| detector, blood spatter analysis, bite marks.. what else?
| rincewind wrote:
| hand-held laser speed measuring
| hinkley wrote:
| Tracking calls that are over 60 seconds.
|
| Everything is electronic now. There are audit trails. It may
| take a while to figure out where you were, but they will. So
| the only advantage of getting off the phone early is to not be
| there when the cops show up. And the fact of where you were and
| what phone you used might help them identify you anyway.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Ballistic fingerprinting is almost completely nonsense as used
| in media. Has some real life use, but limited.
|
| There are multiple types.
|
| 1. Capturing a spent casing and comparing to a reference of
| that firearm. The idea being the primer indentation, and
| chamber wall tolerances/imperfections should let you match
| fired case to firearm. This was believed in so much that every
| firearm sold in the past 20 or so years in NY/MD/?? has
| required a spent case to be shipped with the gun and a case
| kept at some crime labs, or the owner is required to provide
| when registering the gun - the bullshit is that it doesn't work
| at all - and not one single solved crime has ever been
| attributed to this system. Giant waste of money / feel good
| legislation. There is some correlation to be made... Factory
| Glocks have fairly unique square firing pins and it's easy to
| say a case was or wasn't fired from an _unmodified_ Glock.
| Likewise, MP5 platform guns typically have fluted chambers and
| one can easily see the case marks on a fired case, but neither
| of these things will help with storing a sample.
|
| 2. Muzzle/barrel printing. While this is a LITTLE more
| scientific, mostly shit. For the most part, you need a really
| large flaw in a barrel to leave a matchable print on the
| barrel. You can look a fired bullet and easily tell the
| rifling. Polygonal (Glocks again), cut, button, hammer
| forged... but the whole microscope printing of miniature and
| unique imperfections is a lot more art than science. Again,
| easy to prove this bullet didn't / couldn't come from this gun
| - but hard to prove it came from this specific gun.
|
| 3. Micro stamping entirely bullshit. This is where a California
| despite overwhelming evidence it doesn't work is still trying
| to get firing pins to leave a unique impression on the primer.
| The people that push for this stuff have no idea how guns work,
| never have.
| [deleted]
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| Lived in MD. They did away with the spent shell casing law.
| Turns out they were literally throwing them unorganized into
| barrels. No way to organize or search through them if there
| was a need. Just a massive waste of taxpayer money.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| "The Lie Behind the Lie Detector" had a big impact on me [1].
| As a kid I made lie detectors (a 9 volt battery, 1M-Ohm
| resistor, BC108 transistor and buzzer) and got sent home from
| school for "Interrogating" the other kids. The teacher
| evidently thought it really worked - even though as an 8 year
| old I knew it was just an electronic trick.
|
| 40 years later the Iraqi government was purchasing thousands of
| ADE 651 "bomb detectors" [2] - basically a stick - that no
| doubt caused some poor dudes to get blown to bits by IEDs.
|
| All technology (indistinguishable from magic) has a cult-like
| aura around it, in that there's the reality of what it does,
| and a separate set of human _beliefs_ about what it does.
| Cybersecurity is full of wishful and magical thinking in this
| regard. I sometimes feel like a kind of James Randi, trying to
| debunk the _certainty_ people want and project on to
| technologies.
|
| [1] https://antipolygraph.org/lie-behind-the-lie-detector.pdf
|
| [2] https://www.cnet.com/culture/divining-rod-reborn-as-
| explosiv...
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Every few years I come across this statement about
| polygraphs. I want so much to learn about them and how to
| "beat them." But every time I look into it, it's a 300-page
| book to read or a 4+ hour video commitment.
|
| Why?
| mhuffman wrote:
| The "real" TLDR (and I am not kidding here!) is that you
| clinch your anus during every answer. It does something to
| your heartrate, blood pressure, etc. that makes lies
| indistinguishable from the truth. Also polygraphers know
| this and will call you out on it if they think you are
| doing it. It makes all of your answers register the same
| and they assume that you will lie on at least one as a
| baseline (usually something like "have you ever told a lie
| in your life" or something similar).
| toast0 wrote:
| Here's the TLDR; polygraph tests really test for stress
| indictators. If you think they work and you generally
| stress out when lieing, and you really dwell on the 'oh my
| gosh, they're going to know I lied, because of the test and
| I just lied', your stress indicators will be off the chart,
| and there you go.
|
| If you know they're bunk, and so you can lie without
| stressing out, then they won't detect stress, especially if
| you've practiced with a polygraph. But, they usually do
| some sort of calibration. If you're calm or stressed the
| whole test, the results are inconclusive. You want to be
| calm when giving most of your answers, but stressed during
| the calibration questions where they expect you to be
| stressed.
|
| The only reason you should submit to a polygraph if is if
| you want clearance in the US. Or you want to be a on a
| trashy talk show (eh, someone's gotta be on those, I
| guess). Anywhere else, stick to your guns and refuse on the
| basis that they're not reliable and it's a waste of
| everyone's time; don't be goaded into the 'well if they
| don't mean anything, why don't you just take it'
|
| Of course, sometimes you might find yourself in a situation
| where the easiest path to what you want is through a
| polygraph, and it's easier for me to say don't take it,
| than for you to refuse.... like, do your best, I guess?
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Thank you!!
| aasasd wrote:
| I vote for a trashy talk show full of HN crowd.
| Optionally with everyone on polygraphs.
| ghastmaster wrote:
| Thank you. I had not heard of this product before. I want
| one.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651
|
| > According to Iraqi police officer Jasim Hussein, "The vast
| majority of the people we stop, it's because of their
| perfume". A fellow officer, Hasan Ouda, commented that "Most
| people now understand it's what gets them searched, so they
| don't use as much."
| hatsunearu wrote:
| Ulgh, knowing the polygraph is a lie is actually a huge
| hazard for you.
|
| I once had to take a polygraph test, and I was freaking the
| fuck out because I knew being nervous will register me as a
| liar, and I wasn't actually lying at all. I tried my best to
| stay calm, but I was freaking out during the test, and I
| actually did fail the polygraph, but passed after a retest.
|
| It's such bullshit. I wish they got rid of this bullshit
| technology from this earth, because I had so much on the line
| and I was absolutely miserable before and during the test.
| ok_dad wrote:
| I am sorry you had to go through that, but why would you
| take it if you knew it was scientifically unsound? I would
| just say "no, this is scientifically unsound" and refuse to
| participate. They're going to "detect" whatever they want
| from my words and punish me accordingly, so I might as well
| say nothing.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Well, because you don't get a choice, if you don't take
| it then you don't get what you want (for example, a
| security clearance or a job), it tends to be a non-
| negotiable requirement.
|
| You wouldn't get a criminal conviction by refusing to
| participate, but in other contexts refusal to participate
| can be (and is) treated the same as failing it.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Ah yes, the good old security clearance polygraph. My
| friend failed that one 3 times through nervousness. I
| believe that whole process is just partly to make you
| nervous and off-balance while they ask you probing
| questions and partly to signal that you, as an applicant,
| are willing to ask "how high?" when the government says
| jump. I did a few clearance processes when I was in the
| military, ultimately got a TS-SCI, but never took a
| polygraph; I think because I had a clean-as-a-sheet
| record since I joined the military a week after my 18th
| birthday.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| It's a compliance test.
|
| If you'll take a polygraph (or engage in any other
| witchcraft ritual) then you're probably malleable enough
| to do other dumb things against your better judgement.
|
| In other words you'll act dishonestly to please others or
| advance yourself. That is to say - it really _is_ a lie
| detector, just one for seeing how well you can lie to
| yourself.
| efficax wrote:
| fiber analysis is also fake as hell (like saying: these threads
| came from your carpet, or your shirt).
|
| ballistic forensics only works if the gun is barely fired after
| the time that the bullets in question are fired, becuase each
| time you fire a gun it wears down the barrel again, in new
| ways.
|
| Fingerprint analysis is not based on solid science, nobody
| knows how common it is for someone to have very similar
| fingerprints to another person, and nobody knows what the right
| standard for "points of similarity" is. Fingerprint analysis
| has been used to convict people of crimes they could not have
| committed because they were not in the same state or even
| country, in ways that are provable:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Mayfield
| shusaku wrote:
| > Fingerprint analysis is not based on solid science, nobody
| knows how common it is for someone to have very similar
| fingerprints to another person, and nobody knows what the
| right standard for "points of similarity" is.
|
| Weird, I mean surely we have enough data to answer these
| questions with high certainty? Makes you worry that somebody
| won't like the answer...
| bornfreddy wrote:
| Thank you for the link! Though I would say it highlights a
| different problem (investigators' bias) than stated. The
| Spanish police have rejected findings apparently.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| Forensics evidence is almost always circumstantial.
|
| For your example - If everyone wears wool sweaters except one
| person wearing poly microfibre, what is the inference?
|
| The first rule that is taught in forensics is that every
| interaction leaves a trace of some sort. The poly microfibre
| showed up at the scene. How did it get there is now a
| different type of forensics and where lawyers step in. The
| prosecutor will insist because the poly microfibre owner was
| there, while the defense lawyer will insist, there was a
| party the night before and everyone was rubbing against each
| other, the poly microfibre wearer and the wool sweater
| wearers. It can be anyone.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| > nobody knows how common it is for someone to have very
| similar fingerprints to another person
|
| Your last example is definitely a good counterexample to
| this, but I feel in most of cases, the suspects are very few
| so fingerprints only need to be able to distinguish one of
| the others, than say, identify a random dude from billions.
| So it's still useable.
|
| It's like while SHA-1, or even CRC32, is totally incapable
| for security, it's still perfectly fine to be used to detect
| if a known file is corrupted (through natural cause, not
| deliberately altered) or not.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| That is not how criminal convictions (is supposed to) work.
| You don't have to present evidence that proves that, out of
| these three people, this one is the most likely killer. You
| have to prove that, beyond any reasonable doubt, this
| person has definitely committed the crime in question. If
| there is some reasonable possibility that some unknown
| person could have come off the street and committed the
| crime while leaving fingerprints that happen to match one
| of the suspects, then that suspect should not be convicted.
| mhuffman wrote:
| >supposed to "supposed to" is doing a lot of work there.
| People routinely get railroaded in criminal trials
| because they are too poor to afford good defense or for
| even sillier reasons like the prosecutor is better
| looking or more charismatic than the defense attorney.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Absolutely.
|
| But making claims like "fingerprints are good for
| choosing which of the suspects is more likely to have
| done it" is harming the situation you describe, not
| helping. That is, it puts even more onus on the defense
| attorney to explain how the process is even supposed to
| work.
| rhino369 wrote:
| The totality of the evidence must prove beyond a
| reasonable doubt. But not every piece of evidence must
| provide beyond a reasonable doubt.
|
| If all you have is a finger print--then yea--the
| possibility someone else with a close match did creates
| reasonable doubt.
|
| But if the thief was seen in the area at the time and you
| have a finger print, well that's less reasonable now.
|
| TL;DR; apply Bayesian probability.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| I'm not saying you should be convicted by a single
| fingerprint.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| That's like saying if a witness says "he had brown hair,
| that's all I can say", and only one of "the suspects" had
| brown hair, that's reason to convict him.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| You are misrepresenting the odds of a group of people
| having an outlier hair color vs a group of people having
| one which matches sufficiently well to a piece of
| evidence which excludes the others.
|
| 'I remember a brown car' vs "I remember a brown 1976 Ford
| coupe with worn tires and a broken side window'.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| That's a fair comparison, although I don't know if the
| numbers work out to a 1976 Ford Coupe or more like a 2005
| Honda Civic. But the other thing is, fingerprint analysis
| is also usually expressed as more like "a 70% chance of
| being a 2005 Honda Civic with worn tires and a broken
| side window", the match is always partial (another thing
| that science doesn't support, those %'s given).
|
| But would a jury think someone having a 2005 Honda Civic
| with worn tires and a broken side window is _alone_
| reason to convict someone? Probably not? Would they think
| "A 75% match with [fingerprint equivalent]" is _alone_
| enough reason to convict someone? Usually. Because they
| are very misinformed about what fingerprint "science"
| can and does do.
| pas wrote:
| please don't forget all the databases that can search for
| fingerprints, and all the suspects brought before the
| detectives, and at that point if they did not have a good
| enough alibi, or good enough psyche to withstand
| interrogation, or ...
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Mayfield
| [deleted]
| derefr wrote:
| > fiber analysis is also fake as hell (like saying: these
| threads came from your carpet, or your shirt).
|
| I'm not a forensic technician, but I've watched probably
| every episode of every true-crime forensic documentary TV
| show / YouTube channel / podcast / etc that exists; which
| probably has some weak but non-negligible correlation with
| having a gestalt impression of what people do and don't use
| forensic techniques for in practice. (At least in the
| "solved" cases, since the point of these shows is "how they
| solved it.")
|
| In every use of "fiber analysis" I ever saw covered, where
| the "fiber analysis" was actually used to prove something,
| the thing they're always noticing is "trilobal fibers" --
| presumably because, at least for some period in recent
| history, those type of fibers only ever got used by specific
| manufacturers for specific use-cases (vehicle manufacturers,
| for car floor matting, IIRC); and weren't part of the
| composition of anything sold to individuals at retail
| (except, perhaps, replacement car floor mats.) So "trilobal
| fibers on the body" could be taken to imply "this person was
| at some point in a car footwell/trunk."
|
| I don't ever recall any case that made a "fiber analysis"
| claim _other than_ that particular one. ( _Maybe_ once
| someone claimed something about what proprietary dyes were
| used on the fibers via GCMS assay -- but that 's not really
| "fiber analysis" per se.)
| giantg2 wrote:
| I don't have a link handy, but there was a huge FBI scandle
| where their experts were essentially calling things a match
| to a specific person, etc.
|
| But yes, the science is fine if interpreted correctly. The
| correct phrasing would be exclude or not exclude a suspect.
| Or for your example, it could be consistent with someone
| having been in a vehicle. The problem is when the experts
| say they _must_ have been in a vehicle, or especially a
| specific individual vehicle.
| Ekaros wrote:
| That seems something that should be criminal. And
| realistically always asked how many vehicles with this
| type of material is there around?
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| The judge should have thrown it out.
|
| Second thing they teach in forensics is that unless I
| witness the actual event, it is really hard to tie it to
| a specific person. I can present dozens and dozens of
| circumstantial evidence which has sufficient weight for a
| reasonable person to make that inference, but I cannot
| attest to that.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Judges _should_ do a lot of things. In reality, their
| quality and knowledge varies greatly.
| wahern wrote:
| Any judge worth their salt would prohibit or censor
| witness testimony making conclusory statements,
| especially based on circumstantial evidence. This is
| Evidence 101. Everybody knows the so-called "hearsay"
| rule, but almost every rule in evidence revolves around
| one core precept--no evidence is per se conclusive, and
| the function of testimony of any sort isn't to submit
| conclusions to the question at issue.
|
| But _implying_ conclusions is exactly what both the
| defense and prosecutor are working at; they 're
| constantly playing word games, and some judges would
| certainly be better than others at seeing through the
| B.S.
| paulmd wrote:
| Judges are elected in many areas of the US so they're
| potentially _literally some rando in a robe who wants to
| put "bad guys" in jail_, not some master of critical
| thinking.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yeah, and the other way you get judges is via
| appointment. So there's a chance you have a hack that put
| in because the executive leader likes their politics.
| paradisechris wrote:
| Fire pattern analysis often falsely claimed, from visual
| analysis alone, that fires were started with an accelerant.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Body language experts... Thankfully I don't think it is used as
| evidence, but still...
| LtWorf wrote:
| Think again.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Fire investigation was historically plagued by myths like
| "concrete spalling means the floor was soaked in gasoline
| before being set on fire". Turns out, concrete just does that
| whenever it gets very hot, with or without an accelerant.
| gerdesj wrote:
| Concrete spalling doesn't require fire at all. Ask any Civil
| Engineer (I'm not actually Chartered).
|
| I trained as a Civ Eng in Plymouth (Devon, UK) and obviously
| ended up in IT (22 years as MD of an IT firm). It's quite
| wet, windy and the air is pretty salty in Plimuff. All of
| those factors scream: Bad for conc. if you don't allow for
| them. Also, steel is well known to get quite unhappy in the
| presence of salty water, if it isn't cared for properly.
| Concrete cancer is another exciting opportunity to contend
| with in the face of ... conditions.
|
| Concrete is a marvellous material, it really is but it is a
| sodding complicated matrix of variously graded (sizes) stones
| (aggregate) and particular sands bound up in the cement plus
| some admixtures (stuff added for various reasons). The cement
| alone is properly complicated - clinker and that. When you
| mix the stuff up and pour it, it's a chemical reaction that
| happens and not simply drying. That's why it works underwater
| - what you are worrying about underwater is avoiding the
| finer materials being carried off before the stuff sets. In
| the air, you worry more about temperature effects on setting
| and wind causing the surface to dry too fast. The reaction is
| caused by water, so if the surface dries out, the reaction
| doesn't happen and you get ... spalling later in life.
|
| I hope that the studies quoted in court relating to conc
| spalling, describe the precise conditions that the stuff was
| poured in. Care will be taken over the effects of admixtures
| and the temperatures, weather and other conditions that
| affect setting and curing of conc. Was gap grading of the
| agg. a factor perhaps? What is the agg. composition anyway,
| let alone its size distribution?
|
| I could go on a lot, lot more and I'm not even close to being
| an expert. I can pour a decent 3-2-1 mix and expect it to do
| the job at home. My little DIY conc related projects tend to
| work rather well - my garden is quite challenging
| topographically.
|
| I hope I'm getting across that concrete is rather
| complicated. It's not a simple material just as balsa and elm
| are both "wood" but have very, very different properties.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Ironically, Law and Order SVU has an entire episode focused
| on that issue.
| aidos wrote:
| This was posted years ago on HN and it has always stuck with
| me.
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/07/trial-by-fire
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Jesus Christ. Death penalty advocates always say there are
| so many checks and that only absolute monsters are executed
| but this is a case made off animal spirits and the
| testimony of a fellow prisoner, both of which were later
| called into serious question. What the fuck.
|
| I think that a lot of people are just bloodthirsty and once
| they've categorized somebody as evil then anything can be
| done to them. Unbelievable.
| ehecatl42 wrote:
| > animal spirits
|
| *mineral spirits
|
| But thanks! "Animal spirits" intrigued me, so I read the
| entire article. A clusterfuck from top to bottom,
| particularly the bit about the cracked glass patterns...
| something better explained by thermal shock of cold water
| from fire-hoses on hot glass, and not the use of BBQ
| lighter fluid as an accelerant.
|
| Haunting words: "I almost sent a man to die based on
| theories that were a load of crap."
| UncleMeat wrote:
| I used the term "animal spirits" to describe the voodoo
| that the arson investigator used to justify the
| conviction (I admit this is confusing given that "mineral
| spirits" plays a role in the article). The term is often
| used in economics to describe the fickle and unknowable
| and seemingly random reasons for market motion. This
| arson investigation feels just as random.
| eftychis wrote:
| Oh
|
| That was a thing? Was/is there any actual expert involved
| ever in these claims?
|
| I am more worried about all the claims that one field expert
| can look at someone and tell if they are drunk, using
| specific substances or had a head trauma. Doctors can't do
| that but I guess... there are "experts."
| ok_dad wrote:
| Heh, my dad had an old story about how he and his pals got
| pulled over, his pal was driving. The cop had them all do
| the thing where you walk heel-toe, touch your nose, etc.
| His pal driving was unsteady and was arrested, the other
| two guys were obviously drunk but were passengers, so they
| were out driving, and my dad who had drunk the most out of
| all of them was told to drive the two other guys home. When
| he responded, "I drank more than any of them!" the cop told
| him, "That's fine, you seem ok, here's my card if you get
| pulled over, stay safe." Oh, and his pal who was driving
| was stone-cold sober, but had old knee injuries, so he just
| walked funny all the time. He was let go at the hospital
| when the blood test turned up 0.0.
| knodi123 wrote:
| Hell yes. A probably-innocent man in Texas executed for
| murdering his family, based primarily on the evidence of
| fire analysis which was later shown to be almost entirely
| bullshit.
|
| https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-
| issues/innocence/execute...
| ghastmaster wrote:
| > Ultimately, the authorities concluded that Willingham
| was a man without a conscience whose serial crimes had
| climaxed, almost inexorably, in murder.
|
| This is what has condemned innocents throughout history
| to death, torture, and prison. His history is what got
| him convicted, in my opinion. So many people forget to
| shield themselves from future indictment by acting
| "normal" in the present.
| eftychis wrote:
| This is so sad in so many ways. I had to research the
| topic and this was the first case popping up. Thank you,
| and... I am still really sad...
| duskwuff wrote:
| > That was a thing? Was/is there any actual expert involved
| ever in these claims?
|
| Unfortunately, a lot of fire source experts were trained
| based on a mishmash of folk theories about arson, many of
| which have been subsequently disproven by scientific
| testing. There have been some improvements over the last
| decade or two, but the field is still heavily contaminated
| by junk science.
| eastbound wrote:
| I wonder at what point all those movies are here to
| legitimize the use of dubious ways of determining the
| culprit in real-life investigations.
|
| I've always been surprised that USA could claim "It's Al
| Queida" in the first 6hrs of the Twin Towers falling, and
| the French police could say "No relation with the wave of
| terrorism" in the first two hours of Notre Dame burning.
| av3csr wrote:
| This report is relevant. If I recall correctly it pointed that
| some of these analyses are not really reproducible.
|
| https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/228091.pdf
| eftychis wrote:
| You'd be surprised.
|
| a) Drug recognition experts -- commented that on a sibling
| comment too -- identifying drug usage vs e.g. trauma by sight.
|
| b) blood alcohol levels imply alcohol consumption -- you could
| actually be walking around with elevated alcohol levels not
| realizing it due to liver issues+yeast biome/diabetes
| (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK513346/)
|
| c) uniqueness of fingerprints -- studies pointing always this
| is a statistical argument not a unique identifier --
| https://www.aaas.org/resources/latent-fingerprint-examinatio...
|
| d) partial DNA match implying perfect match -- partial matches
| have been used to convict people
|
| e) probably every depiction of mental illness -- there are
| exceptions but can't say Hollywood does its best there
|
| f) lawyer interaction -- no your lawyer can't just barge in:
| you have to ask specifically and probably persist on needing a
| lawyer to consider any further interaction. (And even how you
| word that is a minefield in the U.S.)
|
| g) talking to the police -- somehow invoking the fifth is
| something only bad guys do -- it is the other way around. And
| that is causing issues already.
|
| h) DNA, fingerprints imply you were there. No material can be
| moved around. And police knows that. (And of course substances
| too, e.g. you were in a tax/uber after someone exposed to X,
| you are now exposed to X.)
|
| i) pretty much all of statistics -- this case one would have
| hoped would be the eye opener
| (https://forensicstats.org/blog/2018/02/16/misuse-
| statistics-...)
|
| P.S. j) ... science honestly? I am always dumbfounded with how
| much lack of basic scientific knowledge plagues courts and in
| extend society. Courts can not survive with uncertainty: they
| have to make decisions and stick to them. Science is different.
| tinalumfoil wrote:
| A lot of these problems come from deference to experts who
| wear the hat of science. For instance,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Adams a man was convicted
| because an expert said the DNA gave 1 in 200 million chance
| of incorrect match (or something similar), which is
| incorrect. I don't remember enough details to look it up, but
| I recall a US case where the prosecution repeatedly used an
| expert with a history of lying on stand and of course people
| wrongly spent time in jail for that.
|
| I think a bigger issue here, at least in the US, is
| prosecutions seems to have a really easy time finding
| experts, often on the same payroll as the prosecution, who
| say the things needed to get a conviction and jurors are
| encouraged to blindly trust that.
| vkou wrote:
| That's the whole point of the adversarial system. The
| prosecution finds experts that state one _opinion_ , the
| defense finds experts that say a contrary _opinion_ , the
| juries pick out whose _opinions_ they want to believe. That
| 's the whole point of expert witnesses - they are the only
| witnesses in the courtroom who are there for their
| _opinions_.
|
| The problem is that one side of this equation has a cottage
| industry of well-funded experts to pick from, but there
| isn't a cottage industry of well-funded 'bullshit
| debunkers' to work for the defense.
| eesmith wrote:
| That's incomplete, to some extent.
|
| The Daubert standard says the judge is a gatekeeper who
| can rule that a given expert's opinion will not be
| presented to the jury unless the expert's opinions are
| relevant, reliable, and based in scientific knowledge.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daubert_standard
| tinalumfoil wrote:
| It's more than that. The judge usually has a good
| relationship with the prosecution, and the judge is
| deciding on what the jury is allowed to see and what
| expert witnesses are allowed to testify as expert
| witnesses.
| the_af wrote:
| > _g) talking to the police -- somehow invoking the fifth is
| something only bad guys do -- it is the other way around. And
| that is causing issues already._
|
| The "don't talk to the police" video has been shared enough
| times on HN that I know I will never do so, at least in the
| US. The video claims you are likely to incriminate yourself
| and be charged with something _even if you didn 't commit the
| crime the police is investigating_!
| [deleted]
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Wait - blood spatter must follow the rules of physics, so there
| is _some kind_ of analysis that would be valid, surely?
|
| Reading online I see its still respected lots of places and
| still taught in forensics. Don't know where that came from.
| agf wrote:
| I think if you read this article you'll see (at least part
| of) the answer. Not only does a given action have to cause a
| definable result, the medium upon which the result is
| deposited has to provide enough detail to read the result
| back off it, and the people reading the result have to be
| able to be consistent and accurate in their analysis of that
| result.
|
| With bite marks, the skin has to hold the bite mark (which it
| doesn't) and experts have to be able to map it back to real
| human teeth (which they can't). With blood spatter, there are
| analogous problems.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Which sounds miles from 'have no basis in evidence'. So
| that might have been a little hyperbolic.
| snapcaster wrote:
| I'm not sure why you're trying to play devil's advocate
| on that. The things they are claiming about the analysis
| techniques literally have no basis in evidence. Saying
| "blood spatters follow laws of physics" has nothing to do
| with what the experts are doing now
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| ...and I countered with "the physics surely have
| validity", which the plentiful science done to date has
| corroborated.
|
| Not playing devil's advocate; just doing some simple
| searches and calling out hyperbole.
|
| These days folks have replaced science with advocacy. You
| know, that thing lawyers do to convince a jury. To the
| point folks think that you can arrive at a conclusion
| with advocacy. Instead of looking at the data.
|
| I'd ramble on about how the world is going to pot,
| because folks thing a sarcastic remark or clever-sounding
| turn of phrase is 'just as good' as facts. But oh well.
| kortilla wrote:
| You confused the GP statement about "blood spatter
| analysis" with a statement about "blood spatter".
|
| If someone critiques astrology you don't reply that
| "planets follow physics".
| snapcaster wrote:
| "Blood spatter analysis" is not a physics based
| discipline. The other comment responding to you with the
| analogy about astrology is good explanation of what is
| wrong with your reasoning
| ouid wrote:
| not so, if i square a number, and get 4, There is no
| basis in evidence for the claim that the number I squared
| was 2. it could equally likely have been -2. Science is
| capable of making no stronger a claim than that.
| DSMan195276 wrote:
| I mean the Wikipedia article on it basically says as much:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodstain_pattern_analysis
|
| > The validity of bloodstain pattern analysis has been
| questioned since the 1990s, and more recent studies cast
| significant doubt on its accuracy. A comprehensive 2009
| National Academy of Sciences report concluded that "the
| uncertainties associated with bloodstain pattern analysis are
| enormous" and that purported bloodstain pattern experts'
| opinions are "more subjective than scientific." The report
| highlighted several incidents of blood spatter analysts
| overstating their qualifications and questioned the
| reliability of their methods. In 2021, the largest-to-date
| study on the accuracy of BPA was published, with results
| "show[ing] that [BPA conclusions] were often erroneous and
| often contradicted other analysts."
|
| That's not the same as saying it could _never_ be done
| properly, but the analysis being done right now is not that,
| even though it's presented in courts as expert opinion with
| high certainty.
| d1sxeyes wrote:
| I think the key challenge to blood spatter analysis is not
| that there's _no way_ it could be valid, it 's that so far,
| it's based primarily on unsupported assumptions and
| statements. Those assumptions may well be correct, but the
| hard physics behind it has not been done yet, it's been just
| folks saying 'well I'm very clever and this is what I think'.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| An internet search shows there is research done,
| particularly the 'hard physics' behind it..
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Is there? Simulating forward sounds doable. Some fluid
| sprayed from here, with this mass and so on it lands as
| so. Backwards from a spatter pattern on an object sounds
| a lot harder, not least because there will be multiple
| possible answers and heaps of unknown variables.
| [deleted]
| etempleton wrote:
| Blood splatter is still studied. What I think most forensic
| experts would tell you is they are really trying to compile
| as much evidence as possible that allows the largest
| reconstruction of what may have happened. It is not like the
| movies, or it shouldn't be, where you find a single finger
| print and that determines who the killer is.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| Everything follows the rule of physics. The existence of some
| way to do something is a very low bar to clear. There may be
| some way to determine if there's water underground, but that
| doesn't mean a dowsing rod can.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The actual current practice of blood spatter analysis is to
| the physics of blood splatters roughly what astrology is to
| the physics of the movement of stars and planets.
|
| Could there be an astronomy equivalent for blood spatter
| analysis? In principle yes, but it doesn't exist yet.
|
| Could the current astrology sometimes shed real light? In
| some cases yes, just like even an astrologer can tell you
| something true about where Mercury is likely to be on the sky
| tomorrow. But the vast majority of the claims of current
| experts are going to make claims a lot stronger than that.
|
| And just like most astrologers, they will make those claims
| based on what they _want_ to be true, or what they think _you
| want_ to be true, not on what the evidence tells them.
| pfortuny wrote:
| Usually solving a PDE "backwards" is not possible. And that
| is exactly what those people are claiming to do.
|
| IE: from a specific (discrete) distribution of temperatures
| in, say a length of wire, you cannot infer the distribution
| some time before.
| hammock wrote:
| how is blood spatter analysis bogus?
| giantg2 wrote:
| Many things do have a basis in science. The main problem (with
| almost all of them) is that the results are interpreted in
| incorrect ways. For example, you can compare hair and fibers
| just fine. You cannot say it's a match. You can only tell if it
| excludes or does not exclude someone. Yet many experts would
| say it's a "match" and the juries believe it's unique to the
| suspect.
| cscheid wrote:
| From my understanding, fingerprint analyses don't have widely-
| accepted specificity or sensitivity rates either. Those "73%
| match" figures are not derived from any sound principles.
| LtWorf wrote:
| This presents a summary of all the bullshit science.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScmJvmzDcG0
| TotoHorner wrote:
| Breathalyzer tests are incredibly inaccurate and prone to
| false-positives.
|
| Not saying they have no basis in evidence, but people
| drastically overestimate their accuracy.
| Ekaros wrote:
| And that is why they should only be for suspicion and any
| real evidence should be from blood test administered in
| suitable location verified in lab.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| They have an accuracy rate that is pretty good. Sure they
| have false-positives (eat a gas station pizza, ping positive)
| but far more likely are false-negatives due to bad air
| sampling. Folks go to all sorts of extremes to fake them in
| the car-installed devices e.g. have somebody else blow; blow
| through a long tube so the sample is just what's in the tube;
| hold it out the window and let the wind 'blow' into it; put
| two straws into a half-full drink cup, blow into one and
| connect the device to the other, and on and on.
|
| The devices have all sorts of countermeasures now including a
| dash-cam, temperature sensors, humidity sensors etc to try
| and ensure its actually the right human's breath.
| TotoHorner wrote:
| "Pretty good" is completely unacceptable if states will
| suspend your drivers license for 12 months if you refuse to
| take the breathalyzer test (many states do this).
| kelnos wrote:
| Yeah, it's gross that consent to a breathalyzer test is a
| precondition for even getting a license in the first
| place.
|
| Are people convicted of DUI based on breathalyzer
| evidence alone? I would hope that the breathalyzer is
| just used as a first gate (since it's relatively easy to
| administer), but then a conviction would require
| corroboration from a blood test. Then again, with our
| "justice" system as it is, I wouldn't be surprised if a
| breathalyzer is enough in some circumstances.
| deepspace wrote:
| > Are people convicted of DUI based on breathalyzer
| evidence alone?
|
| In some jurisdictions, absolutely
| kkielhofner wrote:
| > Are people convicted of DUI based on breathalyzer
| evidence alone?
|
| Yes and no. In the US the DUI process looks like this
| (it's an interest of mine):
|
| 1) Pattern of impaired driving or other reason to justify
| the stop. This one is ridiculous and of course highly
| subjective - it includes things like a "sweeping turn"
| which is essentially not turning into the closest lane of
| traffic on a turn (think left turn and not turning into
| the left most lane), tires brushing a line, etc. Then
| obviously there's speeding, running stop signs, etc. In
| some states DUI checkpoints are legal where courts have
| ruled (essentially) that the Fourth Amendment doesn't
| apply for one reason or another to blanket stops for
| investigating impaired driving.
|
| 2) Some justification to start or continue a criminal
| investigation beyond the justification for the stop -
| this is the classic/infamous template: slurred speed,
| bloodshot/watery eyes, smell of alcohol, etc that you see
| in literally every single police report for impaired
| driving.
|
| 3) Field sobriety tests (FSTs). These are designed for
| you to fail and completely ridiculous. In the era of dash
| and body cams you're essentially going to put on a
| horrible performance that makes you look intoxicated or
| at least ridiculous even if you aren't. It's been
| demonstrated time and time again these tests are
| subjective and failure prone under ideal controlled
| conditions with known factors, let alone someone suddenly
| pulled out of their car on the side of a dark road
| somewhere...
|
| 4) Preliminary breath test (PBT). This is the small,
| roadside, handheld unit. You're usually going to get this
| no matter what. Obviously if this reports above the legal
| BAC limit you're going to get arrested. Depending on a
| variety of factors (how the officer feels, your FST
| performance, etc) you can be arrested for impaired
| driving regardless. This is obviously to account for
| other drugs that impair driving but of course do not
| register on an alcohol test. Additionally, you can be
| under the legal limit and still get arrested for impaired
| driving for the real/suspected "I had a beer but I also
| took a bunch of Xanax" type situations. To my knowledge
| these results are not admissible (or easily defeated) in
| court.
|
| 5) Certified test. When you get down to the police
| station (or wherever) they're going to have you do a
| breath test on a "certified" machine that's supposedly
| tested, calibrated, etc. Interestingly, in most places
| there are two tests, typically spaced by 20 minutes (or
| so). Apparently this is to account for the
| surface/residual alcohol issue. If you swish Listerine
| around your mouth and blow into a breathalyzer it will
| max out and tell you you're dead (essentially). Yet
| obviously none of this alcohol is in your blood. My
| understanding is for most cases the second reading is
| emphasized/reported/charged even though it's almost
| always lower because it eliminates a "residual alcohol"
| defense and the result is typically far over the legal
| limit anyway. This test is defined as "scientific" and
| admissible in court.
|
| Of course in many cases where a breath test is refused or
| other drugs are suspected they can get a warrant for
| blood. Typically the barrier here is having a judge on
| call at 2 AM (or 10 AM, whenever) with a rubber stamp to
| issue these. That said, most places with DUI checkpoints
| now will have judges at the ready so more and more a
| refusal to do FSTs or a PBT at a checkpoint is signing
| yourself up for an almost instant blood draw.
|
| But, to answer your question there have almost certainly
| been people convicted on breathalyzer evidence alone.
| However, "convicted" is a stretch here because to my
| knowledge there aren't a lot of jury trials for DUI -
| it's just not really worth it to anyone because the
| stakes for either side aren't really that high. Besides,
| in many states the Department of Motor Vehicles or
| whoever controls licensing has a completely separate
| administrative process that applies to your driving
| privilege.
|
| I suspect in many cases where a breathalyzer has been the
| sole evidence even many (most?) innocent people will
| plead to "reckless driving" or whatever the prosecution
| offers - especially because in most places there isn't
| jail time for a first offense regardless, most states
| have some kind of hardship/occupational standard in place
| so that you can still drive for work, school, worship,
| child care, etc, and as mentioned the DMV process is
| somewhat separate anyway.
|
| Because of the car-first culture in the US (vast
| distances, limited/non-existent public transportation,
| costs of ride sharing, etc) many people just drive with
| suspended licenses anyway which, to get back on track
| with tech here on HN, isn't what it used to be. ALPRs
| (automatic license plate readers) have really changed the
| game there.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| This depends on the country.
|
| In mine (slovenia, a lot of drunk people here), you can
| not-sign the agreement with the breathalizer result, and
| the police will take you to a clinic to do a blood test.
| Usually breathalizers show a bit less (larger
| tolerances/errors that the police have to subtract from
| the measured result), but if you're big/heavy enough, and
| the nearest clinic is far enough, it might be worth it,
| since you'll process some of the alcohol in the time to
| get the blood taken... depending of course if you're on
| the upper limit to a higher fine or near the lower limit.
| [deleted]
| iudqnolq wrote:
| You want the book _Junk Science and the American Criminal
| Justice System_ [1] by Chris Fabricant, the Innocence Project
| 's Director of Strategic Litigation.
|
| The book is an approachable, anecdotal tour of some of the
| significant issues with each major sub-speciality within
| forensic science.
|
| The Innocence Project uses DNA testing to prove convicted
| criminals are actually completely innocent of everything, them
| undergoes the massive legal battle required to have a chance of
| going from conclusive evidence of innocence to release in the
| American Justice System. The are reasonable quibbles with their
| methods on the margin, but taken as a whole their work is an
| amazing contribution to society.
|
| Edit: I imagine some people might be skeptical that there's an
| uphill battle after conclusive evidence of innocence. Take a
| look at Shinn v Ramirez. Mark Brnovich, the Arizona Solicitor
| General, successfully convinced the Supreme Court to tell a
| federal judge they couldn't look at Ramirez's evidence he's
| innocent. Notably Brnovich said "innocence isn't enough here"
| [2][3].
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/Science-American-Criminal-Justice-
| Sys...
|
| [2] https://deathpenalty.org/innocence-isnt-enough-here-
| arizona-...
|
| [3] https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/shinn-v-
| ramirez/
| muaytimbo wrote:
| handwriting experts?
| WheatMillington wrote:
| Fire forensics.
| bolangi wrote:
| Fingerprint analysis is rather sketchy, convicting someone
| based on a tiny part of a print. Also lie detector analysis.
| codeflo wrote:
| Lots of scandals around DNA evidence as well. It's not the
| science itself that's wrong, but mistakes can be made and were
| made during collection and in interpretation.
| amenghra wrote:
| There's also cases of people who received a transplant who
| then supposedly have two (or more) different DNAs in their
| blood.
| kstrauser wrote:
| It also turns out that chimerism may be a lot more common
| than we'd thought.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Wow, that's pretty crazy. I never really thought about how
| transplants imply two different sets of DNA cohabitating in
| the same body.
| jacobkg wrote:
| A founder I worked with had both a bone marrow transplant
| and a lung transplant. He named his company 3dna to
| commemorate having three sets of DNA in his body
| wahern wrote:
| Pregnancy presents a similar situation, and fetal
| microchimerism among parous women is not uncommon. This
| also includes, supposedly, brain tissue:
| https://www.science.org/content/article/bearing-sons-can-
| alt...
| neaden wrote:
| I think the relevant transplant is bone marrow, since
| that produces Red Blood Cells. Here is an article about
| it:https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/07/us/dna-bone-marrow-
| transp...
| knodi123 wrote:
| Wasn't there a famous incident where the police assumed they
| were dealing with a serial killer because identical DNA was
| found at dozens of crime scenes, and only much much later did
| they learn it was the DNA of a guy who worked at the DNA
| analysis lab who didn't always wear gloves like he was
| supposed to?
| nebalee wrote:
| Sounds similar to this:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_of_Heilbronn
| knodi123 wrote:
| No, it was exactly that, and I misremembered some
| details. :-P
| tsimionescu wrote:
| There is some amount of the science itself being
| inconclusive, as no one has really studied things like "how
| likely is it for DNA that matches X's to n% precision to be
| in a location Y given that X has/has not visited that
| location".
|
| Even discounting intentional placement of evidence, we really
| don't know how likely it is to find pieces of your DNA in
| places near to those you frequent - say, in the lobby or
| elevator or first floor of an apartment building you pass by
| every day, but have never entered. This is especially
| important given partial matches, since it's likely thousands
| of people pass by a building each day that have never made it
| inside - so the chances of an accidental match increase
| greatly (while also being guaranteed to match corroborating
| evidence, such as security cameras seeing you next to that
| building on the day of).
|
| Conversely, we also don't know how likely it is that you can
| avoid leaving your DNA in a place you have visited to commit
| a crime.
|
| Now sure, there are cases like "we found a large smear of
| blood, all of it containing DNA that matches this suspect
| 99%, and the suspect has an obvious open wound/scab"; or, the
| same smear containing DNA that only weakly matches the
| suspect or the victim or any known eye witness, which is
| extremly good evidence that someone else was at the scene.
|
| But when one hair or bit of spit is found in an apartment
| that matches someone who does live around that area, we don't
| really know if that means anything.
| LtWorf wrote:
| Nowadays DNA is matched by a proprietary software that nobody
| knows if it's buggy or not. But I've never seen a non buggy
| software before...
| glenstein wrote:
| This was my first thought as well. I think penmanship analysis
| is a candidate.
| googlryas wrote:
| There are two types of handwriting analysis - "Graphology"
| and forensic handwriting analysis. Graphology claims to be
| able to derive personality/psychological traits of the
| penman, and is just for charlatans. But, forensic handwriting
| analysis is "real" and useful, for determining if a known-
| author handwriting sample matches an unknown-author
| handwriting sample.
| monocasa wrote:
| Hair analysis is another. Famously, a man was convicted based
| on hair at the scene that turned out to belong to a dog
| instead.
|
| https://splinternews.com/the-fbi-convicted-this-man-using-ha...
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| If only it was limited to the cinema.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/fbi-overstated-fo...
| 2bitencryption wrote:
| I've been listening to the podcast Your Own Backyard (yes, I
| occasionally indulge in true crime, sue me!)
|
| There was recently an entire episode dedicated almost entirely to
| cadaver dog testimony. Well, the dog was not testifying, the
| handler was.
|
| Now, I have no doubt that cadaver dogs can, and do, find
| cadavers, and can detect when a cadaver was recently present.
|
| But listening to the testimony of the handler, from their
| viewpoints, the cadaver dogs are _psychic_. The ability of their
| senses verges on mysticism.
|
| I don't doubt that there is value to cadaver dogs - clearly they
| work, and get results. But the humans who testify on the dogs'
| behalf have a cult-like behavior about what the dogs can
| realistically detect, and how they interpret the dogs behaviors.
| asveikau wrote:
| > (yes, I occasionally indulge in true crime, sue me!)
|
| Sounds like civil court rather than criminal.
| ghastmaster wrote:
| Similarly, handler beliefs affect scent detection dog outcomes
| to at least some degree as indicated in this study:
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3078300/
|
| > No conditions contained drug or explosive scent; any alerting
| response was incorrect
|
| > Within marked conditions, handlers reported that dogs alerted
| more at marked locations than other locations.
|
| > The overwhelming number of incorrect alerts identified across
| conditions confirms that handler beliefs affect performance.
| Further, the directed pattern of alerts in conditions
| containing a marker compared with the pattern of alerts in the
| condition with unmarked decoy scent suggests that human
| influence on handler beliefs affects alerts to a greater degree
| than dog influence on handler beliefs
|
| I found this to be very telling. It at the very least warrants
| more study. At the worst and in my opinion, warrants
| elimination of dog scent detection as the sole factor in a
| search.
| wsc981 wrote:
| A bit similar in the story of the counting horse from Germany
| in the early 20th century:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| My wife had tulip bulbs from Amsterdam in her carryon and the
| beagle at customs immediately identified her. It was amazing.
|
| That said I'm sure even without training them to do so they
| look to their handlers for cues.
| yaddaor wrote:
| Was she aware of the bulbs being a potential issue? Maybe
| she sweated or showed other signs.
| RajT88 wrote:
| I know guys who smoked a lot of pot when they were younger.
| Would even fly with a small stash.
|
| Never got caught or had a dog alert on them. They also
| didn't look like stoners. Whatever your stereotype is of
| how a stoner looks (and there are a few).
|
| The 9/11 attackers were all clean shaven and dressed in
| business casual.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > immediately identified her.
|
| How many others were "immediately identified" but were not
| carrying bulbs?
| JTbane wrote:
| At this point, I'm convinced sniffer dogs are the dowsing
| rods of our time: basically just serving as psychological
| salve to reinforce a feeling of safety.
| girvo wrote:
| I can tell you the drug sniffing dogs in use in Queensland,
| Australia in the late 2000s absolutely were basically
| "dowsing rods" (I was involved in illicit things at the
| time and went past/was sniffed by drug dogs over a dozen
| times and was never caught or searched despite having
| illegal drugs on my person, without much of an attempt to
| hide them). I've shown my partner how the handlers give a
| signal to the dogs to "mark" someone for a "probable cause"
| search too.
| worthless-trash wrote:
| Are you saying the "use" of sniffer dogs, or that sniffer
| dogs are unable to accurately determine individual scents ?
| JTbane wrote:
| The use of sniffer dogs in schools and airports.
| bongoman37 wrote:
| I had a cop friend directly tell me that there is no point to
| telling an officer not to search your car. If he feels like
| it, he will call a K9 unit, and the with that he will have
| probable cause to search the car. I said what if the dog
| doesn't detect anything. He laughed and said that doesn't
| happen.
| banannaise wrote:
| I know he's your friend, but "don't take legal advice from
| your opponent" applies here. It may be true that they will
| inevitably find a reason to search your car. It may not be
| true that the ensuing search will be legal and hold up in
| court.
|
| Of course, there is a nonzero chance you will not survive
| to see a court date, but that's a different policing issue.
| ghastmaster wrote:
| There is a point. I understand your friends point though.
| In the USA, not giving them permission allows your lawyer
| to fight the case on the ground that it was an illegal
| detention. Case law has set precedent that without
| reasonable suspicion officers cannot extend your detention
| in a traffic stop just to bring a dog in(Rodriguez v united
| states 2015). Never ever give permission to search.
| [deleted]
| rozab wrote:
| Check out this article from the National Detector Dog
| Association - 'The Double-Blind Attack'. These people
| seriously don't believe in science.
|
| https://nndda.org/the-double-blind-attack/
| MereInterest wrote:
| Wow. Everything in that article reads as an admission that
| canine units are utterly useless, even as the article tries
| to defend their use. The primary argument seems to be that
| dogs need constant and immediate reinforcement in order to
| be effective, and therefore double-blind studies are not
| effective measurements. This same argument would also imply
| that canine units are not effective in the field, since the
| handler wouldn't be able to provide accurate reinforcement.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| If that would be treated seriously, it would mean that
| detector dogs are impossible to use in case where they need
| to find or detect something.
|
| So they are completely useless.
|
| Is nndda.org actually serious representation of them?
| banannaise wrote:
| Oh, they're extremely useful, just not for the thing you
| think. They manufacture cause for searches. It's a form
| of evidence laundering.
|
| And yes, the NNDDA is one of several organizations that
| certifies police dogs.
| ghastmaster wrote:
| Wow!
|
| > Results in confusion and frustration in the canine - As
| stated previously, under doubleblind testing, the
| determination of the team's accuracy cannot be made at the
| time of the alert. Therefore, to provide or withhold a
| reward from the canine under such a condition can result in
| confusing and frustrating the canine, which will lead to an
| increase chance of incorrect responses.
|
| Juxtapose that with the real world. I am not an expert but
| I sincerely doubt that K9s in airports get treats every
| time they correctly identify a illicit source. That is why
| they are trained constantly(I presume). Testing for one
| hour or one day will likely not have an effect on the long
| term ability of the dog to correctly sniff illicit sources.
|
| The NNDDA article is addressing the "double blind attack",
| which in my opinion is their way of redirecting from the
| notion that the K9s _should not_ be used as a gold standard
| to ascertain probable cause. I would have to think more on
| the subject to comment on reasonable suspicion. If they
| truly believed in the idea that handlers are benign, they
| would embrace the double blind process.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| Reminds me of audiophiles. When the scientific method is
| the enemy, you are dealing with some massive
| psychological effects that people refuse to acknowledge.
| friendzis wrote:
| Suppose you have a grand piano recording set up something
| like this https://images.squarespace-
| cdn.com/content/v1/59e4eb2464b05f... or like this https:/
| /i0.wp.com/royerlabs.com/photos/rec_tips/piano/Mancin...
|
| Not only you have a multitrack recording to play with
| when mixing/mastering, but the tracks are naturally
| frequency weighted due to spatial positioning. Mix these
| tracks into stereo with some panning and play it on a
| decent set up with large-ish (say 5m) scene. You end up
| with unnaturally large grand piano spanning the whole
| scene. It does not sound "natural", but gives fake
| perception of "scene".
|
| The whole audio field is weird constant chase between
| production, recording and reproduction (e.g. in the 90s V
| shaped frequency profile used to be quite prevalent to
| sound good on boomboxes) which gives perfect breeding
| grounds for audiophilic mysticism. No set up will ever be
| able to "naturally reproduce" both rock concert and
| chamber orchestra.
|
| I have noticed that there are two types of audiophiles.
| The first kind has certain collection of records and
| strive for a set up that gives them the same goosebumps
| they felt first time hearing the recording/concert, the
| second kind lives off giving goosebumps to their
| audiophile friends bringing their own records. Both live
| in constant grind for perfection that they will never
| achieve.
| efficax wrote:
| they absolutely treat the dog for finding contraband.
| that's how you train them to alert on the smell. the
| problem is that this means they might alert for nothing
| at all, just because they want a treat
| krisoft wrote:
| > I sincerely doubt that K9s in airports get treats every
| time they correctly identify a illicit source.
|
| Why do you doubt that? When people say "treat" they don't
| mean a full day at the spa. It's a bite of something
| tasty, or a bit of play with a tennis ball while the dog
| handler says "goood booooooy".
| bee_rider wrote:
| I would be fascinated to know how many and to what extent
| police techniques that appear to stretch believably are really
| tools to perform parallel reconstruction and get around shady
| sources of evidence.
| rnk wrote:
| Probably a lot of them. The US justice system has a lot of
| good things, but parallel reconstruction, constantly using
| the easiest way to get info even if it is illegal. Of course
| the latest thing is spying on all of us either through apps
| on our phones or just asking the phone company directly.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "... and how they interpret the dogs behaviors."
|
| The interpretation part is huge in many disciplines. If you
| especially look at high profile cases, you can have experts for
| each side presenting opposing interpretations (not even
| involving animals).
|
| _Then it 's up to the jury to decide which is more
| believable._
|
| There's your spooky story for the day.
| dahfizz wrote:
| I only recently learned that you can waive your right to a
| jury, and instead have your case decided by the judge.
|
| I think this would be a very tempting option for me, if I
| ever found myself in serious legal trouble. I assume a judge
| would be less susceptible to emotional manipulation, and be
| intelligent enough to properly weigh the facts.
|
| Of course, then you are at the mercy of one person.
| btilly wrote:
| Well actually they will bypass both and offer you a deal
| you can't refuse.
|
| It's called a plea bargain. "Plea guilty and here is your
| penalty. And if you don't, here is the stack of charges
| we'll try to get you for and how much worst it will be. Do
| you feel lucky, punk?"
|
| Over 95% of cases end this way. Based on exoneration, a
| fairly significant percentage are actually innocent people
| who decide that they can't fight it.
|
| If you think this doesn't sound like justice, I absolutely
| agree.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| And, unfortunately, "reasonable doubt" is not a reliable
| fallback in such a situation.
| giantg2 wrote:
| _Reasonable_ is whatever they say it is.
| FpUser wrote:
| So it seems that "beyond the reasonable doubts" is a fiction
| unless one can afford really expensive lawyers.
| atkailash wrote:
| At least in the jury I was in, people severely
| misunderstand reasonable doubt. And they took into
| consideration the defendant not testifying, as is their
| right under the 5th Amendment. No matter how I pointed it
| out they kept saying "if they didn't have anything to hide,
| why not testify?"
|
| It's definitely destroyed my trust in a jury of my peers.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "It's definitely destroyed my trust in a jury of my
| peers."
|
| If only they were actual peers. Many of the smart ones
| know what to say to get out of being on a jury. There are
| so many people with biases too, and many don't get
| filtered out because they don't even realize that their
| belief is based on bias.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"Many of the smart ones know what to say to get out of
| being on a jury."
|
| I believe in supremacy of justice as I understand it over
| a written rule (I know it is flawed but this is me). If I
| feel that person will be punished unjustly then screw the
| law and I would vote for nullification as it is my right.
| I think this will stop from being selected as a juror.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Even expensive lawyers and experts do not always overcome
| the court of opinion.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| >Then it's up to the jury to decide which is more believable.
|
| And anyone who the prosecutor will stereotype as potentially
| having too much critical thinking skills or skepticism of the
| prosecution will get tossed from the jury.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| _Some of the humans_ , the subset who's testimony was selected
| to appear on that show.
| macrael wrote:
| I did volunteer search and rescue for a bit and people were
| split on weather dogs were even useful in that context either.
| Some people thought they were indispensable and some thought
| they were useless.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| The entire industry, yes industry, of "expert witnesses" is
| murky.
| xorcist wrote:
| Not just murky. Surf around and you can find companies
| offering these types of experts as a service. These experts
| are often experts in a surprisingly wide variety of fields,
| too.
| jessaustin wrote:
| A cadaver dog could be useful for _finding_ a carcass, human or
| otherwise. Once a carcass is found, can 't more qualified
| experts testify about it? Are we talking about cases in which a
| carcass _wasn 't_ found, but was theorized to have been present
| at some point?! How do we know the carcass was human? How do we
| know how long ago it was present? If we could be certain of
| either of those things, how do we know it was the particular
| human whose murder is being prosecuted?
|
| We can't blame dog enthusiasts for testifying, but it's a
| judge's job to keep fantasists out. Judges who allow such
| testimony aren't stupid; they are evil.
| ouid wrote:
| well, one potential nefarious use of dogs is the parallel
| construction of evidence that was gathered illegally in some
| way. That's, I assume, what psychics are for.
| bombcar wrote:
| When they find a body, it's easy.
|
| It's the cases you'll read about when it says the dog
| "activated" or "altered" five times on the property, even
| though nothing was found, and that's somehow used as evidence
| of something.
| P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote:
| That scares the shit out of me if I'm being honest.
|
| years ago I read an article by bruce schneier talking about
| how he ran an open home network so if someone accessed
| illegal content he could claim it could have been anyone.
| His argument was that if it was secured the police would
| argue it had to have been him.
|
| I got the point but disagreed.
|
| a year or two later I was reading an article about a police
| officer that got convicted of accessing child pornography
| on the police computer systems. The chief of police was
| quoted as saying "we know it was him because he used his
| password".
|
| My ass went home that night, opened up my home network, and
| I've ran it that way ever since.
|
| _of course_ it 's not that simple, understanding why that
| chief of police was wrong (I'm not making any claims about
| whether that police officer did or didn't access that
| material) in his confidence is what caused me to suddenly
| strongly agree with Bruce Schneier.
|
| So when I hear things like your dog story, I just know that
| confidence has to be misplaced, even if I don't fully
| understand why (although in this case I do).
| rnk wrote:
| Those aren't really the same thing. You can go to the
| next level of detail on the password question. Was the
| officer reliably in the area, was his password well
| known, is it trivial for anyone to find the password.
| Whereas wifi at your home, there are endless ways to get
| it, plus did you share it with anyone.
| P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote:
| Good luck making those arguments to law enforcement.
| toast0 wrote:
| Arguing with law enforcement is a losing battle. You can
| beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride, etc.
| MereInterest wrote:
| Or, when a dog's "evidence" is used to get a warrant. The
| argument is that the right to privacy does not exist for
| illegal actions, and a dog will only alert for illegal
| contraband. So a baseless fishing expedition without any
| reasonable justification is rendered legal based on
| pseudoscience.
| jessaustin wrote:
| That's hideous. Judges who allow that testimony should be
| impeached and disbarred, at a minimum.
| vkou wrote:
| I don't see why judges can't allow bunk testimony, the
| problem is that juries have been watching way too much
| CSI:Miami and don't believe any arguments brought up by
| the defense that forensic 'experts' are reading chicken
| entrails.
| MereInterest wrote:
| For the same reason that a defendant may not be presented
| to the jury in handcuffs or in a prison uniform. Because
| we humans are not able to return to a blank slate, free
| from biases imparted by information later learned to be
| false. For methods that are known to be useless, the jury
| shouldn't be asked to perform the impossible.
| usefulcat wrote:
| Easy to say. But to the extent that it's easy to get rid
| of judges they can't be an effective check on the other
| branches.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Thread hypothesis is that the judges are encouraging
| prosecutorial misconduct, i.e. that they are
| intentionally _not_ acting as a check on the executive
| branch. For local and state courts, which is what we 're
| talking about, the primary check they embody is against
| police and prosecutors. When they fail in this duty,
| absolutely they should be replaced by those who do not
| fail.
| usefulcat wrote:
| Then the question is, who should get to decide when to
| replace a judge? Obviously not the executive branch,
| especially in the context of this particular discussion.
|
| For example, some judges are elected (probably varies by
| state, but there are some places where that's true), so
| in those cases a perfectly viable remedy already exists
| (in theory, at least). Of course, in practice there's
| nothing to prevent voters from being very pro-prosecutor.
| Usually the judicial system is the best option for a
| remedy to that sort of problem, but of course then we're
| back where we started..
| [deleted]
| iudqnolq wrote:
| There's also "dog alerted, after five days of digging we
| found a single bone fragment 200ft away. Insufficient DNA
| remains for us to conclusively say it's human, but all the
| evidence is consistent with human"
| efficax wrote:
| primarily the bad use of cadaver dogs isn't in finding buried
| bodies but in allegedly being able to say that the body was
| somewhere else before it was moved, like the trunk of a car
| or a bedroom etc. cadaver dogs are basically used to frame
| suspects by claiming that the dog smelled the dead body
| somewhere where only the suspect could have been, therefore
| proving they killed the person. it's complete bullshit. can
| dogs detect corpses? i think they can. can they detect where
| a corpse was, but no longer is, days or weeks or even years
| later? absolutely not, but cadaver dog handlers will testify
| under oath that they can
| phpisthebest wrote:
| This is like saying "Dont hate the player hate the game"
|
| No I am perfectly capable of rightly placing blame on both.
| In this context the Cops, prosecutors and judges all have an
| ethical duty to the truth. All 3 seem to have forgotten that
| underlying obligation in the system
|
| They want that "win", that conviction, that revenge, or what
| ever.
|
| So yes I will blame the judge for letting bad "evidence" in
| that lacks proper foundation, but I will also blame the cop
| that is presenting the "evidence" and the prosecutor that
| presented the "evidence"
|
| Our systems have layers for a reason, we can not and should
| not have to relay solely upon the Judge as the first, last
| and only line of defense here.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > In this context the Cops, prosecutors and judges all have
| an ethical duty to the truth. All 3 seem to have forgotten
| that underlying obligation in the system
|
| Could you clarify: are you referring to every single member
| of those 3 groups, or just some?
|
| And if it's just some, then roughly speaking, what fraction
| do you mean, and what evidence supports that?
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Depends on which part of that quote...
|
| I believe every single member of all 3 have an ethical
| duty to the truth
|
| I think a significant number of all 3 groups have
| forgotten that, or believe something else take precedent
| further I believe every member of all 3 groups knows
| about a co-member of the group that has ignored or
| violated their ethical duty and looked the other way, or
| actively covered for that abuse
| paperwasp42 wrote:
| I think it's important to note that cops, prosecutors,
| judges, etc. are trained and encouraged to "listen to the
| science" and "don't rely on your gut." Of course, many
| disregard this, due to corruption or other moral failings.
| But many _do_ follow this advice, and sometimes it results
| in presenting faulty evidence simply because they have been
| taught faulty science.
|
| In addition to rooting out corruption and dismantling
| immoral incentives, we need to seriously re-examine the
| forensic science that is the backbone of many cases. People
| --including judges, juries, cops, and lawyers--are far too
| willing to blindly trust "science," and it can have
| extremely scary outcomes. We need more replication of
| studies and better science education for our criminal
| justice professionals.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| the bigger problem is we have lost the true meaning of
| "science" or rather the "scientific method" as a huge
| part of forensic "science" has no connection with the
| "scientific method" upto and including the foundational
| "science" of fingerprints which is more of interpretive
| art than science
|
| Too much of science today is Hypothesis -> Gather Data to
| support, reject any that does not -> Report Conclusions
| -> Burn Heretics
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Also, in the US precedent sets if something is scientific
| in the eyes of the court, not science.
| levi_n wrote:
| "2biteencryption", name checks out
| Jenda_ wrote:
| > But the humans who testify on the dogs' behalf have a cult-
| like behavior about what the dogs can realistically detect, and
| how they interpret the dogs behaviors.
|
| There was a scandal here in .cz regarding forensic odorology
| using dogs, as a report came out where the authors basically
| found out they were unable to test it, because the dog-
| operators either did not understand what is a double-blind
| experiment, or they even actively sabotaged it. It is then
| implied that when they do the identification for real, they are
| not blind to who the suspect/control is. (report, unfortunately
| only in Czech: https://jenda.hrach.eu/f2/salamoun-testovani-
| pachovych-stop.... google translate:
| https://jenda.hrach.eu/f2/salamoun-testovani-pachovych-stop-...
| )
| rnk wrote:
| It's clear that this resistance to being reasonably tested is
| because the handlers are obviously influencing the dogs. It's
| freaking irritating. A lot of that is drug war bs. I thought
| only us law enforcement would be resistant to evaluation.
| Huh1337 wrote:
| The more "system" you have the more often you'll hear
| "sorry, but that's just how the system works" and nobody
| will ever be able to (or want to) do anything about the
| problem.
|
| And there's _a lot_ of system around here in EU. Applies to
| healthcare, social care /security and of course police as
| well.
| cybervegan wrote:
| This little eggcorn in the article made me chuckle "little to
| know" (should be "little to no").
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| TIL about eggcorns. a word or phrase that
| results from a mishearing or misinterpretation of another, an
| element of the original being substituted for one that sounds
| very similar or identical (e.g. tow the line instead of toe the
| line ).
|
| I have a version of this all the time when writing but it
| doesn't match that definition. For me, it's more like my
| writing is transcribing an internal auditory dialogue and my
| inner voice might be saying 'their' but my transcriber will
| write 'there'. So, it's not that I don't know what's right ( or
| write ) but that it comes out wrong without active rereading.
|
| Does anyone else have this?
| jeff-davis wrote:
| Is this just a general problem in science?
|
| Science is highly objective, but the process of attaining
| scientific credibility is prone to all kinds of human problems.
|
| Expecting the judicial system to sort through this better than
| the scientific community seems foolish.
|
| Ideally, a high-enough percentage of scientifically-educated
| people would mean more skeptical jurors, defense attorneys who
| more able to challenge experts, and judges more able to keep junk
| science out entirely.
| Jenda_ wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Dookhan
|
| I find it shocking that there is no "continuous quality
| assurance" of these labs - for example, one should take the lab
| as a blackbox, and send 10% known-negatives, 10% known-positives,
| and 10% random samples from previous batches in every batch, and
| then evaluate a) how many known positives/negatives turned out
| right, b) how many samples from previous batches return the same
| result.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| This is just another case of one of those typical double
| standards that arise from existing in a society where a non-
| trivial fraction of the population is willing to give the
| government a free pass for anything short of chucking puppies
| into a wood chipper on a live stream.
|
| You can bet your ass if these labs were in the business of
| supplying defense attorneys the info they need to get clients
| found innocent they'd be QC and government-regulated up to
| their eyeballs and would get shut down at the drop of the hat
| for doing shoddy work.
|
| See also: Many telecoms and ISPs will happily provide police
| records with little formality. If a defense attorney wants to
| see all the records the cops got (not just the ones that are
| going to be used by the prosecution in court) they're pretty
| much up shit creek until a judge tells the business to turn
| them over.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| I think there's also the problem of science that has been
| elevated as a religion and anything labelled scientific is
| taken as gospel.
|
| We should all remember this study that showed that 90% of
| scientific papers weren't reproducible (not science then).
|
| While I have no problem with science itself, scientists are
| humans, they make mistakes and can be bought.
| muaytimbo wrote:
| Your assertion that 90% of scientific papers aren't
| reproducible is extremely simplistic. There is a vast
| difference in reproducibility across the different
| scientific fields. A lot of the "reproducibility" crisis is
| taking place in fields that are not even traditionally
| known as science.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Was that replication crisis study ever successfully
| reproduced?
| adastra22 wrote:
| Yes. Massively.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| People have trouble with moderation because moderation
| requires the skillful exercise of prudential judgement, and
| since prudence is a virtue, it means that it is something
| learned and acquired. That we can't verify everything
| personally and therefore must often rely, for practical
| reasons, on appropriate trust toward authority does not
| mean we ought to jump out of the pan of irrational
| skepticism into the fire of uncritical subservience.
| vanattab wrote:
| How offen are people bitting people and only being id through the
| bite marks? Are there people sneaking into bedrooms biting
| people? I don't get it.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Some criminals MO is to bite. Before DNA testing was available,
| it might be all the cops had as evidence. My person opinion is
| it is only good enough for a clue, not evidence. I think the
| same of the blood spatter patterns and when cops do
| reconstructions of things to determine what happened.
| banannaise wrote:
| Bloodstain analysis is, for the most part, also crap. [0]
|
| We should be wary of many of the types of physical "evidence"
| popularized by crime shows; many of them are backed up mostly
| by propaganda rather than science.
|
| [0] https://scholarship.shu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2
| 125...
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Typically it's a "man bites dog" kind of case. [ducks]
| mypalmike wrote:
| When there are violent struggles, it's not actually that
| uncommon for bite marks to be present on victim or assistant.
|
| *Source - I've seen lots of episodes of Forensic Files.
| Hackbraten wrote:
| The murder of Sherri Rasmussen [1] comes to mind.
|
| They caught the perpetrator decades later, mainly due to DNA
| traces left in the bite mark on the victim's arm.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Sherri_Rasmussen
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| I'd imagine it's not uncommon for bite marks to be at least one
| piece of evidence. Victim struggles, bites assailant, cops
| arrest somebody with a bite mark, suspect insists it's from
| some fun times with their SO and not from a victim defending
| themselves, cops call upon their pseudoscientists to "prove"
| that the bite mark came from the victim. Or another way around,
| a victim of a violent assault might have been bit while
| fighting off their attacker. In a grappling scenario, there is
| definitely a portion of the population who will instinctively
| use their teeth, from my experience in water polo, I'd reckon
| about a quarter of people.
| xorcist wrote:
| Surely there must be tons of DNA when somebody gets _bitten_?
|
| Even if the mere presence is not enough for a conviction, it
| should be enough to disprove that "fun times" explanation.
| banannaise wrote:
| It's very hard to get a reliable DNA sample from the body
| of a different person.
| MezzoDelCammin wrote:
| do people in water polo really bite each other? Sounds pretty
| vicious...
| consp wrote:
| I've seen it happen once in over 15 years of playing it on
| a "Beer-team" level. 25% sounds a bit much but YMMV for
| region to region and level of play.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Maybe. Might also have something to do with your
| position. I was a whole set/whole D/bruiser for my high
| school teams, so I spent a lot more time in direct
| contact with other players than most.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| It's a vicious sport. More so in women's polo, where the
| brute strength range is a lot smaller than in men's. I
| played at the highschool level, where the violence is
| vicious, as opposed to the university level where I'd
| better describe it as "brutal". Players treat the game as
| team vs. team vs. referee, so it's basically a melee until
| you think you can flop a bit to get the ref to kick an
| opposing player out.
| smcl wrote:
| Here's one such example of a biter, not in polo but football:
| https://www.businessinsider.com/luis-suarez-biting-
| history-2...
| beastie29a wrote:
| There was an HBO documentary series named Autopsy[0] I watched
| back in the 90s and two crimes stick out. The series mainly
| followed the case file of a Forensic Pathologist named Dr.
| Michael Baden.
|
| If I can remember them correctly, one case was a murder that
| appeared as a break-in and a bite marking found on a garbage
| bag was tied back to the victim. The other was an inmate that
| left bite marks on a guard and tied the crime back to the
| inmate with.
|
| It's so interesting to see this research now and wonder what
| would come of those cases now that the main evidence is
| seemingly unreliable.
|
| [0] https://www.hbo.com/autopsy
| [deleted]
| kuprel wrote:
| Bite marks were used to convict Ted Bundy
| luxuryballs wrote:
| I'm surprised that this even needed a study, which also makes it
| rather alarming.
| holiveros wrote:
| Mexican here, in my country these type of "evidences" are harder
| to support / enforce, as long as your lawyer / you are willing to
| provide enough scientific indication they're not reliable, those
| evidences are dismissed.
|
| Of course, as any country, there's corruption at every level.
|
| Wonder what's the stance of other countries?
| pyuser583 wrote:
| I've heard the Mexican legal system has really strong rights
| for defendants. So strong, it's hard to prosecute corrupt
| officials.
| bombcar wrote:
| Often these types of evidences are used to get the subject to
| confess or agree to a plea deal.
|
| (In other words, they're often used "when we know you did it"
| kind of things.)
|
| The justice industry isn't very pretty, best not to look too
| closely at it.
| Zigurd wrote:
| "Crime labs" cannot be trusted. They are unaccountable and
| dependent on police departments for funding. Their results are
| "good" if people get convicted. That's perverse and contrary to
| scientific principles. That extends to publications in that
| field. It's systemically corrupted and needs to be restructured
| to be independent of police and prosecutors.
| kazinator wrote:
| Bitemark analysis for which child got into the block of cheddar
| cheese is dead accurate, though. You will not so easily overturn
| the convictions.
| irsagent wrote:
| Are any implications drawn from these findings from a dentist
| perspective?
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