
'Great Pause' Among Prosecutors As DNA Proves Fallible - wellokthen
http://www.npr.org/2015/10/09/447202433/-great-pause-among-forensic-scientists-as-dna-proves-fallible
======
jimrandomh
Seen in light of
[http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudenc...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2015/04/fbi_s_flawed_forensics_expert_testimony_hair_analysis_bite_marks_fingerprints.html)
this looks like a systemic problem and not an innocent mistake. If crime labs
were doing _science_ , they would have run enough control samples to quickly
discover the mistake. But the error "may have affected thousands of cases
going back to 1999". I don't think forensic science, as currently practiced in
the United States, deserves the name "science". And the errors are all in the
same direction: towards conviction.

~~~
jsprogrammer
Shouldn't defendants be demanding that "science" be done in any evidence
against them?

Or, at least getting every piece of "non-science" evidence thrown out?

~~~
charrisku
The average defendant in the US is poor or indigent, often lacks much of a
formal education, and is usually at the mercy of whatever overworked public
defender they were assigned. Go ask any lawyer you know about how much weight
their demands carry or how realistic a chance they have of getting evidence
that has the patina of scientific certainty thrown out. I bet you discover
they have about as much hope of that as a gnat trying to stop a locomotive.

~~~
cgriswald
Public defenders are at least politically and professionally incentivized to
win cases even if they are not provided the resources to do so. In my county,
the appointed defender is private and is paid per case. He is strongly
incentivized to take as many cases as possible and spend as little time as
possible actually defending people. "Take the plea deal" might be the best
advice, but only because the system is rigged against the defendant. You don't
have to be poor or indigent, either. The middle class are also in danger and
even if they win their case their lives are often ruined and they experience
significant financial hardships.

------
striking
A commenter named "Godfroi Shagnasty" notes that the headline of this article
is misleading because DNA as evidence isn't in question in this article.
Rather, the fallible thing is the process by which law enforcement analyzes
DNA matches in "mixtures" of DNA from multiple people like the kind found on
doorknobs and such.

Although the headline is highly editorialized, it's clear that DNA evidence is
just as fallible to bad science as any other form of evidence and that we must
treat all forms of evidence with respect and skepticism if we are to find the
truth.

1 in 40 false matches rather than one in a million, throughout thousands of
cases? Outrageous.

~~~
skybrian
I don't think the heading is misleading or editorialized, just abbreviated.
DNA is just a chemical. The headline is referring (in an abbreviated way) to
the process of DNA testing. Analyzing the results is part of the process. If
the analysis is wrong, the results are wrong.

~~~
striking
In my view, it implies that DNA as evidence is entirely not useful, and as DNA
doesn't change, DNA will never be useful as evidence.

However, since DNA analysis techniques _are_ mutable, it is possible for DNA
analysis to be useful, as long as it is used correctly.

I believe there is a difference.

~~~
sampo
Maybe "math is fallible" would have been a better title. Not because math
itself is fallible, but because they used math wrong.

~~~
pjtr
How about "labs are fallible"? I think the point is, while forensic "science"
are still using lie detectors and other very questionable techniques that just
can not work reliably, it's a bit strange to paint DNA itself as fallible. DNA
can work, if the lab is competent. Lie detectors and other voodoo can not.

------
chrisprobert
This article brings up problems with current PCR-based STR genotyping methods,
but lacks information about technologies that are competing to be the future
of forensic genotyping. Here's some more context on the NGS technologies that
are set to replace it:

Illumina is pursuing mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequencing. An advantage here
is that cells contain many copies of mtDNA sequences (as opposed to just one
copy of each gDNA haplotype), and mtDNA contains hyper-variable regions which
confer strong individual specificity. This is potentially advantageous in
crime scene samples, where the DNA could be damaged through degradation
processes like sun exposure. [http://www.illumina.com/areas-of-
interest/forensic-genomics/...](http://www.illumina.com/areas-of-
interest/forensic-genomics/mtdna-analysis-identify-missing-persons.html)

Ion Torrent/ThermoFisher are going after the same STR targets, but using their
Torrent and Proton NGS platforms (rather than PCR). Unlike regular PCR
methods, this can provide things like allele frequency estimates, and can call
more than one base into variable regions (which provides more information, and
can potentially be used to infer things like height, ethnicity, hair or eye
color). [https://www.thermofisher.com/us/en/home/industrial/human-
ide...](https://www.thermofisher.com/us/en/home/industrial/human-
identification/next-gen-sequencing-for-forensics.html)

Carlos Bustamante (a Stanford Professor, and world expert in ancient genomics
/ diverse population genomics: [https://med.stanford.edu/profiles/carlos-
bustamante](https://med.stanford.edu/profiles/carlos-bustamante)) has founded
IdentifyGenomics, which is a startup focused on new methods for forensic DNA
sequencing (disclosure: I know Carlos, but I'm not involved in his startup).

Definitely an important problem, and will be interesting to who succeeds in
converting forensic investigators to use NGS at scale.

~~~
duaneb
Hopefully the underlying use of [mt]DNA in cases also gets some attention and
reform. Simply identifying some kind of physical connection is hardly damning;
it is inherently circumstantial. It's actually quite rare to finding damning
DNA evidence unless the inference directly ties to the crime, i.e. with semen
in sexual assault cases or blood in a suspect's car.

It's scary to think prosecutors have been pitching DNA as infallible, damning
evidence all along. It means getting a defense attorney off their game might
very well lead to an incorrect conviction (think Serial, though obviously the
circumstances there are more tied to the use of the cell phone records). I
don't think that technology is going to bring us easier convictions for a
while yet (e.g. statistical analysis of evidence leading to inference ala
Watson might be interesting). Somehow this isn't reflected in how juries have
chosen, though, so I think public education about it (even via entertainment)
might be the most effective way to change this.

~~~
mahranch
More than that, DNA evidence isn't that difficult to fabricate (Source:
[http://zidbits.com/2012/06/can-dna-be-faked/](http://zidbits.com/2012/06/can-
dna-be-faked/)). If someone wanted to create fake DNA and leave it at the
scene of a crime to frame someone, it wouldn't be all that difficult or
expensive (relatively speaking, of course).

It takes some technology that most people don't have (like a centrifuge) but
the actual process is simple and can be achieved by anyone with familiarity
with the equipment itself.

~~~
chrisprobert
Totally agree here - would be easy to fabricate DNA oligos with given mtDNA or
STR sequences, especially if you know forensic investigators are only going to
use very small target sequences for identification purposes.

This could be a case for using shotgun / whole genome sequencing - we'd expect
to see a more even distribution of genome coverage than one would get by
leaving targeted oligos behind. But this isn't likely to happen anytime soon;
the costs are far too high (10-100X greater than targeted sequencing).

In the meantime though, one highly feasible avenue for spotting synthetic DNA
oligo fragments is the presence and position of nucleosomes
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleosome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleosome)),
which are DNA-associated protein complexes that occur in DNA from organisms,
but not in synthetic DNA oligos. These have been used successfully to trace
tissue of origin in cell free DNA in humans, and have specific signals related
to chromatin/genome topological state. The only way I can think of to fake
this signal would be to have a cell culture from the person you're trying to
imitate. Granted, this too is not completely unreasonable - there are now very
robust commercially available protocols for deriving iPSCs from small dermal
fibroblast samples.

~~~
pmoriarty
Why would you fabricate DNA when you could just collect some from the target,
ala Gattica?

------
rl3
> _" [Juries] are even willing to go a step further and say, 'We'll convict on
> the basis of DNA, even in the face of evidence — non-DNA evidence — that
> this isn't the perpetrator," Murphy says._

Juries are largely representative of the general population. As such, most
have been conditioned by television crime dramas such as _Law & Order_, _CSI_
and _NCIS_ to view DNA evidence as infallible techno-wizardry that always
catches the bad guys.

Ever see a mainstream crime drama end with the arrest and conviction of
someone totally innocent, the credits roll, and that's it? Neither have I.

Instead, we have the stereotype of law enforcement being completely
incorruptible, with the evidence technicians themselves cast as well-meaning
nerds who are equally infallible, because gosh, they're just super geeky
scientists who are super smart.

 _" When you go into court you are putting your fate into the hands of twelve
people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty." \- Norm Crosby_

Sadly that quote is even more relevant today.

~~~
netheril96
> Ever see a mainstream crime drama end with the arrest and conviction of
> someone totally innocent, the credits roll, and that's it? Neither have I.

Justice
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_(2006_TV_series)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_\(2006_TV_series\))
is a legal drama that sometimes the innocent are convicted or the criminal
walk free. It is a fantastic show all around in my opinion, but sadly it got
cancelled after one season due to low ratings. Perhaps that fact validate your
position even more, in that people don't like to face the fact that the
judicial system is fallible.

------
kenesom1
State crime labs are simply a rubber stamp on whatever story the prosecutor
has decided on presenting ahead of time. It's not well known, but crime labs
are paid per conviction [1]. Intentional contamination of evidence,
falsification of results, and the use of unreliable methods are entirely
routine and expected within these departments. They are corrupt through and
through. No state crime lab report should ever be considered at all credible
in any way.

Occasionally large-scale corruption comes to light such as when a Boston crime
lab falsified drug tests on a massive scale [2] or New York state police were
found to have fabricated fingerprint evidence for nearly a decade [3]. The
"forensics" field has been embroiled in a steady stream of scandals [4]. Far
from being isolated incidents, this is the norm within law enforcement.

[1]
[http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0731129X.2013.817...](http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0731129X.2013.817070)

[2] [http://www.policeone.com/csi-
forensics/articles/5956534-Mass...](http://www.policeone.com/csi-
forensics/articles/5956534-Mass-crime-lab-shut-down-50-000-drug-tests-
tainted/)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_State_Police_Troop_C_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_State_Police_Troop_C_scandal)

[4]
[http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/crime_labs_under_...](http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/crime_labs_under_the_microscope_after_a_string_of_shoddy_suspect_and_fraudu/)
[http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/csi-
is-a...](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/csi-is-a-
lie/390897/)
[https://www.nacdl.org/criminaldefense.aspx?id=28286](https://www.nacdl.org/criminaldefense.aspx?id=28286)
[http://listverse.com/2015/02/06/10-heinous-cases-of-
miscondu...](http://listverse.com/2015/02/06/10-heinous-cases-of-misconduct-
by-crime-investigators/)

~~~
nicklaf
"It's not well known, but crime labs are paid per conviction"

Seriously: _what?_

~~~
nicklaf
The relevant passage in the source for this claim[1]:

 _Funding crime labs through court-assessed fees creates another channel for
bias to enter crime lab analyses. In jurisdictions with this practice the
crime lab receives a sum of money for each conviction of a given type. Ray
Wickenheiser says, “Collection of court costs is the only stable source of
funding for the Acadiana Crime Lab. $10 is received for each guilty plea or
verdict from each speeding ticket, and $50 from each DWI (Driving While
Impaired) and drug offense.”117 In Broward County, Florida, “Monies deposited
in the Trust Fund are principally court costs assessed upon conviction of
driving or boating under the influence ($50) or selling, manufacturing,
delivery, or possession of a controlled substance ($100).”118

Several state statutory schemes require defendants to pay crime laboratory
fees upon conviction. North Carolina General Statutes require, “[f]or the
services of” the state or local crime lab, that judges in criminal cases
assess a $600 fee to be charged “upon conviction” and remitted to the law
enforcement agency containing the lab whenever that lab “performed DNA
analysis of the crime, tests of bodily fluids of the defendant for the
presence of alcohol or controlled substances, or analysis of any controlled
substance possessed by the defendant or the defendant's agent.”119 Illinois
crime labs receive fees upon convictions for sex offenses, controlled
substance offenses, and those involving driving under the influence.120
Mississippi statues require crime laboratory fees for various conviction
types, including arson, aiding suicide, and driving while intoxicated.121
Similar provisions exist in Alabama, New Mexico, Kentucky, New Jersey,
Virginia, and, until recently, Michigan.122

Other states have broadened the scope even further. Washington statutes
require a $100 crime lab fee for any conviction that involves lab analysis.123
Kansas statutes require offenders “to pay a separate court cost of $400 for
every individual offense if forensic science or laboratory services or
forensic computer examination services are provided in connection with the
investigation.”124 In addition to those already listed, the following states
also require crime lab fees in connection with various conviction types:
Arizona, California, Missouri, Tennessee, and Wisconsin.125

Glen Whitman and Roger Koppl point out that “the very choice to submit a
suspect's sample to the lab makes the lab more inclined (than it would be
otherwise) to announce a match, indicating that the suspect is guilty.”126 The
forensic scientist must evaluate ambiguous evidence, but give, generally, a
binary judgment that the evidence does or does not match. Whitman and Koppl
explain why the probabilities given in DNA testimony are not usually an
exception to this binary nature of forensic-science testimony.127 In this
situation, even the most rational scientist must choose what to say. The
choice will usually be influenced by scientific analysis done in the crime
lab. But if the evidence is ambiguous, as it often is, then two other factors
matter even for perfectly rational forensic scientists. The scientist is more
likely to inculpate the defendant (1) the higher the forensic scientist's
“prior” probability of guilt, which is the probability before the forensic
evidence is examined, and (2) the weaker the scientist's desire is to avoid
convicting the innocent relative to her desire to convict the guilty._

So, the claim does appear to be true, at least in some states.

[1]
[http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0731129X.2013.81...](http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0731129X.2013.817070)

------
pooya72
This is an issue that Roger Kopel has been tackling for years now. His main
research has been in the social epistemology of forensic science. He has
argued that there is a bias towards conviction. In 2008, he published an
article arguing that it was necessary to move away from the "monopoly
epistemics" towards "democratic epistemics." See his paper here:
[http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPag...](http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8356106&fileId=S1742360000000976)

------
jimrandomh
From the article:

> "When they retested it, the likelihood that it could be someone else was, I
> think, one in 30-something, one in 40. So it was a significant probability
> that it could be someone else," Torres says.

No. That is the probability that the test would have claimed a match with a
particular person, conditioning on it not being the right person. In order to
calculate the probability that it was someone else, you need to know the
probability of it having been the right person prior to the test being
performed. If you take a sample and test it against everyone in a big enough
database, with a 1-in-30 false positive rate, then you will definitely end up
accusing someone falsely.

------
kevinpet
Here's the problem right here:

'...threatens to undermine the deep faith people have placed in the
technology.

'"And it's not faith they should not have had to begin with," says Keith
Inman, who teaches forensic science at California State University, East Bay.'

And that's clearly wrong. Someone without sufficient statistical ability and
without any incentive to look for problems dreamed up a protocol and it was
accepted (with "deep faith" no less) without justification.

And the academics who should be the most disinterested seekers after truth
isn't willing to call this mistaken, but we're supposed to pretend no one
could have seen this coming.

~~~
mdpopescu
Most people treat science as an infallible religion. I've had people argue
with me here, on HN [1] that we should not question the scientists but should
accept everything they say unconditionally. [2]

[1] I am pointing this out because HN readers are presumably more intelligent
than "most people" on average.

[2] You can find a lot of comments like that in this post:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9629797](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9629797)

------
smegel
> the deep faith people have placed in the technology.

Faith in technology or people who work for and are paid by the police and who
know that DNA matches are good for repeat business? It's a complete scandal
that DNA testing does not follow a line-up approach: here are 100 samples, one
may be the suspect, tell us which one if any matches the evidence. So called
partial/mixed matching will become the hair analysis scandal of this decade.

------
Mz
If you know what a chimera is, you already know DNA evidence can be
potentially fallible.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_(genetics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_\(genetics\))

~~~
scott_s
I think chimerism could only result in false negatives - which is the opposite
problem of what's going on here.

~~~
streptomycin
_In 1953 a human chimera was reported in the British Medical Journal. A woman
was found to have blood containing two different blood types. Apparently this
resulted from her twin brother 's cells living in her body.[14] More recently,
a study found that such blood group chimerism is not rare.[15]_

~~~
dekhn
I've long believed (since early 90's, when I first learned about DNA tests and
molecular biology) there are a collection of phenomena that make the common
assumptions in DNA forensic testing much less firm than ... well, the users of
those products assume.

------
cmurf
Combine the unethical public policy of elected aggressive prosecutors, and a
public loss of concern about innocents being jailed, and we get this. There
was a time when it was heinous to think of an innocent being jailed such that
it was vastly preferred a guilty person would go free. No longer.

~~~
javajosh
Not only that, but this story starts with, "Texas has miscalculated the
probability of a DNA match. What a headache!"

A systematic miscarriage of justice that has ruined many thousands of lives.
And the NPR identifies the "victim" here as the lab and the prosecutors.

------
rdancer
What passes for DNA matching in U.S. courts is about as fit for purpose as
"lie detectors" or "breathalizers". When the purpose is enabling police and
prosecutors to put people behind bars with impunity, and justice being "seen
to be done", they fit quite well.

I'm not quite sure if the situation around the world is much different, but I
would believe that we're a little more sane in Europe when it comes to
admitting evidence based more on witchcraft than solid engineering.

------
ajnin
Another problem of DNA testing that is hinted at in the article is that as
more and more people enter the databases the probability of false positives
increases. A 1 in a million chance sounds reasonable when you are testing one
person, but with many people tested the probability rises non-intuitively
quickly (see: Birthday paradox). For example if you test 100 people the
probability of a false positive rises to around 1/200.

~~~
mturmon
The reason the Birthday Paradox is surprising is that there are N people, but
the number of possible matches rises like N^2. The "paradox" occurs because
success is defined as any one of the N-choose-2 matches happening.

The analog here is there are M people in the database, and N crimes, so the
chance of a single failure (mistaken match) is kind of like N __*M.

But I'm not sure that's the correct metric; I think you really care about the
amortized cost of a mistaken match across all N crimes. So you don't see the
"paradoxical" quadratic increase.

I admit I'm being a bit fussy -- just testing the extent of the analogy.

You are of course correct that the database size is growing, and the number of
samples that can be collected, even from one crime, also can be made to grow.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> But I'm not sure that's the correct metric; I think you really care about
> the amortized cost of a mistaken match across all N crimes. So you don't see
> the "paradoxical" quadratic increase.

It seems to me what we should really care about is the number of people
falsely convicted, which is false-positive-rate-per-defendant * number-of-
defendants. Since the size of the database (and therefore the false positive
rate) is related to the number of defendants, the number of falsely convicted
people increases quadratically with the number of people subjected to DNA
testing.

------
perlgeek
So, how many people have been sentenced to death, based on this shaky
evidence?

As an aside, even if "one in a million" were true, we're talking about 300+
matches in the US and 7000+ in the world.

IMHO, then the correct question to ask is: "given there are 300 people in the
US whose DNA matches the one of the murderer, how likely is it that the
defendent is the murderer?"

------
mirimir
The sort of "DNA analysis" discussed in the article is old technology. You
just test multiple samples for the occurrence of some set of marker sequences,
and then estimate the probability that matching occurrence could be due to
chance.

So you're comparing a suspect's DNA with DNA from a crime scene. And you find
the same set of marker sequences. But maybe the crime-scene DNA is a mixture.
However, with a mixture you'd expect to see additional marker sequences in the
crime-scene DNA.

But it depends. Many of the marker sequences are racial. So maybe it's more
likely for two people of a given race to look like one person. And maybe there
was racial bias in marker selection. It's a mess.

Bottom line, with current technology, people should not be convicted based on
the occurrence of marker sequences. Nothing less than complete DNA sequences
should be admissible.

------
benrapscallion
Thanks are due in large part to Dr. Eric Lander.
[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/21/opinion/fix-the-flaws-
in-f...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/21/opinion/fix-the-flaws-in-forensic-
science.html?_r=0)

------
meeper16
Excellent related documentary-
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7ET4bbkTm0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7ET4bbkTm0)

------
meeper16
[https://youtu.be/MJu9dL7a3ZI?t=210](https://youtu.be/MJu9dL7a3ZI?t=210)

------
winterismute
Having finished yesterday "Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA" it is
kind of funny to see this trending on HN today. My knowledge of biology and
genetics is kind of basic, but I did enjoy the book, and I was wondering what
other people that are more into the field might think about it.

------
curiousjorge
I wonder how much lawsuit will fly in their direction now

------
mc32
Here's the thing, DNA can accurately identify the source, if there is no
"contamination" with other DNA, if there is contamination, then they have many
orders of magnitude less accuracy in reconstructing the DNA and thus
identifying the sources. But the issue is juries tend to think of accuracy in
terms of uncontaminated DNA samples.

Now, npr, they always, always, ALWAYS take the side of the underdog, no matter
the less favorable actual odds. They put more faith in soft science results
(child psych says this is good for kids) than results from scientific studies
(study showed none to negative impact).

Example, people in Seattle placing signs saying No Californians, it gets a
chuckle, could you imagine a similar sign saying "No [insert poor country
demonym]. NPR would be outraged, with reason, but you don't see the outrage
when the same bias is projected against the relatively better off.

~~~
jacobolus
> _Now, npr, they always, always, ALWAYS take the side of the underdog, no
> matter the less favorable actual odds. They put more faith in soft science
> results than results from scientific studies_

Oh give me a break. NPR is a standard mainstream news organization, with a
higher journalistic standard than most. They don’t by any means “always always
ALWAYS” do anything, except try their best to discover topical news stories
and report them fairly. Like other mainstream news organizations, they aim for
political neutrality, tend to analyze stories in line with the “consensus”,
and shy away from saying anything which deeply challenges the dominant power
structure.

You might argue that standards of evidence in science-related journalism are
weak across the board, but let’s not pretend that there’s some problem with
NPR in particular that wouldn’t equally apply to, e.g., the New York Times,
the Associated Press, the BBC, Le Monde, or the Economist.

~~~
mc32
Ok, when was the last time they had something negative about an underdog
class? It's not as if only people on the top, politically economically,
socially do bad things.

~~~
drumdance
The Giant Pool of Money episode of This American Life -- on of their most
popular episodes in the history of NPR -- does not skimp on the role of low
quality borrowers in the financial crisis -
[http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/355/t...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/355/the-giant-pool-of-money)

~~~
mlangdon
A note: at the time of the Giant Pool of Money, TAL was distributed by PRI. It
has never been a part of NPR.

------
graycat
> ... DNA from the crime scene was matched to his client with a certainty of
> more than a million to one. That is, you'd have to go through more than a
> million people to find somebody else who'd match the sample.

Nope. False. Grotesque, outrageous, brain-dead incompetence. Instead, even
with the "certainty" of one million to one, might find a "match" in the next
person or not in 10 million people.

Also, where'd they get this _certainty_ stuff? I have an excellent background,
thank you, in pure and applied probability, and we don't use _certainty_ like
that or, really, hardly at all.

Police work with DNA and associated probability calculations? This is from a
Saturday morning TV rerun of some old movie of The Three Stooges, right?

With me on a jury, as soon as the prosecutor presents evidence from a police
lab and/or collected by the police, especially DNA evidence, I'll be tempted
to stand in the jury box and call for acquittal via acclamation, dismissal of
the prosecutor and police for incompetence, and their prosecution for fraud!

As soon as a prosecutor presents DNA evidence, I know he's talking total
nonsense and, then, tough to get a conviction.

Or, commonly a prosecutor will want to show that the defendant has a
background of lying, etc. Well, as soon as a prosecutor presents DNA evidence,
I have to strongly suspect that he is lying or at least incompetent. Can't
convict; have to acquit.

(1) Police departments? (2) The biochemistry and probability theory of work
with DNA? Two things that should never be combined!

Police? Working with advanced, delicate topics in science and math? What a
joke -- what The Three Stooges could make of that. Now definitely material for
SNL!

