
The crisis of American forensics - zeveb
https://www.thenation.com/article/the-crisis-of-american-forensics/
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0xcde4c3db
I think the Genrich case is just as much a story about prejudice against the
mentally ill as it is a story about the failures of forensic science.

> Martinez understands that Genrich comes off as “weird.” But, he insists, “He
> didn’t have a violent bone in his body. He never hurt anybody. He was the
> one getting hurt.”

As far as I've read about it, this is pretty much the norm for people with
serious mental illness. They're believed to be aggressors, but in reality are
vastly more likely to be victims because their alienation and unstable lives
render them highly vulnerable to the tactics of abusers (which are often
similar to the tactics that law enforcement officers use against suspects).
People tend to assume they're lying or delusional when they tell anyone what
happened.

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jernfrost
Precedent is a terribly principle to apply to science. In fact it must be the
worst possible way of approaching science. Science almost by definition is
about challenging and upending established conventions and "truths".

Imagine if we were to continue to treat desease spreading as a product of bad
smell and insist on doing it rather than focus on hygiene because there is
PRECEDENCE for doing so.

 _head shaking_

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jstewartmobile
Until DNA, forensics has _always_ been pseudoscience voodoo. Detectives I've
known guesstimated the fingerprint error rate to be _much_ higher than 1 in 24
--and fingerprints used to be the gold standard.

I've even heard a few judges stress the importance of informing jurors before
a trial on how most forensic evidence is nowhere near as solid as crime dramas
make it out to be. These were sharp guys though, so that is probably not
common practice.

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junkcollector
Conceptually, pattern matching isn't wrong. It's the implementation,
presentation, and gross exaggeration of efficacy that is the real problem. DNA
matching is still often pseudoscience voodoo the way it is used in courts for
many of the same reasons that tooling marking is. Just look at Massachusetts,
where they are having to retry 10's of thousands of cases because tests were
botched by an malicious technician and then passed off in courts as foolproof
even when the prosecution knew them to be suspect.

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logfromblammo
It must be stressful knowing your entire profession is BS with a glossy veneer
over it, and the walls could all come crashing down in an instant.

In some ways, we have come a long way from employing ducking stools to detect
witches, but in other ways, we have not advanced at all.

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asynchrony
I suspect that in at least some cases when the actual perpetrator discovers
that law enforcement has focused in on the incorrect suspect and is expending
great resources to prove that suspect's guilt, they simply take their get out
jail free card and move on. I have no background in psychology, but I'm
confident that statistics will support that even the most deranged actors will
be able to suppress their antisocial impulses to take advantage of such
opportunities. Personally, I would rather have a statistical algorithm
prioritize suspects than a human detective with a feeling (and the influence
to set an entire law enforcement agency after a weak suspect).

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throwaway2048
Until your statistical algorithm decides that black=crime due to the data sets
its been fed, and nobody dares question the wisdom of the computer.

Before you reply that detectives might/would have done that anyways, the point
is that at least that is identifiable and addressable, how do you determine
how a neural net makes its decisions?

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Sacho
> Before you reply that detectives might/would have done that anyways, the
> point is that at least that is identifiable and addressable

I think you're handwaving the difficulty of identifying and addressing bias
and discrimination. I'm not sure it's any easier to do for people than for
computers. Computers have a huge advantage here because we can open up their
brain and examine how they think, and once we create one that suits our
tastes, we can replicate it faithfully. Humans are much more of a black box
than a neural net would ever be.

