
Arson Forensics Sets Old Fire Myths Ablaze - ALee
http://www.npr.org/2011/11/19/142546979/arson-forensics-sets-old-fire-myths-ablaze
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[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann)

~~~
munin
computer forensics is currently in much the same state that arson forensics
was at the time Texas sentenced Willingham to death. as far as I know, it
hasn't killed anyone, yet...

~~~
gwern
I don't know about _killed_ , but every time I read a blurb buried somewhere
about a child porn trial (based, invariably, on the contents of a computer), I
think back to one or two known cases of someone planting CP on another
computer and trying to frame the owner...

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mustpax
As a foreigner it is absolutely fascinating to me how sound the basic tenets
of the American justice system are and yet the system itself manages to be
flawed and bizarrely vindictive. These arson convictions sure take a very
interesting view of the phrase "beyond a reasonable doubt."

~~~
gwern
As compared to... what? A northern European system, I'm guessing. They're the
only ones which aren't prima facie equally flawed and bizarre (like Japan's
99% conviction rate).

~~~
mixmax
That's actually an interesting question. I'm Northern European, and my first
thought was that the parent is right - that'd never happen here - our system
is just and fair.

On closer inspection however I see a lot of my own bias:

\- I'm not American, and so I believe that my system is better than yours.

\- I read sites like Reddit daily, which is infested with stories of
wronddoing, police violence and what have you. Since a lot of the userbase is
from the US and the site generally is US centric I'll be exposed to a lot more
US based wrongdoing which will bias my opinion.

\- The US has a larger population than Northern Europe, which means that even
if the two systems are exactly the same there will be more injustices done in
the US.

So which is it? I don't know, but I do know that if I hadn't stopped to think
I'd agree with the parent poster.

~~~
Tichy
At least we don't have death sentences where I live.

~~~
anamax
> At least we don't have death sentences where I live.

Are people more likely to die in jail than outside? If so, you have death
sentences, you just don't admit that you're pulling the trigger.

Death penalty opponents claim that there are about 10 innocents who have been
executed. (The actual claim is less, but 10, or even 100 suffices for our
purposes.)

The vast majority of people who die in prison are not executed. Instead,
they're killed by prison life, including life-without-parole. Unless you want
to argue that the innocent are more likely to get death sentences than other
sentences, you're stuck arguing that most sentences don't end in death. While
true, that isn't enough to make the case.

Note that folks who get a death sentence get far more review and the like than
folks who don't.

The numbers are pretty straightforward. Folks who yell about the death penalty
killing innocents are either innumerate or care about the death penalty, not
killing innocents. There's nothing wrong with the latter, when done honestly.

~~~
Tichy
"Are people more likely to die in jail than outside?"

I don't know - do you? It seems very likely that they live longer even in jail
than if they are being executed by death sentence, though.

Of course even being in jail as an innocent is a tragedy, but my personal
feeling is that being executed is even worse.

I've never been to a prison and I don't know how the prison experiences vary
by country. Somehow I have a hard time believing that in my country the
infamous shower rapes are the norm. But I don't know.

I am surprised that the claim is only 10 innocents who have been executed.
Even just casually reading I have a feeling that I read about more cases (and
definitely about more cases who have been on death row but were freed in time,
maybe because of the initiative of that law professor with his students?).
Maybe you mean 10 innocents per year?

Perhaps it is also less likely that a case is being resolved after a death
sentence, because there is less incentive to look into it. While people are
still on death row, there might be more urgency to trying to prove their
innocence.

~~~
anamax
> I don't know - do you?

Yes, I do. If it's relevant to your argument, shouldn't you also know?

> It seems very likely that they live longer even in jail than if they are
> being executed by death sentence, though.

Oh really? Based on what? Death row inmates have no risk from other inmates,
good health care, etc.

> who have been on death row but were freed in time, maybe because of the
> initiative of that law professor with his students?).

The vast majority of said cases aren't innocents, but "wrongly sentenced",
which is basically "sympathetic defendant".

> Maybe you mean 10 innocents per year?

Nope. 10 total in the past few decades.

> Perhaps it is also less likely that a case is being resolved after a death
> sentence, because there is less incentive to look into it.

Huh? People die every day in prison.

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leeHS
I'm a Forensic Biologist, working mostly on DNA evidence. This article does
not surprise me in the least. The National Academy of Science is also not
surprised. They issued a report about a year ago examining the forensic
sciences in the US and found that many fields do not have enough core
research. My favorite example is blood spatter analysis (think Dexter). This
field is completely built around crime scene experience. It's only been within
the last decade that some serious research has been undertaken to provide a
scientific basis for the opinions offered in court.

Now, it's not bad if your particular field has a few areas that are still
lacking in basic research. But you have a DUTY to express this in court. For
example, in this case, the expert can say that based on his 40 years in the
field, this is his opinion, but he should note that there is no scientific
support, and he should always declare if there is any disagreement within the
community.

Forensic science is an amazing field...unfortunately the practitioners tend to
mess it up.

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nohat
It is interesting how long it has taken for forensics (even just some small
aspects) to be approached in a scientific way. It is very disappointing when
you consider how many people's lives and livelyhoods depend on forensics. I
wonder what other systems depend on anecdotes and apprenticeships for
expertise, that really ought to be approached scientifically.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Software Engineering.

~~~
nohat
I am not aware of an attempt to scientifically approach software engineering
generally (though it seems like the type of thing that would have been tried).
I have seen some pretty scientific approaches to performance and efficiency.
What do you think should be done? Perhaps more peer review. Blinded testing of
code complexity and development difficulty for different code systems?

~~~
jerf
When people say they think software engineering should be approached more
scientifically, usually what they mean is that they want a scientifically-
verified process that repeatably produces optimal results. Unfortunately, what
science has been done has generally shown that good people produce good
software, bad people produce bad software, and that it doesn't seem to much
matter what process you lay on top of them. (To the extent that sounds
tautological, well, I'm summarizing here.) It is broadly accurate to say that
what scientific evidence there is about software engineering leads to the
conclusion that science isn't going to give us that science-approved unified
single process that people are asking for. So we'll continue to hear this
complaint for at least the next several decades.

(Science can nibble around the edges of the problem of software engineering,
but even what results we have strike me as likely to suffer from the usual
problems of taking small isolated samples from an n-dimensional space and then
trying to extrapolate. For one thing, almost every study you've ever heard of
that establishes some "fact" about software engineering was done on students.
Scientifically speaking, there's no particular reason to expect such results
to translate to professionals in any particular manner.)

------
Alex3917
"Nobody ever set out to send an innocent person to prison for arson"

But they're sure happy to keep them there.

~~~
aptwebapps
Correct. Or keep them in their way to the chair. Because to admit they were
wrong would be embarrassing. This is the banality of evil.

------
marquis
This story was heartbreaking. How frustrating it is to be bound to our own
shortsightedness, and worse - to know it.

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da5e
shorter: flashover occurs faster than investigators thought. That is the sole
myth the article even mentions.

~~~
ceejayoz
It links to a much more detailed article. Expecting a short radio piece to go
into enormous detail is a bit unreasonable, and picking the biggest one - that
fire investigators didn't even know how long a normal, non-accelerated fire
would take to start - is pretty good at showing just how bad the state of the
"art" was/is.

~~~
da5e
The title of the article was linkbait.

~~~
ceejayoz
The title seems entirely accurate. People are going to their executions based
on old wives' tales.

