POST: "How to reform forensics," by Radley Balko, published by the Washington Post on May 5, 2015. (Radley
Balko blogs about criminal justice, the drug war and civil liberties
for The Washington Post. He is the author of the book "Rise of the
Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces.")
GIST: "Crime lab
analysts are supposed to be neutral parties interested only in getting
the science right. But the system is often structured in a way that
makes them part of the prosecution’s “team.” In fact in many
jurisdictions, crime labs actually get paid per conviction,
not per analysis — about as clear a perversion of objectivity as one
can imagine. Of course, the pressures and incentives needn’t be that
explicit. For example, just knowing extraneous details about a case can produce cognitive bias, even in as accepted a field as DNA analysis. There
are two fundamental things that need to be done to reform the field of
forensics. The first is to purge the courts of specialties that have no
basis in science. With the fields that are left, we have to turn these
incentives around, so that the performance of crime lab technicians is
measured only on whether or not they perform accurate analyses."
The entire post can be found at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/05/05/how-to-reform-forensics/
PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
Dear Reader. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog. We are following this case.
I
have added a search box for content in this blog which now encompasses
several thousand posts. The search box is located near the bottom of
the screen just above the list of links. I am confident that this
powerful search tool provided by "Blogger" will help our readers and
myself get more out of the site.
The
Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible
years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr.
Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of
Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic"
section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It
can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith
Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.ca/2013/12/the-charles-smith-award-presented-to_28.html
I look forward to hearing from readers at:
hlevy15@gmail.com.
Harold Levy; Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog;
