Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Bulletin: Radley Balko; (The Watch); A high-ranking Obama official just called for the “eradication” of bite mark evidence; "Suggesting that bite marks [should] still be a seriously used technology is not based on science, on measurement, on something that has standards, but more of a gut-level reaction. Those are the kinds of methods that have to be eradicated from forensic science, and replaced with those that come directly out of science, and have the ability to stand up to the standards of scientific evaluation." (Jo Handelsman, assistant director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy); Washington Post;

"This week, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is sponsoring a conference in Arlington, Va., called the “International Symposium on Forensic Science Error Management – Detection, Measurement and Mitigation.” NIST is the government agency that’s attempting to carve out some standards and best practices for the use of forensics in the courtroom.  In my series on bite mark evidence last February, I pointed out that while the practice of bite mark matching has been roundly criticized by the scientific community for lacking any of the basic principles of the scientific method, some critics of bite mark evidence were concerned that the subcommittees under NIST that were charged with looking into the field had been stacked with bite mark analysts and their allies. But this week, the fate of bite mark evidence took a much different turn. In her speech to open the conference, Jo Handelsman, assistant director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy called for the “eradication” of bite mark evidence. I’ve obtained an audio clip of her speech. Here’s a transcript of the relevant portion: "Two of the elements highly focused on in the report are that we need to have highly consistent data and methods, and we need to have a high degree of certainty in the results that we obtain in forensics science when we’re linking an individual to a crime scene or sample. There are a number of examples where we haven’t lived up to that standard of both certainty and consistency. One of the studies . . . is really quite disturbing. They showed variable conclusions among expert practitioners about whether in the example of bite marks the injury was in fact a bite mark, whether the marks were made by human teeth . . . or by animals, and whether the images of those marks were suitable for analysis. And interestingly, those who had more experience, the more experienced practitioners, showed more variability between the practitioners — they came to less agreement than the less experienced practitioners. So where in many fields we might say, well we just need people who have more experience, more of a feel for the data, in fact it goes the wrong way in forensics. And then they found that many of the practitioners show no consistency. It wasn’t as if some practitioners were consistently conservative and others made less conservative assessments. They were all over the place. Suggesting that bite marks [should] still be a seriously used technology is not based on science, on measurement, on something that has standards, but more of a gut-level reaction. Those are the kinds of methods that have to be eradicated from forensic science, and replaced with those that come directly out of science, and have the ability to stand up to the standards of scientific evaluation.".........Chris Fabricant, a director of strategic litigation for the Innocence Project who specializes in bite mark cases, says it’s difficult to overstate the significance of a senior White House policy adviser on science issues calling for the end of a major field of forensics. “It’s unprecedented,” Fabricant says. “It’s necessary, and she’s completely right. But this has never happened before.”"......... Judges aren’t scientists, and neither are most jurors. Like most of the rest of us, they can be swayed by such non-scientific factors as a witness’s charm, demeanor and tone. Good scientists don’t speak in absolutes, they talk about probabilities. That can make them sound wishy-washy, and thus less convincing, than a charlatan who is willing to make assertions without equivocating. Handelsman’s comments are progress, but they also further expose the core problem with scientific evidence: If not a single court in the country to date has been able to rule against a self-evidently absurd field like bite mark matching, why should we continue to entrust the courts to arbitrate the scientific validity of other evidence?"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/07/22/a-high-ranking-obama-official-just-called-for-the-eradication-of-bite-mark-evidence/