"PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "The report found that crime labs nationwide lacked uniform standards, practices, accreditation, and oversight. In 2015, the FBI found that its own microscopic hair analysts made errors at least 90 percent of the time in testimony and lab reports. But Attorney General Jeff Sessions isn’t buying it. Even before assuming the nation’s top law enforcement position, he had a long history of pushing back against forensic reform efforts that might make it more difficult for prosecutors to win convictions. “I don’t think we should suggest that those proven scientific principles that we’ve been using for decades are somehow uncertain,” he said in response to the 2009 NAS report. And now, under Sessions’ leadership, the DOJ has ended an Obama-era commission tasked with fixing forensic science. In its place, Sessions created a new forensic working group led by Ted Hunt, a former Missouri prosecutor who was a member of Obama’s commission. But, as Pema points out, there’s a catch. Hunt actually opposed many of the science-driven reforms that the Obama commission had embraced."
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SECOND PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "There have been disturbing incidents in other states, as well. In November, for instance, Ohio was forced to postpone an execution after prison officials spent 45 minutes sticking an inmate with needles in an unsuccessful effort to find a suitable vein. “What we have here is masquerade,” said Zimmers, the Indiana University medical professor, who discussed lethal injection on our Inquiring Minds podcast. “Something that pretends to be science and pretends to be medicine but isn’t.”
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: 'Mother Jones got it right in the following story: "Here Is the Worst Anti-Science BS of 2017: Criminal justice, education, environment, medicine—nothing was spared from the war on science." This story is well-worth reading because it paints such a global picture of Trump's war against just about every aspect of science policy - including science itself! Of particular interest to the readers of this Blog (but be sure to read the rest) is a section headed, "Jeff Sessions opposes forensic science reform."
STORY: "Here Is the Worst Anti-Science BS of 2017: Criminal justice, education, environment, medicine—nothing was spared from the war on science," by reporter Jeremy Schulman, published by 'Mother Jones' on December 28, 2017.
GIST: "Much of the forensic science used in American courtrooms is shockingly unreliable. As a result, innocent people go to prison. Some might even be executed. Mother Jones’ Pema Levy explained in August: "As DNA testing has overturned hundreds of convictions based on flawed forensic evidence, scientists and lawyers are increasingly skeptical that culprits can be accurately identified by matching fingerprints, hair samples, bite marks, bullets, and tread marks to suspects. In a landmark 2009 report, the National Academy of Sciences found that nuclear DNA testing was the only reliable forensic discipline; those based on expert analysis, as opposed to laboratory testing, weren’t really science at all. The report found that crime labs nationwide lacked uniform standards, practices, accreditation, and oversight. In 2015, the FBI found that its own microscopic hair analysts made errors at least 90 percent of the time in testimony and lab reports. But Attorney General Jeff Sessions isn’t buying it. Even before assuming the nation’s top law enforcement position, he had a long history of pushing back against forensic reform efforts that might make it more difficult for prosecutors to win convictions. “I don’t think we should suggest that those proven scientific principles that we’ve been using for decades are somehow uncertain,” he said in response to the 2009 NAS report. And now, under Sessions’ leadership, the DOJ has ended an Obama-era commission tasked with fixing forensic science. In its place, Sessions created a new forensic working group led by Ted Hunt, a former Missouri prosecutor who was a member of Obama’s commission. But, as Pema points out, there’s a catch. Hunt actually opposed many of the science-driven reforms that the Obama commission had embraced: In March 2016, the commission recommended that then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch direct forensic experts and attorneys working on behalf of the Justice Department to stop using the phrase “to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty.” The phrase is commonly used on witness stands and in lab reports and gives juries and judges a sense of factuality, but it is subjective and lacks any agreed-upon meaning across the sciences. Hunt was one of two commission members who opposed the recommendation, which Lynch adopted last September. Lynch also adopted a recommendation by the commission requiring forensic testing labs that work with the department and its attorneys to publicize their internal procedures, from equipment maintenance to estimations of uncertainty, in order to foster transparency, trust, and best practices in the industry. Hunt was one of four commissioners who opposed it. Last September, when the commission released a document supporting stricter accreditation standards for forensic labs, Hunt voted against it. And when the commission recommended that the National Institute of Standards and Technology conduct scientific evaluations of the “technical merit of test methods and practices used in forensic science disciplines,” he opposed that, too. At its final meeting, when members had already been informed that the group would be coming to an end, several commissioners pushed for a resolution encouraging experts to use more quantitative language to convey the accuracy of forensic testimony. The resolution narrowly failed, with Hunt among the nays. Hunt has now been tasked with fixing the way prosecutors use forensics so that it is “consistent with scientific principles and just outcomes.” But, as Pema writes, “critics of unchecked forensic testimony have doubts that his work will truly be scientific.”
The entire article can be read at the following link:
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/12/anti-science-bs-climate-opioids-lethal-injection/#
PS! Another section is worthy of particular mention: "States use experimental drugs to execute inmates."..."Mother Jones’ Nathalie Baptiste spent much of 2017 chronicling capital punishment in the United States—a system that is arbitrary, cruel, expensive, and highly inequitable. It is also an affront to basic standards of science and medicine. As Nathalie has explained, there was never much evidence behind the original “three-drug cocktail” that was supposed to make lethal injection painless and humane. But in recent years, things have gotten even worse as pharmaceutical companies have become increasingly unwilling to allow their products to be used for capital punishment, which has left prison officials scrambling to find drugs they can use to kill inmates. In response, some states have resorted to even more unscientific methods of execution, concocting new lethal injection regimens using untested drugs and procedures. The results have been predictably horrific, culminating in Arkansas’ failed attempt in April to execute eight men in less than two weeks—before its supply of the controversial sedative midazolam expired. As Nathalie wrote this spring: "[J]ust like with the original cocktail, these new lethal injection techniques have been developed with little scientific rigor. “There’s been a very active substitution of drugs into this protocol with, of course, no corresponding investigation,” says [Indiana University Associate Professor Teresa] Zimmers. When Oklahoma used the one-drug protocol of pentobarbital in the execution of Michael Wilson in January 2014, the inmate’s last words were, “I feel my whole body burning.” A few months later, the state tried to put Clayton Lockett to death using a three-drug protocol that included the anesthetic midazolam. Lockett mumbled and writhed on the gurney, before dying of a massive heart attack about 40 minutes after the procedure began. Oklahoma’s executions are now on hold. Despite the controversy surrounding midazolam, last month Arkansas rushed to execute eight men in 11 days when its supply of the drug was set to expire. After a series of legal setbacks for the state, only four were put to death. The last man to die, Kenneth Williams, reportedly convulsed, jerked, lurched, and coughed for 10 to 20 seconds after prison officials administered midazolam. Apparently undeterred, Arkansas has since acquired a new supply of midazolam, reportedly paying cash to a secret middleman: Apparently undeterred, Arkansas has since acquired a new supply of midazolam, reportedly paying cash to a secret middleman: One August afternoon, Wendy Kelley, the director of the Arkansas Department of Corrections, picked up 40 vials of a controversial sedative used in prisons across the country to put inmates to death. The details of where she picked the vials up, and who sold the drugs to the prison, are not known, but according to BuzzFeed, Kelley paid an undisclosed supplier $250 in cash for midazolam. Anti-death penalty advocates cried foul, questioning the acceptability of the state paying cash for drugs linked to several botched executions in recent years from an unknown seller. But Arkansas didn’t have to respond to any questions about the incident because its secrecy law shields the public from obtaining certain information about executions. Three weeks later, when Arkansas set November 9 as the execution date of Jack Greene, a severely mentally ill man, Greene’s lawyer, John Williams, told Vice…how “troubling” it was that now all of Arkansas’ execution drugs “come from these side-of-the-road suppliers.” There have been disturbing incidents in other states, as well. In November, for instance, Ohio was forced to postpone an execution after prison officials spent 45 minutes sticking an inmate with needles in an unsuccessful effort to find a suitable vein. “What we have here is masquerade,” said Zimmers, the Indiana University medical professor, who discussed lethal injection on our Inquiring Minds podcast. “Something that pretends to be science and pretends to be medicine but isn’t.”
