QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Sapir declined to be interviewed for this story. An email response from his company said, “We are proud that over the past 30+ years, LSI and SCAN have promoted justice in society, both for victims of crime and for innocent suspects.” SCAN’s purpose, the email said, “is not to accuse but to clear the innocent. ... We have had tens of thousands of past students, who have used SCAN for solving hundreds of thousands of cases; and in the end, the solution of each case was based on physical evidence (which SCAN helped to locate) and/or the subject’s freely given confession. SCAN is being tested every day by finding information from within the text, to be confirmed immediately by independent outside investigation. These confirmations are the rock upon which SCAN is based. After all, reality is the ultimate test in science.”
Laboratory for Scientific Interrogation: (LSI):
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PASSAGE ONE OF THE DAY: "SCAN, a product sold by a company called the Laboratory for Scientific Interrogation (LSI), has, in the words of four scholars in a 2016 study, “no empirical support” — meaning, there’s no dependable research showing that it works. Scientific Content Analysis is akin to other investigative tools scrutinized by ProPublica, including bloodstain-pattern analysis and photo analysis. These analytical techniques promise a degree of certainty — about how blood came to spray across a wall, or whether a particular plaid shirt was worn by a robber — that can guide an investigator or shore up a case. The trial evidence presented against Joyner included yet another example: a prosecution expert testified that two plastic garbage bags — one found in Joyner’s apartment, the other around Hernandez’s head — had “definitely” once been connected. (A statistician said in an interview that this testimony was laced with “a lot of unproven assertions.”) Law enforcement officials hold these tools out as science, even though they have little or no scientific backing. SCAN’s creator has written, “I am pleased to say SCAN has helped solve thousands of cases over the years.” While police in Elkhart and elsewhere have used the tool to make critical decisions that can establish an investigation’s direction, SCAN has escaped the scrutiny that comes with being offered in court as proof."
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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "One
of Vrij’s co-authors
on the Frontiers in Psychology article was Glynis Bogaard, now a
psychology professor at Maastricht University in the Netherlands.
Bogaard, who researched SCAN for her Ph.D. project, attended a training
workshop led by Sapir in Ghent, Belgium, in 2010. During
the training,
Bogaard said, Sapir never offered any scientific support for SCAN. When
she asked for data, Sapir claimed he had it but wasn’t going to publish
it. Bogaard recalled one of Sapir’s claims: “He said when people talk
about closing and opening doors — this can be your home or car door or
whatever — this means you’ve been sexually abused when you were younger.
I couldn’t believe my ears.” The workshop’s other
attendees were Dutch and Belgian police officers, who, to Bogaard’s
dismay, were much less skeptical. During lunch, she talked to them in
Dutch: “Sapir doesn’t speak Dutch, so he couldn’t follow.” She asked
them: “Do you believe all this, do you want to use this?” “And most of
them actually believed what he said. Most of them said, ‘Well, this
looks very promising.’” Bogaard said police who
believe in SCAN don’t put much stock in the research challenging its
effectiveness, because those studies are performed in a controlled
environment; asking someone to make up a story in a lab is one thing,
they say, but taking a statement from a suspect in a real crime is
another. Steven Drizin, a
Northwestern University law professor who specializes in wrongful
convictions, said SCAN and assorted other lie-detection tools suffer
from “over-claim syndrome” — big claims made without scientific
grounding. Asked why police would trust such tools, Drizin said: “A lot
has to do with hubris — a belief on the part of police officers that
they can tell when someone is lying to them with a high degree of
accuracy. These tools play in to that belief and confirm that belief.”
In 1997, a trial in North
Carolina offered a rare example of SCAN making its way into court. A
social worker trained in SCAN analyzed a questionnaire filled out by the
defendant, a foster mother charged with child abuse. The defendant’s
reference to trivial things — for example, “I brushed my teeth” —
signaled deception, the social worker testified, according to a story in
the Raleigh News and Observer. And the defendant’s reference to “the
baby” — instead of “my” baby or using the toddler’s name — indicated
child abuse, the social worker testified. “At times, [the social
worker’s] testimony prompted courtroom spectators to roll their eyes,”
the news story said. The foster mother was acquitted."
------------------------------------------------------------- STORY: "Accused in Elkhart: "Why Are Cops Around the World Using This Outlandish Mind-Reading Tool?" by Ken Armstrong, ProPublica, and Christian Sheckler, South Bend Tribune, published on December 7, 2019. This article was produced in partnership with the South Bend Tribune, a member of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in 2018. ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power."
SUB-HEADING: "The creator of Scientific Content Analysis, or SCAN, says the tool can identify deception. Law enforcement has used his method for decades, even though there’s no reliable science behind it. Even the CIA and FBI have bought in."
GIST: (This is but a small portion - a taste - of a lengthy article which deserves to be read all the way through, word by word) at the link below: HL: "The police gave Ricky Joyner a pen and a nine-page questionnaire. Write what you did, beginning to end, on the day Sandra Hernandez disappeared, one question asked. “Went ot work …,” Joyner
wrote, transposing the letters in “to.” “Went home toke shower got dress
pick Sandra up … went out to eat … went the movies … toke Sandra home …
stop at [bar] for little while, then spent the night with a
grilfriend.” “Did you cause Sandra to become missing?” another question asked. “No,” Joyner wrote. “How do you feel now that you have completed this form?” “Yes,” Joyner wrote, that one word the entirety of his answer. When Hernandez went missing
in Elkhart, Indiana, in March of 1992, the police suspected Joyner
might be responsible. But Joyner, who worked with Hernandez at a
door-manufacturing company, denied having anything to do with her
disappearance.In July, ProPublica and the South Bend Tribune wrote about the questionable evidence used against Joyner at trial.
But in Joyner’s case, as in many others, the police, while setting the
investigation’s course early on, used an investigative tool that exists
out of public view. Such tools rarely, if ever, make it into the
courtroom because they’re too unreliable to clear even the low threshold
for evidence allowed at trial. SCAN, a product sold by a
company called the Laboratory for Scientific Interrogation (LSI), has,
in the words of four scholars in a 2016 study, “no empirical support” —
meaning, there’s no dependable research showing that it works. Scientific Content Analysis is akin to other investigative tools scrutinized by ProPublica, including bloodstain-pattern analysis and photo analysis.
These analytical techniques promise a degree of certainty — about how
blood came to spray across a wall, or whether a particular plaid shirt
was worn by a robber — that can guide an investigator or shore up a
case. The trial evidence presented against Joyner included yet another
example: a prosecution expert testified that two plastic garbage bags —
one found in Joyner’s apartment, the other around Hernandez’s head — had
“definitely” once been connected. (A statistician said in an interview
that this testimony was laced with “a lot of unproven assertions.”) Law
enforcement officials hold these tools out as science, even though they
have little or no scientific backing. SCAN’s creator has written, “I am pleased to say SCAN has helped solve thousands of cases over the years.” While police in Elkhart and
elsewhere have used the tool to make critical decisions that can
establish an investigation’s direction, SCAN has escaped the scrutiny
that comes with being offered in court as proof. Appellate opinions
often refer to key pieces of evidence used at trial, but a search of
legal databases with opinions from around the country turns up precious
few mentions of SCAN. The detective who used SCAN
in the Joyner case was Steve Rezutko. He resigned from the Elkhart
police in 2001 after an internal investigation found he had engaged in sexual misconduct with an informant. He died, in an apparent suicide, this year. In 1994, two years after Hernandez’s death, Rezutko was asked in a deposition to describe his training in SCAN. “Not great,” Rezutko said.
“Been to two schools. At the time, I hadn’t done an awful lot, maybe 40
or 50 interpretations, but I had been to a weeklong school in
Indianapolis under the guy who … developed the procedure.” Joyner’s lawyer asked
whether a person’s ability to read and comprehend the English language
could affect the results of the questionnaire. “Well ... you struggle with
the same questions I struggled with when I went through the school,
went through the sessions,” Rezutko said. “I guess it’s kind of like two
and two is four. Why is it four? It’s two and two is four all over the
world. Why it is I have no idea.” Rezutko, like officers across the country, took it on faith that SCAN works, without really understanding how or why."
https://www.propublica.org/article/why-are-cops-around-the-world-using-this-outlandish-mindreading-tool
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Read related ProPublica/South Bend Tribune story on Ricky Joyner at the link below: "Juries convicted Ricky Joyner twice. Once in 1994 and again in 1998, after he won his first appeal. Prosecutors called the case cut and dried. But we looked through transcripts, reports, video and more. Should Joyner’s conviction stand?" Click here:
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Read Wikipedia entry on SCAN at the link below: About: Related to statement analysis is a different technique for analyzing the words people use called "statement validity assessment" (SVA). The SVA is a tool that was originally designed to determine the credibility of child witnesses testimonies in trials for sexual offences. The "criteria-based content analysis" (CBCA) is a core component of the SVA and is a tool used to distinguish true statements from false statements as CBCA scores are expected to be higher for truth tellers than liars.[4] A qualitative review of the CBCA analyzed 37 studies, strong support for the tool was established as truth tellers obtained significantly higher CBCA scores compared to the liars.[5] More recently, a meta-analytic review found CBCA criteria to be a valid technique for discriminating between memories of real self-experienced events and invented or false accounts.[6] Countries such as Holland, Germany and Sweden use these techniques as scientific evidence in court.[4] However, countries such as the United States, Canada and the UK do not consider these techniques as legally valid evidence in court.[7] Studies have raised serious questions and concerns about the validity of CBCA for assessing the credibility of children's testimonies. One study using 114 children showed that CBCA scores were higher for the group of children describing a familiar event compared to the group of children describing an unfamiliar event.[8] The potential influence of familiarity on CBCA scores raises concerns about the validity of the tool for assessing credibility in children. It has also been noted that the error rate of CBCA in the laboratory is high, that the error rate of SVA in practice is unknown and that the methodology continues to be disputed among the scientific community.[9] In conclusion, there is still great controversy surrounding the use of the SVA and many studies have investigated its core component, the CBCA, in order to determine its validity and reliability. More research is needed to conclude whether or not the information obtained from these tests should be admissible in court. Example: Statement analysis involves an investigator searching for linguistic cues and gaps in a subject's testimony or preliminary statements. Ideally, the technique would guide investigators to ask follow-up questions to uncover discrepancies. The creator of Scientific Content Analysis (SCAN), Avinoam Sapir, gives the example of someone saying, "I counted the money, put the bag on the counter, and proceeded to go home." Sapir says the statement was literally true:
He counted the money (when you steal you want to know how much you are stealing), and then the subject put the bag on the counter. The subject didn't say that he put the money back in the bag after counting it, because he didn't; he left the empty bag on the counter and walked away with the money.[1][2]Sapir says that a fundamental principle of statement analysis is that "denying guilt is not the same as denying the act. When one says 'I am not guilty' or 'I am innocent,' they are not denying the act; they are only denying guilt." Sapir claims that it is almost impossible for a guilty person to say "I didn't do it." He asserts that guilty people tend to speak in even greater circumlocutions by saying things like "I had nothing to do with it" or "I am not involved in that".[1][2] Criticism: Aldert Vrij, one of the leading authorities on detection of deception (DOD) techniques, points out that most studies of the technique did not rely on the ground truth being established and thus examiners could not be certain if "examinees were actually telling the truth or lying".[10] He also notes that there is no standardization among the different methods of analysis and this "implies that much depends on the subjective interpretation and skill of the individual" performing the analysis. Vrij attributes this to an absence of theoretical underpinning behind SCAN/statement analysis.[10] Vrij characterizes SCAN/statement analysis as weaker than CBCA because SCAN/statement analysis lacks "a set of cohesive criteria", being instead "a list of individual criteria".[10] Vrij argues that SCAN/statement analysis is best used as a technique to guide investigative interviews rather than as a "lie detection tool".[11] Critics argue that the technique encourages investigators to prejudge a suspect as deceptive and affirm a presumption of guilt before the interrogation process has even begun. Statement analysis in general has been criticized as "theoretically vague" with little or no empirical evidence in its favor, and SCAN in particular has been characterized as "junk science"[1] with the Skeptic's Dictionary and Skeptical Inquirer magazine[12] classifying it as a form of pseudoscience.[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statement_analysis
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. 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.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
