The Department of Justice Catching Up

1998: Fred Whitehurst, Supervisory Special Agent in the Federal Bureau of Investigation Laboratory from 1986 to 1998, went public to reveal procedural errors and misconduct.

2009: The National Institutes of Health released Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward, which essentially said that almost all forensic science is scientifically worthless or grossly overstated as to its reliability.

2016:  The United States Department of Justice announces its intention to “tighten” rules on testimony by scientists.

The new rules, which have yet to be made final, are the latest in a series of steps that the Obama administration has taken to address the problems, including those revealed in a preliminary review last year of F.B.I. testimony in hair-sample cases.

That analysis, which examined 268 criminal cases from 1985 to 1999, found flawed testimony in more than 95 percent of them. More than a dozen of the defendants have been executed or have died in prison.

If you can’t trust the government to “catch[] misconduct before it ruins peoples’ [sic] lives,” who can you trust?

One thought on “The Department of Justice Catching Up

  1. Billy Bob

    This gives me an idea (the Idea of the Day, as previously suggested by the Host): The Department of Catching Up! It could be a movie, SinDicated with residuals for particiPants and proDucers? If you catch our drift? (Producers always wear pants, even if they are women. Pardon our blatant sexism.) They say fact is stranger than fiction. In this case, fiction could be prologue to fact!, If you catch our drift? Would not be the first time. Or did we get it backwards?

    If this is off-topic, well then suffer. Testimony by scientists? How about testimonies by lying police officers, block watch captains and assorted miscreant “confidential informants”? You know what we’re talkin’ ’bout.
    A scientist is only as good as his last laboratory experiment. Ha. The more he is published, the less the credibility,… in our book. Follow the money, Indigent-Breath! Only kidding?!?

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