One of the nagging dilemmas in the courtroom is the perpetuation of junk science and investigative methodologies that lead to wrongful convictions.  Even as exonerations keep coming, the same mistakes are repeated, presumptively leading to yet more wrongful convictions.  For those who say that knowing the problem is half the solution, it’s not looking good.

A study by the National Science Foundation, however, offers some insight into why the laws of physics seem to no longer apply in the courtroom.  From the Forensic Psychologist, via a twit by the Jury Expert :

As it turns out, no matter how knowledgeable you are, or how great your credentials, judges or jurors may disbelieve the scientific evidence you are presenting if it does not match their social values.

That’s no big surprise, given decades of social psychology research into cognitive dissonance. But a study funded by the National Science Foundation and scheduled for publication in the Journal of Risk Research sheds new light on why “scientific consensus” fails to persuade.

Study participants were much more likely to see a scientist with elite credentials as an “expert” on such culturally contested issues as global warming, gun control, and the risks of nuclear waste disposal if the expert’s position matched the participant’s own political leanings.

It appears that the concept of “expert” has been diluted to the point where it’s no longer about education and experience, but about agreeing with political view and social values.  This appears to incorporate a number of factors, ranging from confirmation bias to the pervasive belief that any fool can be an expert these days, diminishing the value of scientific study as evidence of anything and allowing lay-people (in this case, meant to mean anyone lacking the education and experience of the proffered expert) to simply chose to ignore expertise with which they disagree.

This is, on the one had, a wonderful development, and on the other hand, a nightmare. 

For decades, “experts” have taken the stand, freshly scrubbed and with sufficient credentials to give the appearance of believability, and have testified as to sheer and utter nonsense.  Bite marks?  Comparative bullet lead analysis?  The Black Box?  The Twinkie defense?  Even such mainstays as fingerprints, long believed to be above reproach, have proven flawed.  While some remain widely accepted despite widespread recognition that they’re unreliable (thanks to the judicial gift of precedence), at least they are now subject to challenge.

The cost, however, is the realization that science isn’t, well, quite as scientific as we hope when it comes to the good as well as the bad.  Once the wall of respect toward science is torn down, science becomes as much a matter of social acceptance as anything else.  We adopt the science that comports with our beliefs and reject the science that doesn’t, as if science requires our personal approval to be accurate and worthy of recognition.

And that’s the downside for the defense.  As the study goes on to show, the “atomization” of information, meaning that people now get their insight from select perspectives like Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, or on the other side, Rachel Maddow and Comedy Central, as opposed to years ago when network news and the local paper were the only games in town, we no longer share a common source of information.

Unfortunately, trends in public consumption of news may make this task increasingly difficult. Although people are spending at least as much time as ever on the news, they are less likely to read the daily newspaper and more likely to get their information from television and online sources including, most recently, their telephones, according to an informative new survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. This decreases our common knowledge base and makes it easier for ideologically slanted information sources to influence public opinion.

It’s like putting people on the jury who speak entirely different languages, although they seem to use the same words to do so.  It’s thus a two part problem, based on social and political values derived from disparate sources which are then used to filter scientific evidence, the worth of which has been diminished by the acknowledgement that we’ve been fed junk for science for far too long, and that science, therefore, is no longer inherently reliable.  We accept it only if it comports with our personal views.

In an interesting analysis of the mainstreaming of extremism, alternative journalist Arun Gupta points out the ease with which political pundits for whom facts are irrelevant can indoctrinate the uninformed. A respondent committed to rational scientific inquiry becomes like a dog chasing its tail: In the time it takes to deconstruct one fraudulent news story, the pundits have concocted five more.

In support, the post notes Scott Lilienfeld’s  50 great Myths of Popular Psychology, a great read if you haven’t already had the pleasure, about popularly held notions that have been completely debunked, yet persist.  Many of these apply directly to criminal law and trials, and are specifically the sort of crap we tacitly confront in efforts to persuade very nice jurors every day.

So while the public’s disregard for expertise may help in breaking down the junk science wall, it is similarly likely to block efforts to gain acceptance for new scientific efforts as well, such as the fallibility of eyewitness identification.  For those of us who are frustrated by the seeming inability of the public to let go of myths in favor of science, this study brings at least a better understanding of what we’re up against. 

To some extent, our problem is the flip side of our success in debunking old junk science in the courtroom.  And to some extent, the political and social polarization of society, dictating the sources of information to which people turn, is a hurdle that may prevent us from ever selling new science to a crowd that has already decided it’s not buying.