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Why is courtroom science so unscientific? + UC Irvine reneges on promise of rigor

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Why Is Courtroom Science So Unscientific?
https://gizmodo.com/why-is-courtroom-sci...1841892967

EXCERPT: . . . While it’s now widely accepted that some forensic disciplines, like microscopic hair comparison, are junk science, evidence from similarly subjective pattern-matching disciplines still gets into courtrooms. There are standards meant to prevent this, but they aren’t working, which can contribute to wrongful convictions. According to legal experts, what’s necessary is stopping bad science before it gets to court.

[...] “By the time [evidence] gets to a judge, in some ways it’s sort of too late,” said Brandon Garrett, a law professor at Duke University ... “You already may have someone arrested, potentially pleading guilty based on the forensics. We need to focus on improving the science in the laboratories.”

[...] While standards meant to keep unreliable forensic testimony out of the criminal courtroom exist, they aren’t often used to do so. Some states have adopted a standard called the Frye test, which emerged from a 1923 D.C. Circuit court decision and states that the scientific technique discussed in an expert’s opinion needs to be generally accepted by the relevant scientific community.

Most states and the federal government now refer to the Daubert standard, the result of a 1993 Supreme Court decision. This standard requires that the methodology underlying expert testimony be scientifically valid, which includes having a known potential error rate. “People expected there to be more rigorous screening of forensic science after the [Daubert] decision,” said Garrett. “The court said you can’t just let in experts because the methods they use are generally accepted. You have to ask whether it has a basis in valid and reliable science.”

But in criminal cases, the courts haven’t consistently been asking this. “What we’ve seen is in civil cases, where there are financial stakes, there is often a careful inquiry,” said Garrett. In criminal cases, by contrast, judges tend to let in evidence if similar types were used in the past. According to Thompson, there’s “this inertia: we’ve always let it in, so we’re going to continue to. I think the courts just feel like they have no option. If we’re going to have any kind of law and order, we have got to let prosecutors come in and use fingerprint testimony,” for instance.

Another problem is that it’s up to the defense team to ask the judge for a hearing to dismiss the prosecution’s scientifically flawed evidence or testimony. But defense attorneys are stretched thin, and many lack the financial resources or the know-how to do this, according to Sandy Feinland, a public defender in San Francisco... (MORE - details)



Quackademic medicine update: UC Irvine reneges on promise of scientific rigor
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/quackad...fic-rigor/

EXCERPT: A little over two years ago, Henry and Susan Samueli, wealthy patrons of medical pseudoscience, gave $200 million to the University of California Irvine (UCI) to establish the eponymous Samueli College of Health Sciences. But the gift came with some troubling strings attached [...] The gift’s size and emphasis on “integrative medicine”, coupled with the Samuelis’ penchant for quackery, engendered a sharp response from adherents to science-based medicine and some bad press. ... SBM blog posts on the subject as well, appropriately calling it out as “quackademic medicine”.

[...] UCI’s medical brass pushed back hard against these criticisms. ... they swore up and down that unproven treatments would never, ever darken the door of the UC Irvine Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute. UCI med school professor Dr. Jay Gargus added that the idea that the med school was going to become a home of “witchcraft” is “just not going to be the case . . . We’re only going to be doing evidenced-based medicine.”

Recently [...] an internet search just happened to land me on ... the perfect opportunity to ... see if UCI stuck to its evidence-based guns. So, what did I find? Let’s start with the witchcraft. [...see article for details...] To ensure that pseudoscience becomes firmly established in the medical profession, the UCI Department of Family Medicine, in collaboration with SSIHI, is developing “a new model of primary care” with a track in integrative medicine...

In sum, UCI obviously reneged on its commitment to evidence-based medicine in launching the Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute. Of course, no one really thought the result would be otherwise because, by definition, integrative medicine requires the inclusion of pseudoscience. Otherwise, it’s just plain old medicine. Fortunately, it appears that at least some in medicine are waking up to the fact that medical institutions have become infested with nonsense and are urging reform.... (MORE - details)
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