Search Results for: science

When Forensic “Science” Is Anything But

Blood spatter expert Duane Deaver testifies during a trial in Durham, N.C. in 2003. (AP Photo/Sarah Davis, Pool, File)

Part two of Pamela Colloff’s ProPublica/New York Times “Blood Will Tell” investigation into the faulty forensic “science” of blood spatter analysis came out today. It’s a sobering look at the reliability — or lack there of — of what has become an important crime scene investigation technique, and anyone who cares about criminal justice or understands forensics only via Dexter should read it. If you haven’t yet read part one, which details the unlikely arrest and conviction of Joe Bryan for the murder of his wife, Mickey, now’s the time:

When Robert Thorman settled into the witness box on the fifth and final day of the state’s case, it marked a turn in the prosecution’s fortunes. Thorman was the bloodstain-pattern analyst who was called to the Bryan home when investigators were still working the scene. As an interpreter of bloodstains, Thorman possessed a singular expertise, and the prosecution would use this to bring its hazy narrative into focus, lending a sense of scientific certainty to an otherwise equivocal set of facts…

The district attorney began by leading Thorman through a recitation of his credentials. The detective explained that he had served as a military police officer for 20 years before working his way up through the ranks of several small law-enforcement agencies and that he had been trained in bloodstain interpretation. The jury did not know that Thorman’s training was limited to a 40-hour class he took four months before Mickey was killed.

Bryan was convicted despite a complete lack of other forensic evidence (in fact, there was evidence that pointed away from him), an extremely improbable timeline, and no motive; there is zero evidence that he was anything other a supportive husband who was deeply in love with his wife. Then he got a re-trial, and was convicted a second time on the same shoddy evidence.

Thorman told the jury not only that the flashlight was in the bedroom at the time of the shooting but also that the killer, before fleeing the scene, had changed into clothes that were already in the Bryan home. He delivered his findings with the authority of an expert, stripping away the ambiguities of the state’s case. As he spoke to the jury, he grounded his findings in the certainty of science. “Based on my knowledge and experience in bloodstain interpretation,” he said, “the flashlight itself was right next to or near the source of energy, that being the gun.” By the time the guilty verdict came down on the last day of the trial, it seemed like a foregone conclusion. Joe was again sentenced to 99 years.

Read the story

‘The Fatal Conscience’: Julia de Burgos, Puerto Rico’s Greatest Poet

Longreads Pick

Molly Crabapple retraces the life of the great twentieth century Puerto Rican poet Julia de Burgos amid the devastation of Hurricane Maria.

Published: Apr 26, 2018
Length: 24 minutes (6,141 words)

I Have a Half Mind to Donate My Brain to Science

AP Photo/Teresa Crawford

Every year, thousands of Americans donate their brains to science. Dara Bramson‘s grandmother will be one of them. Since Bramson was a child, her grandmother Marge Pearlson has carried a plastic replica brain in her purse as a prop and conversation starter. With Pearlson now at an age where her donation time is approaching, Bramson has been wondering: how does the donation process worked, and where does grandmother’s brain end and her identity begin? For The Atlantic, she visited the University of Miami’s Brain Endowment Bank to find out.

Walking the halls of Miami’s Brain Endowment Bank, I was introduced to researchers and peered into a microscope at Alzheimer’s tissue. I wondered what people and which spaces would encounter my grandmother’s brain. I struggled—still—to reduce her to tissue on a slide. I wanted to ask the researchers if they can call tissue inanimate with conviction.

At one point, the bank’s office manager plopped a thick folder on a desk in front of me. This was my grandmother’s file—a collection of medical records as well as letters, photographs, and invitations that my grandmother shared with the bank to keep them informed about her life over the years. The office manager called the file impressive, wagging another thin manila folder, the norm for most donors.

Read the story

Homeward Bound: Allegedly a Sea of Sexual Harassment in the Field of Science

Getty Images

Homeward Bound is an Australian organization dedicated to helping women achieve leadership positions in the field of science, though ironically, the mentorship program has allegedly been plagued by the prevalence of sexual harassment during the program’s three-week long Antarctic voyage. Perhaps the worst part? Women who have reported concerns feel silenced by the organization. “Their belief is that Homeward Bound is not yet a safe space for women, even as it works toward making science more inclusive of them.” Read Eve Andrewspiece at Grist.

The women who wrote to me, all alumnae of Homeward Bound’s inaugural Antarctic voyage, alleged that, rather than working to remove barriers that stymie women scientists, the trip was plagued by them. They noted several instances of sexual harassment and bullying, and one participant alleged a disturbing episode of what she labeled “sexual coercion” at the hands of one of the ship’s crew. Much of that environment of hostility was perpetuated, they say, by Homeward Bound’s leadership and faculty.

Read the story

What If Forensic Science Isn’t Really Science?

(Busà Photography/Getty)

Forensic science — the kind that traces the grooves in bullets, the mark of a shoe, or the scrape of a tool — emerged in the early 20th century as a way to professionalize police work. But once its findings made their way into the court system, it became almost impossible to divide the good forensic science from the bad.

In an in-depth feature for The Nation, Meehan Christ and Tim Requarth look at the case of Jimmy Genrich, who was found guilty of a series of pipe bombings in the early 1990s after forensic evidence linked tools found in his apartment with markings on the bombs.

The evidence was circumstantial — Genrich was nowhere near the scene of the crime — and while the forensics specialist was able to show that the tools Genrich had in his possession could have made the marks, he was unable to show that similar tools would make the same marks. “Holy shit, this is not science,” remembers Genrich’s lawyer. “It’s like voodoo.”

Law enforcement borrowed terms from science, establishing crime “laboratories” staffed by forensic “scientists” who announced “theories” cloaked in their own specialized jargon. But forensic “science” focused on inventing clever ways to solve cases and win convictions; it was never about forming theories and testing them according to basic scientific standards. By adopting the trappings of science, the forensic disciplines co-opted its authority while abandoning its methods.

Once a technique has made it into court and survived appeals, subsequent judges, most of whom have no scientific training and little ability to assess the scientific validity of a technique, will continue to allow it by citing precedent. Forensic examiners, in turn, cite precedent in order to claim that their techniques are reliable science. Prosecutors point to guilty verdicts as evidence that the science brought to court was sound. In this circular way, legal rulings — which never really vetted the science to begin with — substitute for scientific proof … Nowhere in this process is anyone required to provide empirical evidence that the techniques work as advertised.

Read the story

 

Forensic Science Put Jimmy Genrich in Prison for 24 Years. What if It Wasn’t Science?

Longreads Pick

Forensic science — the kind that traces the grooves in bullets, the mark of a shoe, or the scrape of a tool — emerged in the early 20th century as a way to professionalize police work. But once its findings made their way into the court system, it became almost impossible to divide the good forensic science from the bad.

 

Source: The Nation
Published: Feb 6, 2018
Length: 46 minutes (11,700 words)

Longreads Best of 2017: Science, Technology, and Business Writing

We asked writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here is the best in science, tech, and business writing.

Deborah Blum
Director of the Knight Science Journalism program at MIT and author of The Poisoner’s Handbook

The Touch of Madness (David Dobbs, Pacific Standard)

A beautifully rendered exploration of the slow, relentless creep of schizophrenia into the life of a brilliant graduate student, her slow recognition of the fact, and the failure of her academic community to recognize the issue or to support her. Dobbs’ piece functions both as an inquiry into our faltering understanding of mental illness and our cultural failure to respond to it with integrity. It’s the kind of compassionate and morally-centered journalism we should all aspire to.


Elmo Keep
Australian writer and journalist living in Mexico, runner-up for the 2017 Bragg Prize for Science Writing

How Eclipse Chasers Are Putting a Small Kentucky Town on the Map (Lucas Reilly, Mental Floss)

Anyone willing to write about syzygy in the shadow of Annie Dillard’s classic 1982 essay “Total Eclipse” has balls for miles. Reilly’s decision to focus on the logistics faced by tiny towns preparing to be inundated by thousands of eclipse watchers was inspired. It brilliantly conveyed the shared enthusiasms that celestial events animate in us. Between these two essays, I’m convinced a total eclipse would be a psychic event so overwhelming I might not survive it. I’ve got 2037 in Antarctica on my bucket list — if it’s still there in twenty years.    Read more…

The Science of Spying: How the CIA Secretly Recruits Academics

Longreads Pick

The US spy agency has spent millions of dollars creating whole scientific conferences in order to gather intelligence and get nuclear scientists from countries like Iran to defect.

Source: The Guardian
Published: Oct 10, 2017
Length: 16 minutes (4,100 words)

What Happens When a Science Fiction Genius Starts Blogging?

Longreads Pick

After giving up writing fiction at age 87, fantasy, science fiction, and speculative fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin has started a blog. Internet citizens may want to know: does she write about her cat, Pard? Why yes, yes she does — while examining the human condition, of course.

Published: Sep 7, 2017
Length: 6 minutes (1,734 words)