Most forensic science isn’t real science. Try telling that to the criminal justice system.

Earlier this week, the Justice Department announced that Attorney General Jeff Sessions was ending the National Commission on Forensic Science and suspending a review of controversial evidence techniques, opting instead for a new in-house strategy. While Sessions praised the commission’s work, his decision has been widely interpreted as a rebuff to Obama-era efforts to bring higher scientific standards to the forensic techniques that are used in the criminal justice system. David A. Harris, the John E. Murray Scholar at the University of Pittsburgh’s law faculty, has written “Failed Evidence: Why Law Enforcement Resists Science” on the debates over forensics and scientific method. I conducted a short email interview with him on controversies over applying scientific knowledge to forensics and what abolishing the commission means.

Most forensic science isn’t real science. Try telling that to the criminal justice system. 9-17%20willingham%2041406662091

Most forensic science isn’t real science. Try telling that to the criminal justice system. 9-17%20willingham%2041406662091

HF: People tend to think of police forensics as highly scientific and of confessions and eyewitness testimony as highly reliable. Your book, however argues that the “bottom line” is that “most of forensic science lacks a basis in science,” a finding that has a National Academy of Sciences report to back it up. You also point out problems with eyewitness identification and confessions to police. What has gone wrong with the use of evidence in the criminal justice system?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/04/13/most-criminal-forensic-science-isnt-real-science-jeff-sessions-just-shut-down-efforts-to-change-that/?utm_term=.0d6b0692779d

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“The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime.”-- Max Stirner
"Remember: Evil exists because good men don't kill the government officials committing it." -- Kurt Hofmann

Most forensic science isn’t real science. Try telling that to the criminal justice system.

Most forensic science isn’t real science. Try telling that to the criminal justice system.

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