Dr. Whitehurst and the FBI Lab Scandal (2017)
whistleblowersblog.org
whistleblowersblog.org
In politics, you can see people who are corrupt like this getting rewarded with promotions for having taken one for the team. I see it in companies as well, where if you take on the risk from committing fraud, you can use it as leverage. There are numerous cases where I see managers telling subordinates to fudge data of all kinds, and the ones who don't lie get managed out, and the ones who do lie get promoted. The tactic is to get someone to do something compromising or illegal on your behalf, so you can take credit for the outcome, but the person bullied into lying holds the risk. The only people who ever get persecuted or prosecuted are the ones who threaten to give away the game. The dynamic is covered in the concept of a Moral Maze (https://hbr.org/1983/09/moral-mazes-bureaucracy-and-manageri...).
You can't fix corruption and adulteration. The only way out is to fork a new organization and create a gate that prevents the corruption from taking root in the new org, and even then I've seen it creep back. The alternative is to make grisly examples, but nobody has the stomach for that.
a quick read of four or five related Wikipedia articles shows a lifetime of fraud perpetrated by Motherisk founder Dr Gideon Koren, complete with threats of countersuit, piles of falsified research papers in publication, repeated denial and then being caught, and losing his license to practice medicine at age 70+
eye-opening to see this information given the status of US AMA Physicians these days, in income, authority and protection from meaningful punishment
also the psychology of using authority to remove children from the care of their biological mother, over and over and over.. combined with academic hubris publishing falsified research over and over and over.. combined with prominent cultural activities.. this individual has done a lot of harm in a way that defeats trust and true authority
Sorry what? They take your kids away because of a hair drug test, realize their tests are inaccurate, then explain to you years later -- you still cannot have your kids back?
My cynical side worries it's only gotten worse, as CSI made the job "sexy" attracting a pool of people that would not be overly concerned with the science part of forensics in the first place.
They switched to partial-DNA "matches". Nothing has changed.
Not all science is equal, and it's a doubled-edge sword. I think the fault is more in human nature.
On one hand, we have science that lets us land probes on asteroids and return home with samples, or deploy a terrestrial vehicle on Mars capable of launching a smaller aerial probe... powered by radiation from a burning sphere of gas.
On the other, we have forensic science. Same level of confidence, very different results. Who's to blame? The jurors ignorant of the science behind the evidence that influenced their decisions? The judges and lawyers equally so? The labs and employees perpetuating bad science, or the schools that taught them? The police that collect and document it?
The FBI who falsified the accuracy of so many forensic sciences for a start. The prosecutorial side has a strong interest towards exploiting "science" for their gain, we know they are doing it and we need to counteract it.
The article didn't make it seem like there was actual fraud, just bad science being followed blindly. I had to find the original FBI announcement to understand it was indeed intentional fraud by individual FBI examiners misrepresenting bad science.
https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-testimo...
>When Dr. Frederic Whitehurst initially blew the whistle on the systemic forensic fraud in the FBI crime lab...
And then proceeds to discuss the fraud in no ambiguous terms.
> It was “alterations of reports, alterations of evidence
Isnt the whole point of jurors being ordinary person from the streets with no special knowledge making decisions purely going by what was said in courtroom? If you tell them "this guy is great expert" and then that guy dont get meaningfully challenged, you dont get to blame jury who went by what they have been said.
> The judges and lawyers equally so? The labs and employees perpetuating bad science, or the schools that taught them? The police that collect and document it?
Yeah, these. The judges, lawyers, prosecutors and the police who are the actually the ones who decide which lab is going to be used often and which not. Which person is going to be treated in courtroom as expert in front of jury, regardless of actual knowledge and which is not even going to be asked to be there.
It is not that deep.
I agree wholeheartedly, but the world seems to have a problem holding government employees responsible for their actions.
Ended up on Wikipedia reading about the history of jury trials, and found this lovely snippet:
One issue that has been raised is the ability of a jury to fully understand evidence. It has been said that the expectation of jury members as to the explanatory power of scientific evidence has been raised by TV police procedural and legal dramas, in what is known as the 'CSI effect'.
The quote you have there is complaint about jury expecting too convincing evidence. And the real world issue is them falling for real evidence.
The issue here is with "experts" saying non scientific crap in courtrooms and juries being told this is science. Experts who have little to no scientific training, little to no checking done over methods they use and so on.
Like hypothetically if you plucked a guy from an isolated tribe in the amazon (who spoke perfect english), then put him on a jury, he would just be lost. “Well, so, we gave them net90 terms in the original contract, but then in the email dated…” — the content is just beyond his ability to reason about from where he’s sitting.
Maybe our culture has a sufficiently large internal spread either between itself or between the legal system, that the average juror is more like the tribal guy on the jury than not?
It’s mostly not a problem because tricky contract disputes aren’t normally jury trials, it’s mostly people doing comprehensible things for human reasons, which is a good match for jurors.
But then you introduce stuff like I Fucking Love Science propaganda plus Hair DNA Matching: SCIENCE! And how are people supposed to use their common sense to apply judgement?
The original context of jurors was like “I don’t know about no fancy laws, but wrong is wrong,” like folksy, probably-religion-based moral intuitions that prevent legal nerds from running amok. But where are we now, if the nerds can just say the word SCIENCE and the jury has no choice but to sign off?
I have no idea what the right answer is, but probably the current setup isn’t it.
Given new science, the prosecution and defense make their case and the judge allows/disallows the evidence. But, the judge isn’t a scientist, she’s a lawyer (if we’re lucky - some parts of the US have elected judges with little to no professional requirements). And the prosecution might have more money and better experts.
I think they are explicitly assumed to be from community, so that they understand social aspects of issue. I remember layers talking about that.
I am no expert on this, but jury gets very specific questions they are supposed to answer. There is a lot more to it both in theory and practical then just folksy wisdom against "the nerds".
> But then you introduce stuff like I Fucking Love Science propaganda plus Hair DNA Matching: SCIENCE! And how are people supposed to use their common sense to apply judgement?
They are not. This part is supposed to be on layers to not allow "propaganda" into the room in the first place. If the system regularly pushes in bad science and does not enable defense to conteract it, issue is not with jurors at all.
Problem 2: Jury selection in the US explicitly selects against jurors who will exhibit independent thinking. If you have a job which is based on engineering, you're likely getting struck by the prosecution. I actually watched the prosecution and defense play chicken over who was going to strike me. I've wasted enough hours in my life showing up for jury duty only to get struck over and over and over.
Problem 3: Jury selection in the US explicitly selects for jurors who exhibit deference to authority which means effectively "Defendant in the seat is guilty." This is a problem because if the prosecution had a slam dunk of a case there probably wouldn't be a trial. The correct Bayesian prior for sitting on a jury is almost always that the prosecution should be viewed with extreme skepticism.
A lot of the problem in the jury system in the US could be solved by disallowing prosecutorial strikes. The prosecution has enough advantages--if you can't make the case with an actually random jury, tough, you didn't have a case and didn't do your job properly.
I don't get why they don't continuously send 10-20% of "control samples" (either with known result, or randomly sampled from e.g. the last 3 months → to check that the results are still the same) through the labs, thus having a continuous estimate of data quality - and they can also score "accuracy vs. technician" etc., to spot these problems.
(of course this won't work when the entire system is corrupt -- but often it's just a malice/incompetence of a few persons in the lab)
Yay. Death penalty is a nice word for murder.
I don't understand how someone can consider the death penalty monstrous, but forgetting someone for decades in a brutal, hopeless prison environment is perfectly fine.
The death penalty is an interesting motivator. Death row inmates get much more publicity, support, and investigative resources than those with life sentences.
Neither do I.
One thing that has been very helpful is the sheer amount of time it often takes to solidify a conviction in the justice system. It can take close to 20 years to finalize death penalty appeals, often giving enough time for science, law and public opinion to change sufficiently to free those who are innocent.
(And please do not forget those who are guilty but who were not given their due process - they might be monsters, but if we allow them to be railroaded then we do a disservice to any of us who might find ourselves swallowed into the machine in the future).
Likewise, when reporting stuff to the police, its advisable to have a lawyer with you as the Police may decide to go for the easy route and prosecute whoever is reporting stuff as its low hanging fruit.
Likewise, the legal system ignores the health of the defendant which could explain their actions, and it often doesnt take into account their past. I know here in the UK, when talking to people, we are still seeing the knock on effects of WW2, Brexit is the most obvious example as there is a lot of prejudice towards the Germans & Austrians and a general low level xenophobia even towards people not from these areas, as highlighted by the BBC trolling the public with their comedy sketch show The League of Gentlemen https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p006vm6j or Little Britain https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006q2zd
Is there much difference between a religious follower, like a muslim on jihad or a law enforcement professional? They both follow the written word, so then whose written is write? One has stood the test of time for thousands of years but ignores the changes in society today and the other is often changed to reflect changes in modern society but not stood the test of time as prison populations amply demonstrates.
In other words who is most righteous?
If you are locked in a facility awaiting trial, it is very unlikely you will ever see any of the evidence against. For instance, until very recently in Illinois it was illegal for your attorney to share any of the evidence with you if you were in jail. How can you make an informed decision about whether to risk trial or take a plea deal if you can't know what the case is? This is why so many innocent people faced with a death penalty following trial will accept a life sentence plea deal.
IMO, we should introduce death penalty for people involved in such malicious cover ups... Especially if the evidence is strong. They should be hung in a public square and then all of that person's children and descendants should be jailed for life just to be on the safe side.
Why stop there? Jail their ascendants too! The accused bad education must have come from somewhere? Then just to be on the safe side, I'd include neighbors; the whole city block may be seen as too lenient so jailing the whole city would send the right message!