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Comment by eftychis | Hacker News Reader

That was a thing? Was/is there any actual expert involved ever in these claims?

I am more worried about all the claims that one field expert can look at someone and tell if they are drunk, using specific substances or had a head trauma. Doctors can’t do that but I guess… there are “experts.”

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Hell yes. A probably-innocent man in Texas executed for murdering his family, based primarily on the evidence of fire analysis which was later shown to be almost entirely bullshit.

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence/execute...

This is so sad in so many ways. I had to research the topic and this was the first case popping up. Thank you, and... I am still really sad...

> Ultimately, the authorities concluded that Willingham was a man without a conscience whose serial crimes had climaxed, almost inexorably, in murder.

This is what has condemned innocents throughout history to death, torture, and prison. His history is what got him convicted, in my opinion. So many people forget to shield themselves from future indictment by acting "normal" in the present.

> That was a thing? Was/is there any actual expert involved ever in these claims?

Unfortunately, a lot of fire source experts were trained based on a mishmash of folk theories about arson, many of which have been subsequently disproven by scientific testing. There have been some improvements over the last decade or two, but the field is still heavily contaminated by junk science.

Heh, my dad had an old story about how he and his pals got pulled over, his pal was driving. The cop had them all do the thing where you walk heel-toe, touch your nose, etc. His pal driving was unsteady and was arrested, the other two guys were obviously drunk but were passengers, so they were out driving, and my dad who had drunk the most out of all of them was told to drive the two other guys home. When he responded, "I drank more than any of them!" the cop told him, "That's fine, you seem ok, here's my card if you get pulled over, stay safe." Oh, and his pal who was driving was stone-cold sober, but had old knee injuries, so he just walked funny all the time. He was let go at the hospital when the blood test turned up 0.0.

I wonder at what point all those movies are here to legitimize the use of dubious ways of determining the culprit in real-life investigations.

I’ve always been surprised that USA could claim “It’s Al Queida” in the first 6hrs of the Twin Towers falling, and the French police could say “No relation with the wave of terrorism” in the first two hours of Notre Dame burning.

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