Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stop
Speaker 1: Work dot com. Hey, so, I just wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know that Christian and I ended up talking about
Speaker 1: this topic for a really long time. So we decided
Speaker 1: to split the episode in two, and this is going
Speaker 1: to be the first half of our discussion. You can
Speaker 1: tune in again next time to hear the second half.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick and I'm Christian Sager. So our co host
Speaker 1: Robert is away this week. He's on vacation, and the
Speaker 1: two of us thought that this would be a good
Speaker 1: opportunity to talk about a little side project that we've
Speaker 1: been working on for like six months now, longer than that.
Speaker 1: Are you talking about that breeder reactor we've been working on?
Speaker 1: That's our side side project. This one is is a
Speaker 1: little bit more on the books. This is the one
Speaker 1: where we've been looking into d I Y for forensics.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so Christian and I, well may Christian, I
Speaker 1: want to give you all the credit because it's true
Speaker 1: that you've had this idea of wanting to produce a
Speaker 1: video series for How Stuff Works showing how you can
Speaker 1: do your own forensic science investigations just like you'd see
Speaker 1: Uh well, I don't want to say just like you'd
Speaker 1: see on c s I, because it turns out all
Speaker 1: all that stuff you see is mostly Faye garbage. Um,
Speaker 1: but like a forensic investigator would do it a crime scene,
Speaker 1: So so how you can use tools available to you
Speaker 1: to figure out what happened if say there's blood spatter
Speaker 1: all over a wall, or if there is a fingerprint
Speaker 1: left on a surface. And so the first one that
Speaker 1: we did was like a demo because we wanted to
Speaker 1: like kind of test it as a proof of concept, right,
Speaker 1: And we took one of our studios here at how
Speaker 1: Stuff works and we covered the walls with paper. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we got a mannequin head and put some fake blood
Speaker 1: packets on it. Yeah. And then um, we've basically had
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogel Baumb from Forward Thinking come in with Thor's
Speaker 1: hammer mulenir, which we just have laying around and just
Speaker 1: pound on this mannequin's head so that the blood would
Speaker 1: splatter as if it was a person being hit with
Speaker 1: a real hammer. It's to see how the blood was splatter.
Speaker 1: And we were testing basically the premise that you of
Speaker 1: how blood splatter analysis works and there's some math to it.
Speaker 1: So then we subsequently did the stringing, which they've probably
Speaker 1: seen on these forensic TV shows like C S I,
Speaker 1: where they string crime scenes and there you're trying to
Speaker 1: identify the trajectory of the blood that hit to leave
Speaker 1: the stained pattern that you find. Yeah, exactly, so you
Speaker 1: can sort of figure out both where the crime happened
Speaker 1: and what the like height. And I guess like three
Speaker 1: dimensionally is the best way to explain it, right, you
Speaker 1: can explain where it happened in the room, but also
Speaker 1: the height of the blow. Uh. And so we did
Speaker 1: it and it it worked, um sort of. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a mess with all of the complications we have. Ye. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we definitely weren't as prepared for how difficult
Speaker 1: it was as I thought. And then we posted some
Speaker 1: photos to the stuff to blow your mind social media accounts,
Speaker 1: and at least one, maybe two people popped up if
Speaker 1: you're listening, thank you. Um they were blood spat spatter
Speaker 1: analysis experts, and they gave us some advice. Uh. And
Speaker 1: we still we've just been so busy with everything else
Speaker 1: that we do here, we just haven't been able to
Speaker 1: get to the rest of it. But the idea was
Speaker 1: we were going to take this and we're gonna extrapolate
Speaker 1: it out into like a four maybe five part series
Speaker 1: that was going to be a locked room murder mystery
Speaker 1: where each episode Joe and I tried to solve a
Speaker 1: crime by doing d I Y forensics in the room.
Speaker 1: And we were going to do the blood spatter one,
Speaker 1: We're going to do paper chromatography. We were talking about
Speaker 1: dusting for fingerprints with super glue, which is really interesting.
Speaker 1: We were going to talk about decomposition of bodies and
Speaker 1: how do you figure out the time of death. Then
Speaker 1: we got into looking at some other stuff. We had
Speaker 1: to bite marks, hair and fiber analysis, stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and we were like, how valid actually is this? I
Speaker 1: mean not not just beyond like us doing the I
Speaker 1: Y version of it with like ziplock, Baggies and tweezers
Speaker 1: here in our studios, but like, how actually valid is this?
Speaker 1: And Josh Clark from Stuff you Should Know started talking
Speaker 1: to us about it, and he was like, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of really bad pseudo science in this,
Speaker 1: and he sent us a great article. This is something
Speaker 1: that Josh and I had talked about several times before.
Speaker 1: Actually it's sort of a running conversation we have about
Speaker 1: problems that keep emerging in forensic science. Absolutely. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: he pointed this out to us, and we thought, you
Speaker 1: know what, uh, why don't we do an episode of
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind about this was so we
Speaker 1: can sort of get our thoughts clear, really do a
Speaker 1: deep dive on the research, and then maybe one day
Speaker 1: we'll return to this video series and we'll make sure
Speaker 1: that the stuff that we're doing, first of all, is valid.
Speaker 1: But that second of all that we can what I'm
Speaker 1: hoping to do with it is also somehow within this
Speaker 1: locked room narrative that we're going to construct also tell
Speaker 1: the audience like you can't rely on hair evidence, for instance,
Speaker 1: right or bite marks because there's a lot of subjectivity
Speaker 1: to how that's done. Right now, So that's what we're
Speaker 1: here to talk to you about today, is the pseudoscience
Speaker 1: and the sort of false interpretations and there's there's just
Speaker 1: a lot of problems with forensic science, and I think
Speaker 1: people within the field that would acknowledge that as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it certainly has been openly acknowledged. So one resource
Speaker 1: that we're gonna be referencing throughout this episode is this
Speaker 1: massive compilation research document put together by the National Research
Speaker 1: Council and published in two thousand nine called Strengthening Forensic
Speaker 1: Science in the United States. And this was put together
Speaker 1: out of a out of a commission I think funded
Speaker 1: by Congress to look at the state of forensic science
Speaker 1: in the United States and and take a scientific, analytical,
Speaker 1: critical approach to it to say how well are we
Speaker 1: using forensic science in our courts, Like how well how
Speaker 1: scientifically established are the methods that are being used, how
Speaker 1: often do they get the right answer as far as
Speaker 1: we can tell, Because it has become more and more
Speaker 1: clear that lots of traditional methods used in forensic science analysis,
Speaker 1: the kind of science we would use to analyze a
Speaker 1: crime scene, to identify a suspect, to demonstrate the guilt
Speaker 1: of a suspect, etcetera. Uh, these things are in many
Speaker 1: cases full of flaws. And I've seen it alleged that
Speaker 1: really nuclear DNA analysis is about the only forensic science
Speaker 1: discipline used in US courts that isn't thoroughly riddled with problems. Actually,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about it in this episode two. There
Speaker 1: are even it can be vulnerable, but I think it's
Speaker 1: generally considered the best. It is considered the best, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but there are issues with it as well. UM So
Speaker 1: I got a question for you. Have you ever served
Speaker 1: on a jury before? No, I haven't. I've I've had
Speaker 1: you know, jury selection days, but I've never I've never
Speaker 1: been picked for a jury. So a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: I was picked for a jury and I don't know
Speaker 1: how this happened, but somehow I ended up foreman and uh,
Speaker 1: little do they know what power they put in the
Speaker 1: hands of this uh, this doom purveyor. It was a
Speaker 1: real weird case and I won't take you all down
Speaker 1: the long road of it, but I will say you know,
Speaker 1: one of the people that came in it was a
Speaker 1: it was a cocaine uh possession and distribution case, but
Speaker 1: also a firearm possession case for felon who was not
Speaker 1: supposed to be carrying firearms. Um. The they had a
Speaker 1: cocaine expert come in from their forensics lab. And you know,
Speaker 1: like with any rhetorical position, especially in the courtroom, I
Speaker 1: mean this is where like a lot of the Greek
Speaker 1: terminology for for rhetoric came from. They first started off
Speaker 1: by presenting the ethos the quality of the character of
Speaker 1: this woman. She gave us her how many years that
Speaker 1: she had been working in the lab and in the field,
Speaker 1: and what her degrees were, and what her training was,
Speaker 1: and how many cases that she had looked at and
Speaker 1: all that stuff to sort of establish upfront, this is
Speaker 1: a person you should believe, right, And that's pretty much
Speaker 1: standard practice when you're in a courtroom and somebody who's
Speaker 1: a science expert comes or a forensics expert comes to
Speaker 1: testify about a case. But what you don't know is, necessarily,
Speaker 1: like the actual field itself, how much solidity there is
Speaker 1: to the discipline. Yeah. So imagine you are on a
Speaker 1: jury and it is eighteen thirty five or so, so
Speaker 1: you are not the scientifically literate person you are today.
Speaker 1: You are maybe a farmer who has been called in
Speaker 1: for jury duty, and it's a murder trial, and the
Speaker 1: prosecution brings on an expert witness to testify to the
Speaker 1: guilt of the defendant. And the expert witness who comes
Speaker 1: on says, look, here is a map of the different
Speaker 1: organs on the human skull. And as you will see
Speaker 1: in this sketch of the defendant's head, they have an
Speaker 1: extremely pronounced organ of murdering, and that's a bump that's
Speaker 1: right here on this part of the head, and the
Speaker 1: principles of phrenology, we can demonstrate that this person is
Speaker 1: by nature a murderer and will kill again if released.
Speaker 1: Now we know that that sounds like complete bunk. And
Speaker 1: wouldn't life be super easy if we could just touch
Speaker 1: everybody's heads and figure out if there are murderers? It
Speaker 1: would be much easier. It would also give you more
Speaker 1: excuses when you're touching the heads and people are saying,
Speaker 1: why are you doing? What do checking? Make sure? Make
Speaker 1: sure I'm safe. I don't want to be in the
Speaker 1: presence of somebody with a pronounced organ of destructiveness. Um
Speaker 1: but so, yeah, we all know today phrenology is nonsense.
Speaker 1: But back then a lot of people would not have
Speaker 1: had the knowledge to do that. And it's not because
Speaker 1: they were stupid, they just didn't know. It's probably presented
Speaker 1: in much the same way. This learned gentleman gets up
Speaker 1: in front of you and says, I am an expert,
Speaker 1: and all phrenologists agree. Um. So, in that case, if
Speaker 1: if the judge has decided that this is admissible testimony
Speaker 1: and you're on the jury, how would you know to
Speaker 1: quite usenet And then even if you're the judge, the
Speaker 1: judge might know not exactly. It's not a qualification to
Speaker 1: be a judge to also have a science degree exactly.
Speaker 1: Now we are going to talk, believe it or not,
Speaker 1: about a real case where somebody tried to use phrenology
Speaker 1: in the courtroom in the eighteen hundreds. But we'll get
Speaker 1: to that actual historical example in a bit. First we
Speaker 1: should back up, I think and and look a little
Speaker 1: bit more generally at a sort of top down view
Speaker 1: of what are some of the problems with forensic science
Speaker 1: as it's used, especially in U. S courts today, but
Speaker 1: this is going to apply to a lot of courts
Speaker 1: around the world in the general sense. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: like as usual, because we're Americans and we're here in
Speaker 1: the US, a lot of our research is focused here.
Speaker 1: But the best resource that I was able to find
Speaker 1: came from Popular Mechanics, and they had a really good
Speaker 1: article on the myths of c s I and they
Speaker 1: began by establishing that forensic science as we know it
Speaker 1: it was mostly created by police, not by scientists, and
Speaker 1: it's based more on common sense rather than scientific practice.
Speaker 1: And we all know what common sense is. Common sense
Speaker 1: is the reasoning faculty that tells you that the Earth
Speaker 1: does not move and is flat. Yeah, b O B.
Speaker 1: I'm downe with B O B. Well, I mean those
Speaker 1: things are common whitest thing I've ever said on this show.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Uh yeah, I mean so common sense, as
Speaker 1: we know from all kinds of fields of science, very
Speaker 1: often betrays us. Common sense is useful for getting your
Speaker 1: average stuff done day today, but it is not good
Speaker 1: for for deducing truths that are obscure. Yeah. Right, So
Speaker 1: this popular mechanics article goes in depth and it says okay,
Speaker 1: and it and it points out DNA testing right off
Speaker 1: the bat, and they said, DNA testing is is really good,
Speaker 1: and it's made it possible for us to re examine
Speaker 1: all this other biological evidence that we've taken from past trials,
Speaker 1: so that more than two hundred people this is in
Speaker 1: the US have had their convictions overturned because the DNA
Speaker 1: analysis refutes the other biological evidence that was used in
Speaker 1: the case. Fifty percent of these cases involved bad forensic
Speaker 1: analysis contributing to their imprisonment, and they refer to this
Speaker 1: as the c s I affects of this bringing up
Speaker 1: the show. Yeah, the c s I effect, as I've
Speaker 1: kind of come to understand, let me know, if this
Speaker 1: is in line with what they're saying. As I understand it,
Speaker 1: it's where juries tend to expect to encounter scientific style
Speaker 1: evidence presented in the courts, or especially DNA evidence. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And so it's a perpetuation of the media versions of
Speaker 1: the forensic examiners solving difficult cases the science and cutting
Speaker 1: edge tech. Right, Like, so when you think of c
Speaker 1: s I and you think of, like, wow, this this
Speaker 1: is how old I am, Like David Caruso throwing on
Speaker 1: his sunglasses and whipping back his red hair, and then
Speaker 1: there's like c g I zooming in on a dead body,
Speaker 1: and like the explanation exposition about like how forensics works.
Speaker 1: That's what they're expecting, right, They're expecting some David Caruso
Speaker 1: slick type to show up and explain this to them.
Speaker 1: There's an argument though, that this is a misconception that
Speaker 1: absolutely sways jurors before they're really even in the courtroom. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: Like it leads to the misperception that generally the methods
Speaker 1: leading to the prosecution, identification and prosecution of a defendant
Speaker 1: are very scientific in nature. Not only that, but that
Speaker 1: they all cases will have some kind of scientific quote
Speaker 1: unquote scientific evidence, uh engaged or as evidence for them
Speaker 1: to review. Yeah. So, but what's actually going on is
Speaker 1: a little bit more difficult. Like like all things in
Speaker 1: the world, America's forensics labs are totally overburdened and understaffed,
Speaker 1: and a two thousand five studied by the Department of
Speaker 1: Justice found that the average lab has a backlog of
Speaker 1: four hundred and one requests. So that's why, Like, for instance,
Speaker 1: that case that I was the forem and on, I
Speaker 1: think it happened like a year year and a half
Speaker 1: after they actually arrested the guy because they were waiting
Speaker 1: on evidence. It took forever for them to actually get
Speaker 1: to the evidence into Like in this case, they were
Speaker 1: looking at the cocaine that was found on his person
Speaker 1: to see what percentage of it was pure cocaine. Um.
Speaker 1: So this isn't even getting into all of the state, city,
Speaker 1: and now federal forensic departments that have been scandalized by
Speaker 1: mishandling evidence or just straight up committing fraud. Uh So,
Speaker 1: I mean, even outside of the science angle that we're
Speaker 1: talking about. There are the pseudoscience angle we're talking about,
Speaker 1: there's the mishandling of evidence which makes the science bad,
Speaker 1: and then there's just people committing fraud, right, which is well,
Speaker 1: I mean unethical. I guess you could encounter fraud in
Speaker 1: any situation, like even in a even in a field
Speaker 1: where all of the established methodology is well vetted, scientifically
Speaker 1: valid methodology, you could still have somebody falsified data, somebody
Speaker 1: who has like the quote unquote quality of character to
Speaker 1: testify in a courtroom. But whatever, somebody somebody got to them.
Speaker 1: But or than just telling people not to be liars,
Speaker 1: there's really not as much to do about that. So
Speaker 1: I think we're probably not going to focus as much
Speaker 1: on fraud today, but it's just important to know that
Speaker 1: it's out there, right, especially like next time one of
Speaker 1: you is in the jury box. You know, just consider
Speaker 1: these things that we're talking about today. Uh So, the
Speaker 1: argument basically goes like this, the forensics science field, it
Speaker 1: has a foundation that's very shaky and very subjective. In fact,
Speaker 1: the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors says, look, there's
Speaker 1: no advanced degree that's required to have a career in forensics.
Speaker 1: Some people do, but it's not inquired. I think it
Speaker 1: varies field to field because there will be for example,
Speaker 1: like maybe like boards or licensing organizations that work in
Speaker 1: different fields and they have different requirements. Sure yeah, especially
Speaker 1: probably based state to state all that stuff. Um, And
Speaker 1: one question I have and let's I don't want you.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can answer it right now or we
Speaker 1: can think about it and come back to it the
Speaker 1: end of the episode. But should it be should they
Speaker 1: be required to have an advanced degree? Uh? Well, I
Speaker 1: mean I think that's gonna very case to case again.
Speaker 1: I think I think methodology is more important than credential ing.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, Um, Like you can have somebody with the
Speaker 1: high school education and if they are rigorously forced to
Speaker 1: follow certain methodologies, I would probably be okay, but still
Speaker 1: believe it. Yeah. And or computer automated systems that are
Speaker 1: forced to follow those rigorous methodologies too, which is something
Speaker 1: that people are talking about. So it's been argued that
Speaker 1: the body of research behind forensic science is just totally incomplete.
Speaker 1: The methodologies aren't precise. Like I said, there's lying in
Speaker 1: fraud today. We're mainly going to concentrate though, on whether
Speaker 1: the science itself adds up so that you can take
Speaker 1: valid conclusions from it and use it as evidence in
Speaker 1: a courtroom. Right, pseudo science problems in the scientific method. Yeah,
Speaker 1: We've had chemists who have faked results and gone to
Speaker 1: prison for drug convictions. There's been sloppy work that's been
Speaker 1: done than thousands of cases related to Saint Paul, Minnesota, Detroit, Michigan, Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: North Carolina, Houston, and more. I mean, this is like,
Speaker 1: this is everywhere, but in two thousand five, this is
Speaker 1: this is the what led to the paper that we
Speaker 1: were talking about earlier. Congress commissioned the National Academy of
Speaker 1: Science to examine the state of forensics in the US
Speaker 1: in the U S law enforcement, and they this group
Speaker 1: found in two thousand and nine that there were quote
Speaker 1: serious deficiencies in the nation's forensics science system, and they
Speaker 1: advocated for extensive reform. And they said, apart from d NA,
Speaker 1: remember we're gonna come back to DNA later, there is
Speaker 1: no single forensic discipline that has been proven with a
Speaker 1: degree of certainty to be able to match a piece
Speaker 1: of evidence to a suspect. Now that brings up an
Speaker 1: important thing that I think may come up again. In
Speaker 1: this episode, which is that some fields, as practiced, may
Speaker 1: be better able to sometimes exclude the possibility of of
Speaker 1: a defendant being gilt rather than matching. If that makes
Speaker 1: any one example I know we'll talk about later. His
Speaker 1: bite marks. Yeah, and that that's something I've seen pointed out,
Speaker 1: is that while it might be hard to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: this bite mark identifies that this truly is the defendant,
Speaker 1: you could more easily say this makes it clear that
Speaker 1: this bite mark was not left by the defendants. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's complicated, right, and it's uh, it brings me back,
Speaker 1: as many of our episodes do episodes do lately, to
Speaker 1: the wicked problems that Robert and I talked about earlier
Speaker 1: this year, that just what's going on with forensics in
Speaker 1: the justice system in general is a wicked problem. And
Speaker 1: I don't think it's gonna be solved with one answer, right,
Speaker 1: but but it's worth looking at. Well. I mean, one
Speaker 1: thing we can take comfort in is that this big
Speaker 1: two thousand nine report is very extensive, and I hope
Speaker 1: that this already has in some cases led to some
Speaker 1: initiated reforms, and it will help lead to continued reforms
Speaker 1: in the future. So it's not like nobody Reckon noises
Speaker 1: this problem and nobody's doing anything about. Yeah, I suspect
Speaker 1: that there are a lot of people who are working
Speaker 1: very hard right now. You may even be listening to
Speaker 1: the show who are like, hey, you know, we're doing
Speaker 1: our best over here. So we get that. But but
Speaker 1: it's also important to sort of walk through the process
Speaker 1: and figure it out. The worst implication of this, though,
Speaker 1: Joe is like, this is and and this is extrapolating
Speaker 1: it out to. One reason why a lot of people
Speaker 1: care about this now is because it's in our pop
Speaker 1: culture right Cereal, the biggest podcast out there, Making a
Speaker 1: Murderer on Netflix, all of all of which touch upon
Speaker 1: these things. There's an implication that if the forensic science
Speaker 1: is wrong, that there are innocent people who are jailed
Speaker 1: for crimes they didn't commit, and subsequently there are guilty
Speaker 1: criminals out there who are still roaming free to so,
Speaker 1: um what we're going to talk about this group a
Speaker 1: lot as well. The Innocence Project found that when prisoners
Speaker 1: were exonerated by d n A, the real perpetrators were
Speaker 1: identified in half of those cases, and in all but one,
Speaker 1: the real perpetray Waters continued to commit crimes, serious crimes
Speaker 1: after the innocent person went to jail. Yeah. So the
Speaker 1: Innocence Project, if you haven't heard of it, it's an
Speaker 1: advocacy organization, So it does you might say, probably have
Speaker 1: an ax to grind in this issue, but but it's
Speaker 1: also yeah, it's uh. I think it is abundantly clear
Speaker 1: that that many innocent people have been convicted of crimes
Speaker 1: they didn't commit. Many guilty people have been let go
Speaker 1: on the basis of bad forensic evidence, or or have
Speaker 1: been let go simply because somebody else has made to
Speaker 1: cop for the crime that they committed. Um, and yeah,
Speaker 1: and these people so so somebody who actually did a
Speaker 1: murder is out roaming the streets because somebody else is
Speaker 1: in prison for it. Yeah, And that's just one disappointing
Speaker 1: but too terrifying, right, uh. And so another part of
Speaker 1: the problem. And I don't think we're gonna have a
Speaker 1: lot of time to dive deep into this today. But
Speaker 1: it's also important to remember that the legal sciences don't
Speaker 1: get as much federal funding as other disciplines when it
Speaker 1: comes to research like this, so subsequently, there aren't as
Speaker 1: many examples of statistically defensible research that these forensics. Forensic
Speaker 1: examiners can rely upon that they can go back to
Speaker 1: and that they have a depth of research in their field. Right,
Speaker 1: And so one argument is we should fund them more
Speaker 1: and too they should be broken out into their own division.
Speaker 1: They shouldn't be beholden to police and prosecutors because right
Speaker 1: now most forensic scientists work under the police and under
Speaker 1: prosecutors um, which is obviously going to throw bias into
Speaker 1: their work. Yeah, that's another thing that is that is
Speaker 1: addressed by that big two thousand nine document is is
Speaker 1: experiment or bias? I mean, this is a problem that's
Speaker 1: also different in some sense from methodologies. Yeah. Absolutely, Well, actually,
Speaker 1: I guess you could say it's part of methodology because
Speaker 1: when you design an experiment in science, you part of
Speaker 1: your methodology is to try to remove bias, for example,
Speaker 1: by blinding or experiment or blinding people carrying out the
Speaker 1: research shouldn't be aware. Let's explain what that means. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not blinding a human being, right, experiment or blinding
Speaker 1: for example, is you know, if you want to test
Speaker 1: whether a certain type of artificial sweetener causes cancer. When
Speaker 1: you're conducting the experiment, ideally the person performing the experiment,
Speaker 1: shouldn't know what the hypothesis is, shouldn't know what the
Speaker 1: samples they're using are. They should be sort of unlabeled
Speaker 1: and identified later by like numbers that could be matched up.
Speaker 1: So so that the if the experiment or has a
Speaker 1: certain way that they maybe even unconsciously want things to
Speaker 1: go in the experiment, that can't affect it because they
Speaker 1: don't know what's going on and what's ex there's no
Speaker 1: actual variables that they could unconsciously put into the into
Speaker 1: the test, right. Yeah, but in many cases in forensic science,
Speaker 1: that's not necessarily how it's practiced. A lot of times
Speaker 1: the the forensic investigator in certain scenarios might know what
Speaker 1: the hypothesis is. It's that this certain person is guilty
Speaker 1: and here's what they did. But again that's one that
Speaker 1: varies from field to field, so we can't say that
Speaker 1: that's problem across the board. Yeah, So, like I'm thinking
Speaker 1: like an example here, although I'm not I don't want
Speaker 1: to accuse the woman in the case that I was
Speaker 1: a part of of of pseudoscience in any way. I
Speaker 1: have no idea one way or the other. But her
Speaker 1: job was to prove that the cocaine that was given
Speaker 1: to her had a certain percentage of pure cocaine in it,
Speaker 1: so that this man could be charged for distribution. There's
Speaker 1: like on the law, it has to be a particular
Speaker 1: percentage so that it's legally enforceable. Um, you know, rather
Speaker 1: than it being like, I don't know salt, I don't
Speaker 1: know what people mix in with their cocaine nowadays, sorry, guys,
Speaker 1: not on the street as much as I used to be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: non dairy creamer and salt. The fair powdered here. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: but she knew what her job was going into it
Speaker 1: when she was measuring right. So yeah, you mentioned that
Speaker 1: word pseudoscience, and I guess we should get into that
Speaker 1: a little bit. Uh. It's something that comes up on
Speaker 1: this show fair often we talk about pseudoscience, But what
Speaker 1: what is pseudoscience for? For those who are you may
Speaker 1: have heard the term, but you're not clear exactly what
Speaker 1: it is. You're you're aware that it's maybe just false
Speaker 1: information or something. But I think that in this case
Speaker 1: it's very important to emphasize the specific definition of it
Speaker 1: because pseudoscience US standard Dictionary definition I found is a
Speaker 1: collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being based
Speaker 1: on the scientific method. So um, the scientific method with
Speaker 1: reference to forensic science, as defined explicitly in that big
Speaker 1: two thousand nine UH National Research Council report is quote
Speaker 1: hypothesis generation and testing. So you've got a hypothesis going
Speaker 1: in falsifiability and replications, so there are ways that you
Speaker 1: could show your knowledge is not true, and testing more
Speaker 1: than once by different people to verify the results you get.
Speaker 1: And then peer review of scientific publications, so testing your
Speaker 1: findings against other experts in your field to see what
Speaker 1: they think and if they can criticize your method. Now,
Speaker 1: other than the peer reviewed aspect, this is pretty much
Speaker 1: what we learned in science class in high school, right, well,
Speaker 1: depending on Yeah, when you get your little research lab
Speaker 1: book and you're filling out all your stuff for the
Speaker 1: experiments that you perform in class and such like that,
Speaker 1: this is what they're teaching us. The importance of that
Speaker 1: the peer review stuff comes later when you're in I
Speaker 1: guess higher education. But uh, it shouldn't be that hard,
Speaker 1: you're right, But in a lot of cases that this
Speaker 1: is exactly what they have found. Many forensic fields, or
Speaker 1: certain forensic investigators don't always practice that their techniques don't
Speaker 1: reflect this, or the rules of analysis they use don't
Speaker 1: necessarily reflect this. They're not based on well replicated, falsifiable
Speaker 1: scientific tests. They're more just kind of like knowledge, you
Speaker 1: general wisdom, folk wisdom about here is what you'd expect
Speaker 1: to see here, So kind of like, so I like
Speaker 1: to think about a scene that I love from TV.
Speaker 1: But this is total pseudoscience, all right. But it's also
Speaker 1: like street cops right the wire, the infamous f words
Speaker 1: seen in the wire, you know what I'm talking about,
Speaker 1: Right where bunking Meltier in the kitchen, and they're trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how a woman was shot through a
Speaker 1: window in the kitchen, and so they're basically measuring with
Speaker 1: pens and like I don't even know if they have
Speaker 1: a measuring tape in that scene or not, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. And they're measuring like what the
Speaker 1: trajectory of the bullet might have been, what angle the
Speaker 1: guy might have been shooting from, where she was shot,
Speaker 1: where the bullet might have been lodged in the refrigerator door,
Speaker 1: all this stuff. In the meantime, while they're swearing a bunch,
Speaker 1: which is funny for us as the audience. But that's
Speaker 1: not science. Well, I mean, that's just them. They've got
Speaker 1: some common sense and yeah, they've they've been on the job,
Speaker 1: they've seen enough homicides that they have a bit of
Speaker 1: an idea on how to explore that scene. But that's
Speaker 1: not something that unst necessarily would submit to the courtroom, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, I can I can look at that scene
Speaker 1: and say, I don't know, it seems like they're reasonable
Speaker 1: in the conclusions they're drawing. Yeah, but um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean one problem there is, for example, the lack
Speaker 1: of quantitative evidence. Yeah, this is something that's often important
Speaker 1: in science, is trying to find a way to represent
Speaker 1: your findings with numbers so it takes the gut feeling
Speaker 1: out of it. So instead of saying, yeah, that bullet
Speaker 1: hole looks like it came from there. Instead what you
Speaker 1: should be doing is putting a straight object through it
Speaker 1: and measuring with a pro tractor exactly what the angle is,
Speaker 1: so that it takes your gut feeling out of it.
Speaker 1: You have a specific number that has been explicitly measured. Now,
Speaker 1: I think if David Simon, creator of the wire, we're
Speaker 1: here with us, he would argue that one of the
Speaker 1: points of that scene also is that because the Baltimore
Speaker 1: Police Department is so horrifically underfunded, this is how these
Speaker 1: police have to go about doing their jobs because they
Speaker 1: don't have protractors or forensics teams that can come in
Speaker 1: and do all that for them. Right. So, one important
Speaker 1: point I think that we should make is that pseudoscience
Speaker 1: isn't just any false knowledge or bad epistemology. It's a
Speaker 1: specific type of thing. Like if a prosecutor on a case,
Speaker 1: you're on a jury, and prosecutor brings in a tarot
Speaker 1: card reader, uh to turn some cards to show you
Speaker 1: show you exactly how guilty, Uh, you know this guy
Speaker 1: is of attacking somebody with a folding chair. That would
Speaker 1: be a bad evidential standard. But I don't think I
Speaker 1: wouldn't the tower came up, I'd be real worried. Huh.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't call it pseudoscience because it's not trying to
Speaker 1: dress itself in the wardrobe of science. And that that's
Speaker 1: exactly what is so pernicious about some of these flawed
Speaker 1: forensic science methods. They take on the credibility of the
Speaker 1: scientific method without actually practicing the method in every case. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and depending on how charismatic or rhetorically qualified uh, defense
Speaker 1: or prosecutor could be. You know, it's very easy to
Speaker 1: convince a jury that somebody is an ex it in
Speaker 1: something that they just simply don't understand, you know, so
Speaker 1: that's also worth considering. Yeah, um, all right, I want
Speaker 1: to bring up one thing here that references another old
Speaker 1: episode of ours too, which is um, Robert and I
Speaker 1: did that episode earlier this year about cargo cult science
Speaker 1: and our cargo cultism, and then we also talked about
Speaker 1: cargo cult science with a concept from Feineman. H yeah
Speaker 1: he was he semi involved in that. Yeah. Yeah. In fact,
Speaker 1: we told a really fun story. Go back and listen
Speaker 1: the episode. Everybody but told a fun story about Fineman
Speaker 1: hanging out in a bathtub while people were doing reflexology
Speaker 1: on each other. Uh anyway, Fineman always hanging out in bathtub? Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: hot tub, I guess more than bathtub there. Um. But
Speaker 1: so this also it made me think of what Robert
Speaker 1: and I talked about as the Church of science quote
Speaker 1: unquote in that episode two, that there is there is
Speaker 1: a an idea of science as being almost like a
Speaker 1: deity now days, right, that that that true knowledge and
Speaker 1: true um ways to judge how the world works can
Speaker 1: come from science rather than the old way that we
Speaker 1: thought it did, which you know generally was from religion
Speaker 1: or mythology. Uh. And this is an example of where
Speaker 1: quote unquote science is a false god. Uh. You mean,
Speaker 1: like the people who treat science sort of as dogmas
Speaker 1: rather than as a method. Exactly when people say, I
Speaker 1: hate when I hear this, when people say quote science says, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's one of my least favorite phrases. Science doesn't say anything.
Speaker 1: Science is a tool. It's not a it's not a
Speaker 1: deity speaking pronouncements to you. And one of the people
Speaker 1: one of the things scientifically literate people will know is that, um,
Speaker 1: you know, scientific results are tentative. You you learn something
Speaker 1: through science, but then there might be new studies coming
Speaker 1: out next year that say, actually, those previous studies were
Speaker 1: flawed and here's the better answer. Yeah, I guess. Just
Speaker 1: my general point is that, like, it's important to realize
Speaker 1: that this is fallible and that you should apply critical
Speaker 1: thinking to this when it's when it's put in front
Speaker 1: of you as matter of fact, right, knowledge that is
Speaker 1: cloaked in the garments of science ain't necessarily so just
Speaker 1: because it's wearing those clothes. Absolutely, So Okay, I want
Speaker 1: to bring this back though, because I don't want to
Speaker 1: make it seem like we're just totally bashing forensic science
Speaker 1: and it's all bad. No were to put your critical
Speaker 1: lenses on, and there are examples of well researched science
Speaker 1: being used in forensics. In fact, chromatography which was one
Speaker 1: of the things we were going to do for the
Speaker 1: We're gonna do paper chromatography for our little d I
Speaker 1: y uh lab experiment. It's a method for separating complex
Speaker 1: mixtures and it allows examiners to identify bodily fluids for
Speaker 1: drug cases, and for the most part it's seen as
Speaker 1: being well researched and backed up. Uh. The other one
Speaker 1: which we mentioned is DNA analysis, which has set a
Speaker 1: new scientific standard. But if you also have to remember
Speaker 1: that quote, good science takes time, right, so you can't
Speaker 1: just like whip up DNA evidence like you know, in
Speaker 1: a flat Literally the TV show The Flash, I don't
Speaker 1: know if you know this, the character the Flash is
Speaker 1: a forensic scientist, and so whenever he's like, you know,
Speaker 1: got work to do, he just super quickly like does
Speaker 1: it all like in like thirty seconds or whatever. So
Speaker 1: it's that's not a good example. Why does he make
Speaker 1: the machines work faster? No, he just runs around really
Speaker 1: quickly and like shakes like like like little pipettes and
Speaker 1: stuff or test tubes really quickly. The machines work faster
Speaker 1: because he is the machine. So he becomes a centerfuge
Speaker 1: or something like that. Yeah. As much as I love
Speaker 1: the Flash, both TV show and just as a character,
Speaker 1: it's like the worst example of what should happen in forensics.
Speaker 1: SciTE um. Anyways, the DNA thing, it took thirty years
Speaker 1: from the discovery of the double helix structure before it
Speaker 1: could actually be used to confirm a positive identification of
Speaker 1: an individual. Now it's broadly accepted and quantifiable, right, but
Speaker 1: it took a long time. In fact, the most advanced
Speaker 1: analysis has a one in more than a quadrillion chance
Speaker 1: of a random match of two strangers DNA, So that
Speaker 1: seems fairly reliable. Yeah. Yeah, Yet DNA only constitutes less
Speaker 1: than ten percent of the case load in US crime labs, right,
Speaker 1: So that's important to remember as well. What we really
Speaker 1: need is the rest of forensics to be just as
Speaker 1: rigorous and justice statistically grounded. Yes. Uh. And one thing
Speaker 1: I do want to say, picking up on what you
Speaker 1: said a minute ago about how we're not trying to
Speaker 1: trash all these fields, is that I would say that
Speaker 1: I think any field can be pursued in a scientific way.
Speaker 1: So if we say something about major flaws in uh,
Speaker 1: bite matching or something, or in fire analysis, that's not
Speaker 1: to say that forensic ode ontology, this study of you know,
Speaker 1: dentistry in in crime cases, or that fire analysis are
Speaker 1: not legitimate fields of study. There are totally legitimate ways
Speaker 1: to study these, and there are lots of great scientists
Speaker 1: who do exactly that. The problem is that as practiced
Speaker 1: in many in many court cases and forensic investigations, it's
Speaker 1: full of bad methodologies or unverified knowledge. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think you know that c s I effect that we
Speaker 1: were talking about earlier too, is perpetuated by by way
Speaker 1: more than just like the sort of um police procedurals
Speaker 1: like c s I that we're used to. I mean,
Speaker 1: like I just mentioned the Flash that's not really a
Speaker 1: cop show, and yet like it throws in a dose
Speaker 1: of that kind of stuff in there. Also thinking of
Speaker 1: like a great TV show, Sherlock but it relies on
Speaker 1: like lots of like examples of Sherlock Holmes conducting his
Speaker 1: own like at home forensic tests. Have you ever seen
Speaker 1: this show before? Like I've seen was one where like
Speaker 1: he's just like beating a corpse with like a horsewhip
Speaker 1: or something like that, just just to see, like what
Speaker 1: how long it takes bruises to form on a corpse? Right,
Speaker 1: And it's like, Okay, like I get it that that's
Speaker 1: an interesting like way narratively to show us that he's
Speaker 1: conducting research and everything. But also like what but it's
Speaker 1: funny that Sherlock is often used as a as a
Speaker 1: you know, great symbol of scientific investigation because he uses
Speaker 1: deeply unscientific methods a lot of the time. Sherlock Holmes
Speaker 1: will you know, look at a few facts about you
Speaker 1: and make deductions, right, That's what he does science of deductions.
Speaker 1: Say well, your watches turned back to this time, which
Speaker 1: makes me know that you were in this country and
Speaker 1: this time zone. That's not scientific, that's just making an assumption.
Speaker 1: But we love it. We eat it up right, like
Speaker 1: as an audience. That's great fun because it makes the
Speaker 1: world a lot simpler than it actually is. And it
Speaker 1: man like, of course, like I would love it if,
Speaker 1: like I could be Sherlock Holmes and just solve every
Speaker 1: problem by just like kind of very quickly looking around
Speaker 1: the room and knowing everything that's going on. But it's
Speaker 1: not realistic. It's a fun story, but in terms of
Speaker 1: like people's lives or whether or not they're guilty perpetrators
Speaker 1: out there running around, it's not really how things work. Okay,
Speaker 1: we need to take a quick break, but when we
Speaker 1: come back, we're going to talk about evidence standards for
Speaker 1: scientific evidence in US courts and then a bunch of
Speaker 1: specific examples of forensic science disciplines and what some problems
Speaker 1: with them might be, including, uh, the aforementioned case of phrenology. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're back, So Joe tell me and the audience what
Speaker 1: is the fry test and how how why is it
Speaker 1: pertinent to this forensic research that we're talking about here. Well,
Speaker 1: this comes up in a lot of discussions of forensic
Speaker 1: science because this has been the legal standard for the
Speaker 1: admissibility of scientific evidence in US courts for a long time. Now.
Speaker 1: There are other standards that have in some ways superseded it,
Speaker 1: but this was sort of the original one. So The
Speaker 1: Fry standard essentially determines that for scientific evidence to be
Speaker 1: admissible in the court, it has to be quote generally
Speaker 1: accepted by experts in the field in which it belongs.
Speaker 1: So Fry came out of a murder trial in nineteen
Speaker 1: three and which the defendant tried to demonstrate his innocence
Speaker 1: by using a lie detector test to measure systolic blood pressure.
Speaker 1: So this is an early lie detector test. And and
Speaker 1: this guy is going to say, look, you know, I
Speaker 1: didn't do it. And here's a machine that shows I'm
Speaker 1: telling the truth when I say that I didn't do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what. I think. This is before the polygraph,
Speaker 1: because William Marston invented that, and he is also the
Speaker 1: co creator of Wonder Woman, the fun things that Christian
Speaker 1: Sager knows in his little weird brain, the lasso of truth,
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly, And that didn't happen until the late thirties
Speaker 1: early forties. That's a whole other field of forensic pseudoscience
Speaker 1: that that we can talk about. But so in this case,
Speaker 1: the court rejected this evidence, writing quote, just the scientific
Speaker 1: principle or discovery crosses the line between the experimental and
Speaker 1: demonstrable stages is difficult to define. Somewhere in this twilight zone,
Speaker 1: the evidential force of the principle must be recognized. And
Speaker 1: while courts will go a long way in admitting expert
Speaker 1: testimony deduced from a well recognized scientific principle or discovery,
Speaker 1: the thing from which the deduction is made must be
Speaker 1: sufficiently established to have gained general acceptance in the particular
Speaker 1: field in which it belongs. And that's where this general
Speaker 1: acceptance doctrine comes from. It So, lie detector tests not
Speaker 1: generally accepted by the relevant scientific fields then or now, really,
Speaker 1: and yet we still see them in pop culture all
Speaker 1: the time, right, And even if they were mostly accurate,
Speaker 1: they're not legitimate scientific evidence to use in a court.
Speaker 1: But even this is not fool proof depending on how
Speaker 1: it's applied and interpreted. For example, what if a whole
Speaker 1: field is just rotten to the core with pseudoscience. Um. So, again,
Speaker 1: it might not come as a surprise, but most phrenologists
Speaker 1: consider phrenology a legitimate science. Yeah, of course they would.
Speaker 1: And so if you don't, here we go, Yeah, here
Speaker 1: we go. I see the next line coming up. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm waiting for the emails to come in. Right,
Speaker 1: most people who own orgon energy accumulators probably think Wilhelm
Speaker 1: Reich is not pseudo science. Yeah, absolutely so those of
Speaker 1: you who are long time listeners may know. Earlier in
Speaker 1: the year, Joe and I did an episode on Willhelm
Speaker 1: Reich and organ accumulation and cloud busting, and we received
Speaker 1: some nasty emails from people who are deep followers of
Speaker 1: Reich's belief. Yeah, they were not happy that we did
Speaker 1: not see the genius in his method. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: I like to feel like we did a fair treatment
Speaker 1: of that topic, but that they were upset. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know, we do our best, but but I don't know.
Speaker 1: As we see, I don't think the organ accumulator has
Speaker 1: much going on for it. Yeah, and neither do I.
Speaker 1: And I'm the one who owns VHS tapes and books
Speaker 1: by that guy and has state at his estate. Uh So,
Speaker 1: in these cases Wilhelm Reich phrenology, it's obvious to us
Speaker 1: what's wrong, because we're well aware of the these fields
Speaker 1: and their faults. But what about in obscure sciences, you know,
Speaker 1: things that are not popularly known to be uh, pseudoscience,
Speaker 1: where an entire field could just be riddled with problems
Speaker 1: and nobody on the outside would know UM. So in
Speaker 1: nineteen the Federal Rules of Evidence were established, and this
Speaker 1: brought in Rule seven oh two which is relevant to this,
Speaker 1: and it reads quote, if scientific, technical, or other specialized
Speaker 1: knowledge will assist the trier of fact to understand the
Speaker 1: evidence or to determine a fact in issue, a witness
Speaker 1: qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or
Speaker 1: education may testify there too, in the form of an
Speaker 1: opinion or otherwise. So this seems to massively just on
Speaker 1: the face of it, this looks like it massively relaxes
Speaker 1: the standard um and and this led to much argument,
Speaker 1: lots of back and forth between legal scholars like does
Speaker 1: this embrace the Fry standard or does it reject and
Speaker 1: replace it? And there were many fierce arguments, but eventually
Speaker 1: Fry was superseded by the Daubert standard in the courts.
Speaker 1: So the Daubert standard is much more complex and it
Speaker 1: says um Essentially, the qualifications for the admissibility of scientific
Speaker 1: evidence in the courts are whether you can test the theory.
Speaker 1: That's an important thing, like it shouldn't be just unfalsifiable
Speaker 1: knowledge that there's no way you could show if it
Speaker 1: was wrong. Second, whether it has been subjected to peer
Speaker 1: review in publication. That's another important one. What it's known
Speaker 1: potential error rates are. So you know, you could have
Speaker 1: a totally valid field that has a known pretty high
Speaker 1: error rate. I mean, it could still be valid as
Speaker 1: long as you acknowledge what the known error rate is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and acknowledge that to the jury exactly. Um, the the
Speaker 1: existence and maintenance of standards controlling its operation, right, so
Speaker 1: you've got to have uh systems in place to to
Speaker 1: make sure everybody's doing it right. And uh, and then
Speaker 1: again whether it is generally accepted among the scientific community.
Speaker 1: So who where did this come from? Yeah? Daubert was
Speaker 1: established in nine case in which the plaintiffs were attempting
Speaker 1: to show that a drug called ben Deckton had caused
Speaker 1: birth defects in their children and uh, and it clarified
Speaker 1: this rift between Fry and rule seven O two, saying
Speaker 1: that seven O two, as enforced, should have all those
Speaker 1: qualities I just mentioned, um, but also that that two
Speaker 1: thousand nine National Research Council paper that's like that's like
Speaker 1: the big daddy source that we keep coming back to.
Speaker 1: If you want to know everything about this. You should
Speaker 1: go read that very big. It's learning, it's huge, um,
Speaker 1: and that they write that quote. The court also emphasized
Speaker 1: that in considering the admissibility of evidence, trial judges should
Speaker 1: focus solely on experts, principles, and methodology and not on
Speaker 1: the conclusions they generate. And that seems that seems absolutely
Speaker 1: crucial and correct to me. What should be important is
Speaker 1: the method they use, not what they end up saying. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's still I would say, or at least just
Speaker 1: from my experience, not exactly the case, you know, but
Speaker 1: the two thousand nine documents says that. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: been seven years since then, so hopefully it's better. But
Speaker 1: I think that case that I worked on was probably
Speaker 1: a couple of years after this. Yeah. But another thing
Speaker 1: that this, uh, this indicates is that the court essentially
Speaker 1: placed faith in the system by saying, look, we've got
Speaker 1: an adversarial system. So you have prosecution and you have defense.
Speaker 1: You have plaintiff and you have defense. Since there are
Speaker 1: two sides, we can be sort of generous in what
Speaker 1: kind of scientific evidence we accept. Because if the defense
Speaker 1: doesn't like the prosecut uter's expert witness, they can call
Speaker 1: in their own expert witness. Yeah, and so the court wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: vigorous cross examination, presentation of contrary evidence, and careful instruction
Speaker 1: on the burden of proof are the traditional and appropriate
Speaker 1: means of attacking shaky but admissible evidence. That essentially means
Speaker 1: it's not the court, or rather, it's not the judge's responsibility. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's this. It's on the responsibility of the prosecution and
Speaker 1: the defense to argue rhetorically against the science. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: the judge might have the ability to rule out a
Speaker 1: phrenologist giving evidence, but in a case where that's not
Speaker 1: as clear as phrenology, but just where the science appears
Speaker 1: legitimate but might be shaky. Uh, it's incumbent upon the lawyers,
Speaker 1: right that We'll let it in and we'll see if
Speaker 1: the other side has something to say about that. All right, So, phrenology,
Speaker 1: you've been you've been teasing around for knology. I know
Speaker 1: you've been wanting to tell this story all episode. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna take you back more than a fifty years.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take you the thirty four the United States,
Speaker 1: in the state of Maine. We're up where Wilhelm right, Well,
Speaker 1: he wasn't doing an eighteen thirty four but yet right
Speaker 1: unconnected early rangely Maine. Yes, this is will not ring
Speaker 1: unconnected to Wilhelm Wright. In Maine in eighteen thirty four,
Speaker 1: a nine year old boy named Major Mitchell was facing
Speaker 1: trial for a serious violent offense. He was charged with
Speaker 1: assaulting and maiming another boy, an eight year old schoolmate
Speaker 1: named David Crawford, and according to the allegations, Major Mitchell
Speaker 1: had lured Crawford into an empty field with the intention
Speaker 1: of whipping him and killing him. H Crawford had called
Speaker 1: Mitchell names like a hog, a fool, and a steeler,
Speaker 1: and then Mitchell began to punch Crawford until an adult
Speaker 1: neighbor came by and separated them. Later, Mitchell found Crawford
Speaker 1: walking along a road and forced him into some nearby woods. There,
Speaker 1: Mitchell began torturing Crawford, he uh supposedly a acording to
Speaker 1: the allegations, He filled his mouth with grass, stripped his
Speaker 1: clothes off, tied him up, beat him with sticks, tried
Speaker 1: to drown him in a stream, including damning the stream
Speaker 1: to make the water deeper to make it easier to
Speaker 1: drown him, and partially castrated him with a piece of
Speaker 1: rusty taka. And this is what happens as you name
Speaker 1: your child major. This is messed up. This is not yeah,
Speaker 1: not a happy circumstance. That's a joke. By the way,
Speaker 1: there's no evidence that naming your child major will scientifically
Speaker 1: lead to them being a scumbag. But eventually, but this
Speaker 1: is a nine year old kid. This is something weird
Speaker 1: going on here. This would be extremely disturbing if an
Speaker 1: adult did this to another adult, but this is a kid.
Speaker 1: Doing this to another kid is just so messed up
Speaker 1: and um So, eventually Mitchell let Crawford go and Mitchell's
Speaker 1: legal defense was taken up voluntarily by this Portland's lawyer
Speaker 1: named John Neil. Now Neil didn't just do this out
Speaker 1: of like pity or kindness. Neil happened to be a
Speaker 1: proponent of the budding science quote science and quotes there
Speaker 1: of phrenology. So for for the audience out there, and
Speaker 1: this is my imagination of phrenology at the time. I
Speaker 1: have an inkwell at home that is a bust of
Speaker 1: a head and it has all the phrenology. You know
Speaker 1: that the stereotypical like phrenology drawings of like which part
Speaker 1: of the head does, which it contains which emotions. So
Speaker 1: those of you out there who are wondering what does
Speaker 1: this phrenology they keep talking about, think of those like
Speaker 1: those illustrations of like a profile of a head and
Speaker 1: it's like carved up kind of like kind of like
Speaker 1: those like depictions of like what parts of a pig
Speaker 1: are good to eat? Right? Yeah? Yeah, and it shows
Speaker 1: like okay, and this part this is where anger is
Speaker 1: and in this part, this is where compassion is. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's great. So, uh, it's not great, it's awful, but
Speaker 1: it's great. It's great fun to look at it. So
Speaker 1: phrenology might in a primitive way be considered a predecessor
Speaker 1: to neuroscience, and that it linked mental faculties and personality
Speaker 1: traits to the physical makeup of the brain. Uh, who
Speaker 1: you are as a product of your brain. That's not
Speaker 1: a bad starting place for for science. But from there
Speaker 1: it sort of becomes the body builder bro science of
Speaker 1: the brain. Uh. So you know how when you lift
Speaker 1: heavy weights use certain muscles, those muscles get bigger over time.
Speaker 1: I have no idea what you're talking about, at least
Speaker 1: in theory, at least in theory. Uh, you know, and
Speaker 1: so you can often tell how strong a certain part
Speaker 1: of a person's body is by looking at how big
Speaker 1: the muscles there are. Well, phrenology sort of takes the
Speaker 1: same principle to the brain. It positive that the brain
Speaker 1: is covered in these topographical regions. Quote organs, organs right,
Speaker 1: that are responsible for particular aspects of personality your behavior.
Speaker 1: So if you had a lump or a raised contour
Speaker 1: on the part of your head that chronologists legal labeled
Speaker 1: the organ of hope or the organ of secretiveness, those
Speaker 1: personality traits would be super pronounced in you. So if
Speaker 1: one of these guys you know, pulled the let me
Speaker 1: tell you to the gun show line, the guns would
Speaker 1: probably refer to something like the organ of benevolence, let
Speaker 1: me show you my head bumps. So like what what
Speaker 1: I mean phrenologists. Even at that time, people knew like
Speaker 1: if you get hit in the head with a baseball bat,
Speaker 1: bump forms on your head like oh like, depending on
Speaker 1: where you got hit in the head, your momentarily turned
Speaker 1: into a more benevolent person or a more aggressive person.
Speaker 1: That is almost exactly what the defense argued in this case. Okay,
Speaker 1: hit it so phrenology is now considered completely discredited. There's
Speaker 1: no evidence at all that these cranial organs had any validity. Uh,
Speaker 1: And you can't accurately predict people's behavior by measuring bumps
Speaker 1: on their heads. But the defense in this case argued
Speaker 1: that Mitchell had suffered an injury to the skull when
Speaker 1: he was young, quote, whereby the portion of the brain
Speaker 1: called by phrenologists the organ of destructiveness was prematurely enlarged
Speaker 1: and a destructive disposition excited. Man, if it was that
Speaker 1: easy to make children into little monsters, right, like you'd
Speaker 1: be able to very easily like create like an army
Speaker 1: of homicidal maniacs, but just like whacking them on a
Speaker 1: certain part of their head. Well that that's not actually
Speaker 1: completely off. And I want to get into that in
Speaker 1: a minute. Because so in this case, they observed a
Speaker 1: lump behind Mitchell's right here, and they said, look, you know,
Speaker 1: the organ of destructiveness is enlarged. Uh. The crime was
Speaker 1: a result of this enlarged organ of destructiveness. The enlargement
Speaker 1: was due to circumstances beyond Mitchell's control. He just got hurt. Um,
Speaker 1: so he shouldn't be held responsible for the crime. And
Speaker 1: the judge wrote, quote, where people do not speak from knowledge,
Speaker 1: we cannot suffer a mere theory to go as evidence
Speaker 1: to a jury. So the judge actually pretty wisely in
Speaker 1: this case ruled like this, This like old main judge,
Speaker 1: though it sounds like people do not speak from knowledge.
Speaker 1: It's like in pet cemetery. Yeah, exactly, you don't want
Speaker 1: to go on that road of phrenology. That's a bad
Speaker 1: road of phrenology. Okay, yeah, those are a terrible main accent.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. No, mine is not just as equally bad,
Speaker 1: and I'm from New England. But this does raise an
Speaker 1: interesting question like how to outsiders and lay people determine
Speaker 1: what is knowledge and what is mere theory, and how
Speaker 1: to judges do it by the preferred nomenclature of today,
Speaker 1: I think most scientists would prefer to say mere hypothesis
Speaker 1: than mere theory. But either way, um, neither judges determining
Speaker 1: admissibility nor jury members listening to an expert witness testify
Speaker 1: typically have exhaustive knowledge of these disciplines. So what do
Speaker 1: you do? Yeah? But then again, I do think this
Speaker 1: case raises important issues that are still relevant today because,
Speaker 1: for one, for one thing, courts today will take real
Speaker 1: evidence about, say injuries to the brain or illnesses that
Speaker 1: affected the brain into consideration when thinking about somebody's responsibility
Speaker 1: for a crime. What if you, you know, normal person,
Speaker 1: not a violent person, suddenly one day get the urge
Speaker 1: to go out and start beating people down with a
Speaker 1: folding chair. And then they discover that you've got a
Speaker 1: tumor on your brain rick flair disease. The the this
Speaker 1: tumor may well be changing your behavior in a way
Speaker 1: that it's kind of hard to hold you personally responsible for, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's shaky, but yeah, well, I mean
Speaker 1: that's how a lot of the courts would look at it.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure you'd feel the same way if you were, Like,
Speaker 1: you'd be like, this isn't me. I don't know why
Speaker 1: I did that. That doesn't feel like a part of
Speaker 1: me at all. And then they discover, well, there's a
Speaker 1: tumor in your brain that's changing the way your brain works.
Speaker 1: Can you remove the tumor? Well, maybe you can, maybe
Speaker 1: you can't. Yeah, I mean I guess like whether or
Speaker 1: not you're responsible, you're still responsible. But then then it changes,
Speaker 1: like what the punishment would be right, like, like, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't necessarily send somebody like that to jail, but they
Speaker 1: would need to be ice lated so that they're no
Speaker 1: longer doing this if yeah, I mean hopefully they could
Speaker 1: get treatment and other things would be a brain injury.
Speaker 1: You've probably heard the story of Phineas. I was just
Speaker 1: about to bring up Phineas. We talked about him on
Speaker 1: the show all the time. Phineas Gage. He's this guy.
Speaker 1: What what you're with that? Do you remember? I can't remember,
Speaker 1: but I do remember that when I was in a
Speaker 1: junior high school that our school had a DARE program
Speaker 1: and they would often talk to us about the repercussions
Speaker 1: of drinking and driving, and they gave us all t
Speaker 1: shirts that had a picture of a skull with a
Speaker 1: metal rod shoved up through it, and it was to
Speaker 1: remind us about Phineas Gauge and how his brain changed
Speaker 1: because of the rod. If you're not familiar with this incident,
Speaker 1: he was a railway worker working on a railroad and
Speaker 1: and there was some accident and explosion shot a metal
Speaker 1: rod through his head and his personality completely. Yea, he lived,
Speaker 1: It didn't immediately kill him, but he was not the
Speaker 1: same man. And this brain injury had altered something physical
Speaker 1: about the way his brain works, and he was no
Speaker 1: longer morally or in terms of character, the same person. Right,
Speaker 1: And so like in my instance with these T shirts,
Speaker 1: Dare was trying to use this as a metaphor for like,
Speaker 1: this is what happens when you drink is you're no
Speaker 1: longer the same person. Subsequently you shouldn't drive, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: But but this is another way that I think neuroscience
Speaker 1: may come into forensic science in the future, because like,
Speaker 1: the more we understand about neuroscience, the more we understand
Speaker 1: about what things of physical changes in the brain can
Speaker 1: lead to certain behaviors with with pretty reliable predictive power,
Speaker 1: you know, you say, like, oh, we've discovered that most
Speaker 1: of the time you see this physical process in the brain,
Speaker 1: people start behaving in this way. Uh. Certainly, especially like
Speaker 1: when you're talking about depression and anxiety. Yeah, exactly, do
Speaker 1: those things start changing our idea of how responsibility works
Speaker 1: in the courtroom? Uh? So, Like if we say that
Speaker 1: you know, somebody who Phineas Gage had a bar goes
Speaker 1: through his head, or somebody had a tumor in their brain,
Speaker 1: and this directly seemed to lead to a change in
Speaker 1: their behavior that caused criminal activity or something like that. Uh,
Speaker 1: and what what if it's not an injury or an
Speaker 1: illness but just some inborn condition. This is just how
Speaker 1: your brain was born. Yeah. Yeah, it's complicated stuff again,
Speaker 1: wicked problems right, Like like it's not it's not even
Speaker 1: just as easy as like having the forensic science be perfect,
Speaker 1: because even then you get cases like what you're these
Speaker 1: hypotheticals that you're putting out. Yeah, it's very complicated to
Speaker 1: decide what's right and wrong. Yeah, and since we ran
Speaker 1: so long, we're gonna have to call it right there.
Speaker 1: So here, here's what we're gonna have to leave off
Speaker 1: the first half of this discussion, but to hear the rest,
Speaker 1: you can simply tune in again next time. And in
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