alcohol & money

The Phyllomedusa Bicolor (Giant Monkey Frog) covers itself in a skin secretion to avoid drying out in the sun.

Basically a lot of it is pseudoscience that was never rigorously tested in controlled situations to see if it actually worked.

This is because it was not developed by scientists, but by police, and mainly with an interest in putting people in prison rather than uncovering the truth.

At least two dozen people have been falsely convicted due to “Bite Mark Analysis”. 

“Burn pattern analysis” put an innocent man to death in Texas

“Blood Spatter analysis” such as that shown on the TV show Dexter is actually completely unreliable even according to the US Department of Justice

Forensic hair comparison is also widely believed to be junk science and the FBI is currently reviewing convictions based on hair analysis due to the unreliability of their results

Handwriting analysis has an unreasonably high error rate, by some accounts as high as 43%

Lie detector tests, or polygraphs, are notoriously unreliable and based on bad science. Even though everybody knows this, they are still constantly being used in criminal investigations among other places.

Toxicology labs can be poorly supervised and badly run, producing false and even fraudulent results

Due to sloppy procedure at many labs and lack of regulation even DNA testing is often unreliable

Even when correct results are produced, genetic profiles may be less useful than we have been lead to believe

Fingerprinting analysis is not foolproof and actually has not been thoroughly tested, as this Frontline special discusses

Here are a few more articles on how unreliable modern forensics are.

In case you are stopped by the paywall here’s a Slate article on the same thing and here’s another one. 

Hair analysis alone has been used in thousands of trials. The FBI is reviewing 2500 cases out of “21000 federal and state requests to the FBI’s hair-comparison unit between 1972 and 1999″. Even if this review exonerates some of those convictions, that doesn’t even begin to cover the hundreds of state and local “experts” trained by the FBI in this bogus “hair analysis” technique to do things like this:

Santae Tribble served 28 years for a murder based on FBI testimony about a single strand of hair. He was exonerated in 2012. It was later revealed that one of the hairs presented at trial came from a dog.

Five thousand years ago, the Sumerians called the night ngi, the stars mul, and the moon Nanna.

Four thousand years ago, the Akkadians called the night mūšu, the stars kakkabū, and the moon Sîn.

Three thousand years ago, the Hittites called the night išpanza, the stars haštereš, and the moon Arma.

Two and a half thousand years ago, the Greeks called the night nux, the stars astra, and the moon Selênê.

Two thousand years ago, the Romans called the night nox, the stars stellae, and the moon Luna.

Kings and queens and heroes looked up at them. So did travelers coming home, and little children who sneaked out of bed. So did slaves, and mothers and soldiers and old shepherds, and Sappho and Muršili and Enheduanna and Socrates and Hatshepsut and Cyrus and Cicero. In this darkness it didn’t matter who they were, or where they stood. Only that they were human.

Think of that tonight, when you close your window. You are not alone. You share this night sky with centuries of dreamers and stargazers, and people who longed for quiet. Are you anxious? The Hittites were too: they called it pittuliyaš. Does your heart ache? The Greeks felt it too: they called it akhos. Those who look up to the stars for comfort are a family, and you belong to them. Your ancestors have stood under Nanna, Sîn, Arma, Selênê and Luna for five thousand years. Now its light is yours.