I love the Olympics. Everything about it is awesome in my opinion. From the pageantry to the personal stories of triumph… The competition, but also the community of it all is so very inspiring. One of the stories the NBC featured was that of Jake Gibb. Jake Gibb represents the United States If you recall, […]
Christine Funk charges away questioning the underlying validity of the crime laboratory
Christine Funk is one of my role models. She helped me come up with the idea of the Forensic Science Geek of the Week. She is one of the folks who has taken me under her wing especially in the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. For a long time, she has been charging away and […]
Justice be done: Frederic Whitehurst leads the way
Our regular guest blogger here, Dr. Frederic Whitehurst, JD, PhD was featured for his courageous work in exposing invalid science with the FBI. He is a true American hero! Way to go Dr. Whtiehurst! Dr. Whitehurst will be presenting the Donald Gates case and his efforts at the American Chemical Society national meeting and the […]
Dry-labbing leads to…. early retirement
Perhaps nothing irks me more than reading about dry-labbing. In case you have never heard of it dry-labbing is a phenomenon whereby the laboratory analyst reports out a result but actually did no testing whatsoever. Dry-labbing in a crime laboratory is particularly dangerous given that crime laboratories are notoriously opaque and absolutely not transparent. Data […]
Help wanted: External Quality Assurance Officer for Forensic Laboratories
On occasion I attend various scientific short courses such as the ones put on by the American Chemical Society, the National Fire Protection Association, The Chromatography Forum of Delaware Valley or various manufacturers such as Restek, Agilent and the like. I highly commend any lawyer to go to these conferences and seminars. In my opinion it […]
The Problem of Modern Forensic Science: Novices can become experts at the push of a button
I have lamented before about the horrible state of affairs that has developed in modern forensic science and in particular instrumentation. As an industry, the machine manufacturers seek to automate and make these processes so simple that they no longer require true understanding of the underlying science or the process that makes the machine do […]
The Houston Crime Laboratory: A continuing model of what is wrong?
It’s been long known that the Houston Crime Laboratory has struggled for a long time. According to www.hpdlabinvestigation.org the relevant historical context can be summed up as follows: The public crisis that eventually led to the hiring of an independent investigator to review the Crime Lab’s operations began on November 11, 2002, with the first in […]
Why don’t crime laboratories lose their accreditation more often?
As we have reported here before, state crime laboratories almost never lose their accreditation even when horrible issues of quality control emerge and massive failures of quality assurance are exposed. There is of course one notable exceptions to this proclamation: State Forensic Lab Loses Accreditation Malloy Official Says Concerns Being Addressed Here is the normal […]
Another crime laboratory in danger: US Army
Some folks seem to think that laboratory errors are confined to local laboratories and rouge out-of-control isolated agents who are either sloppy or up to no good. Intuitively, we know this is not true. Laboratories are run by humans. Humans make mistakes. Some humans deliberately lie to get what they want and to keep themselves […]
The Innocence Project weighs in on forensic science mishaps and fraudulent science
As of December 14, 2010, there have been 261 exonerees according to The Innocence Project. 74 of the 261 cases are connected to defective or fraudulent forensic science. That is over 28%. A new movie starring Hillary Swank in part exposes this phenomenon in Conviction. It chronicles the false conviction of Kenny Waters. From wikipedia: […]
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