Science Found Wanting in Nation’s Crime Labs

The report says such analyses are often handled by poorly trained technicians who then exaggerate the accuracy of their methods in court. It concludes that Congress should create a federal agency to guarantee the independence of the field, which has been dominated by law enforcement agencies, say forensic professionals, scholars and scientists who have seen review copies of the study. Early reviewers said the report was still subject to change.

The result of a two-year review, the report follows a series of widely publicized crime laboratory failures, including the case of Brandon Mayfield, a lawyer from Portland, Ore., and Muslim convert who was wrongly arrested in the 2004 terrorist train bombing in Madrid that killed 191 people and wounded 2,000.

And there’s some commentary, How to Bring Real Science Into the Courtroom

Law enforcement organizations have tried to derail the report nearly every step of the way, and with good reason. Police and prosecutors have been relying on bad science to get convictions for decades. It’s only recently, as the onset of DNA testing has begun uncovering a disturbing spate of wrongful convictions, that some of the criminal justice system’s cottage industry pseudo-sciences like “bite mark analysis” have been exposed for the quackery they are.

I agree with the skepticism that more government bureaucracy will fix the problem. I think it’s more that the standard of legal evidence is not the same as the standard of scientific evidence. In science, you need to take steps to rule out alternate explanations of a phenomenon, which we sometimes explain as “correlation does not prove causality.” If you watched the videos of why you should never talk to the police, you’d see that the legal system is not interested in ruling out alternate explanations — they leave that to the defense. But the prosecution and the science labs are part same system, so it’s a matter of whether they are asking all the questions, or if they stop when they get an answer they want.

Guest Column: Letting Scientists Off the Leash

Where does the money come from to pay for our science? Mostly from the federal government — your tax dollars at work — and non-profit foundations. Income from grants written by professors is the single largest contribution to the Stanford University budget (the second largest is endowment income, and student tuition is a distant third). Stanford has an enormous endowment ($17 billion before the market crash) but applies it in a heavily leveraged manner — in other words, they tend to use it to prime the pump and not to support ongoing research programs.

via

A number of articles about a new bill bent on destroying public access to government-funded research

The Fair Copyright in Research Works Act is a lot of things, but fair ain’t one of them

Allan Adler, VP of the Association of American Publishers, issued a statement in which he had the gall to say that “Government does not fund peer-reviewed journal articles—publishers do.”

That’s just not true. The NIH spends over $28 billion in taxpayer money annually to fund research. Researchers write articles about their findings, and their peers review those articles, without compensation from publishers. Without the research, there would be nothing to publish. Largely due to historical accident, publishers manage the peer review process, helping journal editors to badger referees into reviewing articles, generally for no pay. The value of the scientific expertise that goes into refereeing dwarfs that of the office expenses incurred by publishers in managing the process. The referees’ salaries are paid by universities and research institutes, not by publishers. Basically, we have a system in which the public pays for the research, the universities pay for the refereeing, the publishers pay for office work to coordinate the refereeing, and also for some useful editing. Then the publishers turn around and sell the results back to the universities and to the public who bore almost all of the costs in the first place.

Congress Hears Debate Over Bill That Would Forbid NIH-like Public Access

Open Access: The Time to Act is Now

Please contact your Representative no later than February 28, 2009 to express your support for public access to taxpayer-funded research and ask that he or she oppose H.R.801. Contact your Representative directly using the contact information and draft letter below, or via the ALA legislative action center [link forthcoming 2/11]. As always, kindly let us know what action you’re able to take, via email to stacie [at] arl [dot] org.

Click the link for more.

H/t to D H.

I am writing to request that you IMMEDIATELY contact your elected
representatives and let them know that the proposed Congressional
economic stimulus package must include a strong investment in
scientific infrastructure to ensure the future competitiveness of
our country. We also request that you contact House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi to thank her for her tremendous efforts in ensuring that
science infrastructure investments were included in the House
stimulus package, formally known as the .American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act of 2009.. You can make these contacts quickly
and easily at:
http://www.congressweb.com/cweb4/index.cfm?orgcode=apspa&hotissue=81
&
http://www.congressweb.com/cweb4/index.cfm?orgcode=apspa&hotissue=82

There, you will find pre-written messages to your Senators and
Speaker Pelosi. You may send these letters as they are, modify them,
or write your own. While individualizing your letter is not
essential, please at least make minor edits to the subject line
and the first line of the text of each email so that these emails
are more individualized. (See webpage pointers below for further
instruction.)

As you may be aware, the U.S. Congress is currently formulating a
stimulus package to help spur the recovery of our economy. In
addition to the tax cuts in the draft packages being discussed,
the packages include a number of infrastructure investments that
would create millions of jobs.

APS has actively participated in this process by providing the
incoming Obama Administration, and the leadership in the House and
the Senate, with recommendations for investments in scientific
infrastructure that would create more than 100,000 direct and
indirect jobs. The investments we proposed are principally in
infrastructure in our national laboratories and universities, high
performance computing, in procurements of scientific instruments
and material for projects such as ITER, and in creation of jobs for
young investigators at our universities to ensure that they have a
place to go during these trying economic times. As a result of our
efforts, many of our recommendations were used by the House and
Senate in formulating their proposed stimulus packages.

On January 15th, the leadership of the House of Representatives
proposed a bill that would give a significant boost to science
infrastructure, including allocating $2 billion for the Department
of Energy Office of Science (OS), $2.5 billion for the National
Science Foundation (NSF), $500 million for the National Institute
of Standards and Technology (NIST) and $100 million for advanced
computing. On January 23rd, the Chairman of the Senate
Appropriations Committee released a summary of a proposed Senate
stimulus package. Unfortunately, the announcement did not offer
many details about how much funding science would receive in that
package. However, we are receiving troubling signs that science
may not receive the same levels of funding as in the House package
and would even, in some scenarios, be cut or even eliminated. We
are therefore urging the Senate to follow the House lead in helping
to ensure American competitiveness in the 21st century by making
critically needed infrastructure investments.

The attached letters would 1) thank House Speaker Pelosi for her
support of science and 2) request that the Senate follows the House
by including a robust amount of funding for scientific
infrastructure investments.

WEBPAGE POINTERS:
(1) While individualizing your letter is not essential, we ask that
you make minor edits to the subject line and the first line of
the text of each email.
(2) If you are a government employee, please do not use government
resources to send a communication.
(3) Your browser will take you to a page where you will enter your
name and address.
(4) After entering your address, click the .Edit/Send Email button..
A window with an individual email message to the four offices will
appear. Click .Send Emails. to transmit the communication.
(5) Electronic submission is preferred.