FAKE SCIENCE: How a Dubious Forensic Science Spread Like a Virus. “From his basement in upstate New York, Herbert MacDonell launched modern bloodstain-pattern analysis, persuading judge after judge of its reliability. Then he trained hundreds of others.”
Its path — the steady case-by-case, decision-by-decision acceptance of a new forensic science by the justice system — is one that’s rarely, if ever, been retraced. But it reveals the startling vulnerability of judges, and juries, to forensics techniques, both before, and after, they’ve been debunked.
Although the reliability of blood-spatter analysis was never proven or quantified, its steady admission by courts rarely wavered, even as the technique, along with other forensic sciences, began facing increasing scrutiny.
In 2009, a watershed report commissioned by the National Academy of Sciences cast doubt on the whole discipline, finding that “the uncertainties associated with bloodstain pattern analysis are enormous,” and that experts’ opinions were generally “more subjective than scientific.”
Still, judges continued allowing spatter experts to testify.
Subsequent research, funded by the Department of Justice, raised questions about experts’ methods and conclusions. But little changed.
All along, attorneys like Bankston continued challenging the admission of bloodstain-pattern analysts. But they came to learn that a forensic discipline, once unleashed in the system, cannot easily be recalled.
What a mess.
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