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Dr. John Plunkett died this week. He spent nearly 20 years arguing in court against bad forensic science, for which he was maliciously prosecuted and received false ethics complaints. Through his efforts, 300 innocent people were exonerated. (This sentence from fark.com)
Like a lot of other doctors, child welfare advocates and forensic specialists, John Plunkett at first bought into the theory of Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS). It's a convenient diagnosis for prosecutors, in that it provides a cause of death (violent shaking), a culprit (whoever was last with the child before death) and even intent (prosecutors often argue that the violent, extended shaking establishes mens rea.) But in the late 1990s, Plunkett — a forensic pathologist in Minnesota — began to have doubts about the diagnosis. The same year his study was published, Plunkett testified in the trial of Lisa Stickney, a licensed day care worker in Oregon. Thanks in large part to Plunkett's testimony, Stickney was acquitted. District Attorney Michael Dugan responded with something unprecedented — it criminally charged an expert witness over testimony he had given in court. Today, the scientific consensus on SBS has since shifted significantly in Plunkett's direction.
[...] According to the National Registry of Exonerations, 16 SBS convictions have been overturned. Plunkett's obituary puts the figure at 300, and claims that he participated in 50 of those cases. I'm not sure of the source for that figure, and it's the first I've seen of it. But whatever the number, Plunkett deserves credit for being among the first to sound the alarm about wrongful SBS convictions. His study was the first step toward those exonerations.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Captival on Wednesday April 11 2018, @11:22PM (3 children)
So he got a bunch of baby murderers off the hook. Wonderful work, when's the statue go up?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 11 2018, @11:28PM
Shaken to death by a baby! What a way to go! Got to feel sorry for him.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday April 11 2018, @11:37PM (1 child)
Ho-hum. If a baby dies, someone must go to prison, right?
Which part of "pseudoscience" did you fail to comprehend? Never submit to a lie detector. Never submit to a roadside sobriety test. Never permit a bite mark "expert" testify at trial. Pseudoscience will convict you when science cannot.
Tomorrow's lesson on pseudoscience will go slightly off course, and explore the concept of exorcism, and why you don't want superstitious fools determining who lives in your body.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Thursday April 12 2018, @05:00PM
That term is in desperate need of some scare quotes!
Forensic "science."
DNA testing is pretty much the only one supported by actual science and even that has some caveats.
Some additional reading:
The troubling flaws in forensic science [bbc.com]
Forensic Tools: What’s Reliable and What’s Not-So-Scientific [pbs.org]
Forensic evidence largely not supported by sound science – now what? [phys.org]