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The Washington Post has a story about flawed FBI science, and its effects on hundreds of cases prior to the year 2000.
The FBI has admitted that virtually all of their elite examiners have given tainted testimony overstating forensic hair matches.
The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.
Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory's microscopic hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed so far, according to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Innocence Project, which are assisting the government with the country's largest post-conviction review of questioned forensic evidence.
Hair match wasn't the ONLY evidence in these cases. But in many cases it may have been the only evidence that placed defendants at the scene. However, 32 of these cases were death penalty cases, and 14 of those defendants have been executed.
All of these cases are now going to be reviewed.
This is the second major use of junk science the FBI has been forced to admit. There was the whole Bullet Lead Analysis used for decades to claim that the lead in bullets used in a crime matched batches of bullets the defendant had access to.
Peter Neufeld, co-founder of the Innocence Project, commended the FBI and department for the collaboration but said, "The FBI's three-decade use of microscopic hair analysis to incriminate defendants was a complete disaster."
(Score: 5, Interesting) by anubi on Monday April 20 2015, @05:20AM
In one of my jobs, I was required to submit to a lie detector test.
Yes, I was nervous. Some suited tie-guy was going to determine my career with the company based on how conductive my skin was, and what his interpretation of it was.
Now, all of us who have gone to school know about the trick question. Just how does the grader want us to answer?
Anyway, I got so worked up over it the guy apparently could not get a reading.
I was later laid off from that company ( aerospace ) within a month or so.
I was right at 50 at that time. I never got a decent job since.
I can't help but think I failed that test, but they could not say so.
I think they were just trying to rid themselves of the older engineers so they could replace us with a younger model. Legally. I noted almost all of the older ones were either being given severance packages or having the division the worked for shut down and they did not "qualify" to transfer out.
I get the idea people involve a machine to give them plausible deniability for doing whatever they want to do. Machines enjoy a "hold harmless" stance people do not.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 20 2015, @06:00AM
From your description of the process, I presume that you have read some of the books published on the subject of lie detectors. You are right - it all boils down to the interviewers opinion. If he feels like you are being evasive, then you're a liar, no matter what the machine indicates. Likewise, if the interviewer trusts you, any results that machine might offer are irrelevant. Lie detector experts have stated, and published, as much, in multiple books.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by anubi on Monday April 20 2015, @07:52AM
I guess I do know a lot about the machines themselves, as one of my first childhood curiosities was the "Metrigraph Psychogalvanometer" featured on the TV Cop show "Highway Patrol" which I watched as a kid. Oh yes... I remember that thing. I thought the machine could read someone's mind. I made it a point to find out how it worked.
To my dismay, I found out it was just a whetstone bridge. Yeh, it had a vacuum tube in it, just like my RCA Vacuum Tube Voltmeter (VTVM). It was very sensitive to resistance changes, and all those knobs on the instrument were just to balance out the bridge and set the gain, and the meter lets the proctor see the immediate changes in skin resistance while he manually re-adjusted the baseline for his next question.
Later, in College, I saw the thing again, but this time it had a new skin. Scientologists had an array of 'em set up offering free "stress tests", and trying to invite us to a scientology center where we could pay for more "treatments" to get "cleared" of some - uh - boogeymen. I knew what that thing was just the way they were using it. It could not have been much more than four transistors in the thing.
By that time, I knew exactly what that thing was and knew good and well that it was just an instrument used to scare the bejeebies out of anyone that did not know what it was. I saw it mostly a tool of intimidation. Yes, it would measure skin resistance, but that had nothing to do with the truth - no that had everything to do with how scared you had that bloke you hooked it up to.
Then, at work, they wanted us to report to some little industrial building across town where somebody had set up a interview room in it, and there - again - was another re-incarnation of that same machine... except this time I was having the electrodes put onto me, and my future with that company hinged on whatever that suit-guy behind the controls thought of me.
Now, here's my problem: I have developed a high distrust of people wearing suits. They do not seem to think at all like I think, and by and large, many seem to be about the greediest self-centered assholes on this planet - always trying to game the system to their advantage at the expense of others. Some people fear the man wearing a bandit mask. Well the guy wearing the bandit mask may deprive me of a week's wages. The guy wearing the suit has the power to deprive me of my career!
As much as I tried to hold my fear of losing my employment over this, it made my readings unusable to him. I knew how to swing the needle, but it was pegged. I was in a cold sweat and there was nothing I could do about it. I could not have had much more than 500 ohms across me. Nothing I could do about it.
I know the business suit is a power symbol, and people will wear them to garner respect. I am also quite aware that many business executives consider a handshake with a suit-guy a helluva lot more important than , say, stability of a phaselock loop in a communications system.
Incidentally, I never did get the art of lying down very well - its one of the reasons I went into engineering - no lying was tolerated. I show my work and how I arrived at my conclusion. If I could lie worth a damm, I would have went into sales or politics.
It seemed to me like lying was part of "people skills", and how to get others to carry out my will by giving them incomplete information, then covering my own ass with legal paper.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 4, Touché) by jasassin on Monday April 20 2015, @06:21AM
So what exactly do you do here at Initech?
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Monday April 20 2015, @06:23AM
Selfish self reply.... Please don't burn down the building.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @07:29AM
But I want my stapler back!
(Score: 4, Funny) by q.kontinuum on Monday April 20 2015, @09:40AM
But... but... I GOT PEOPLE SKILLS! WHY THE FUCK DONT YOU UNDERSTAND! CUSTOMERS MUST NOT DEAL WITH ENGINEERS BECAUSE I HAVE FUCKING PEOPLE SKILLS!
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Tork on Monday April 20 2015, @07:05AM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 3, Interesting) by anubi on Monday April 20 2015, @08:19AM
I did not know there was such a thing. Thanks. I'll revisit this when I get some mod points...
This was a government contractor. Nor can I prove that it was the polygraph that did me in.
What I experienced was being told to do something out of my expertise, then isolating me via "compartmentalization" so I could not network with others. Then they took the only DOS machine I had, and just to make me mad, stored it in my boss's office on a high shelf where I would have to pass it every day to see it up there, unused.
They then gave me a windows box, 386SX, running doublespace, and expected me to produce CAD drawings in it using a CAD system I had never used before. It would barely run, and locked up all the time with "General Protection Fault". I remember being so frustrated wondering if the computer got the mouse click. Often it would delay several seconds before it would do anything, and if I jumped the gun and clicked again, all sorts of odd stuff would happen. It was driving me nuts.
I could not bring any diagnostics in to help me figure out why my machine was locking up so much. Nor could I load my DOS programs, I could not even defrag the disk with doublespace on it.
Then watched me fall further and further behind.
Then justified the termination on that.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @06:01PM
So, basically you ended up losing your job because they refused to train you on the equipment you were required to use. Horray for private contractors cutting corners to pocket higher profits!
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday April 21 2015, @06:21AM
Good word of warning for any other of you considering a gig with the military-industrial complex.
If you are not one of the highly paid suit-guys running the thing, you are highly expendable, needed only for one contract, and there are no protections as they hold the "security" trump card. You will know you are planned for dismissal if you see them placing you in "compartmentalized" projects. It is their way of keeping you ignorant so you won't learn enough to become valuable.
They are exempt from damn near every employment law.
Main trouble is that they are about the only game in town for the STEM graduate, as most of the other stuff is either offshored or taken by H1-B.
My advice to the young'uns is to learn skills other people, not industry, needs. Welding, construction, dentistry, auto repair, refrigeration ( that's what's keeping me going ), electrician, whatever.... and find a good trade union if you have to deal with business.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @08:29AM
According to the US Department of Labor [dol.gov], the Employee Polygraph Protection Act has the following exemptions:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @09:20AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @10:33AM
This pseudoscientific garbage shouldn't be used by anyone, and especially not by the government.
(Score: 2) by Leebert on Monday April 20 2015, @02:05PM
Hey, now, be nice. It worked on Aldrich Ames [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday April 21 2015, @08:25AM
When I followed your link, I just felt more and more like Frank Grimes [wikia.com]
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 4, Informative) by tathra on Monday April 20 2015, @05:51PM
polygraphs are total bullshit [apa.org] and even the people administering them know that. how they get people to tell the truth is, after the test, they lay a line like, "Well we've found out that you're lying, so why don't you go ahead and come clean and maybe we can get you some leniency" or something like that, tricking people into spilling their guts after the bullshit show. that's for legal matters, for less objective means, like employment, it would come down to whatever the conman - i mean, examiner - thinks.