, Columnist
Crime-Solving Isn't a Science (But It Could Be)
Why did Jeff Sessions pull the plug on an initiative to make criminal forensics more scientific?
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The latest victim of Trump administration cuts -- the National Commission on Forensic Science -- could have more accurately been called “The Commission to Help Forensics Become a Real Science.” That would better reflect the magnitude of the job handed to this 30-member panel of experts, tasked with evaluating widely used but scientifically untested crime-solving techniques.
Other areas of science have had their problems with irreproducible results, misleading claims and errors. But when criminal courts present flawed forensic “science,” innocent people can be imprisoned -- or, in the U.S., even sentenced to death by their own government.