From Michelle Malkin at Townhall:
As I’ve been chronicling in my newspaper columns and CRTV.com investigative reports, many state crime labs and police departments are particularly ill-equipped and inadequately trained to interpret DNA evidence, especially “touch” or “trace” DNA — minute amounts of DNA of unknown origin often transferred through incidental contact — which has resulted in monstrous miscarriages of justice against innocent people.
The aura of infallibility conferred on crime lab analysts by “CSI”-style TV shows exacerbates the problem when juries place undue weight on indeterminate DNA evidence of little to no probative value. Just last week, North Carolina’s Mark Carver, who was convicted of murdering a college student based on dubious touch DNA that was likely the result of investigators’ contamination, won a new court date for a hearing that may set him free.
Costly errors and gross misconduct will continue as long as politicized prosecutors operate with a “win at all costs” agenda and stubbornly refuse to admit their failures. Dark history seems to repeating itself at the Oklahoma City Police Department, home of the late forensic faker Joyce Gilchrist. Known as “Black Magic,” Gilchrist conjured mountains of phony DNA evidence out of whole cloth in collaboration with an out-of-control district attorney over two ruinous decades.More.
This is another reason why so many people do not accept expert opinion in science readily. And it certainly would not be wise to do so while endemic corruption continues. But expect the characters in our Tales of the Tone Deaf anthology to keep muttering about how to Fix people who don’t “believe in science.”
See also: More Tales of the Tone Deaf: How to Weed Creationism Out of Schools
and
Tales of the Tone Deaf: Doubt of science authorities as social deviance