LastWeekTonight
6 HN mentions · mentioned in 5 months, 2017–2024
18:51 · 11M views · Oct 2, 2017
A John Oliver Last Week Tonight segment on how forensic science used in criminal trials is often unscientific. It looks at unreliable methods and lab malpractice, and ends with a joke about a TV procedural that might change public perception.
Cited as a light-hearted but informative overview whenever threads touch on junk science and unreliable forensic evidence in courts.
6 comments from Hacker News
> Prisoners are deprived of rights... by due process... Nice sound bite; but not really true. It's certainly true a process is followed but that process is pretty shitty. Plenty of people get released after the murder weapon is actually tried for fingerprints and low-and-behold it was somebody else! How does a person go through trial with even the murder weapon being tested? It's not required by the process. Plenty of people have been convicted because "their bite marks match". Is there actually some peer-reviewed standard of bite marks where if I gave you somebody's bite and a bite mark you could match them together at 90% accuracy? No. How are non-reproducible methods used to incarcerate people? The process doesn't require accuracy. For more, John Oliver: Forensic Analysis [1] [1]: this video
And fingerprints, DNA, and eyewitness testimony has all lead to people being wrongly convicted. EDIT: Pasted wrong link first time - sorry [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] For a light hearted break down of such failures see this this video To answer your question, I would feel better with multiple forms of evidence as a collective instead of a single piece. EDIT: Also I'm not saying that this guy isn't cheating. I'm saying it is possible that 1000 coin flips could come up heads in a row and doing so isn't proof of cheating. Unlikely, but possible.
> Maybe ultimately no one will believe video any more? People believe whatever they want to believe; forensic hair analysis (not DNA) is also quite a controversial practice, it's still accepted as evidence by many courts in the US. Last Week Tonight had a bit about that issue in a recent episode [0] It's sad and mindblowing that people have been sentenced to prison/death because a so-called "expert witness" confused a dogs hair with being their hair. [0] this video
Not sure if this is what you meant, but Norm's conclusion, > how in good conscience could he act on basically "taking the word of some guy in a white lab coat." is actually quite correct. There is science behind DNA evidence, but there is also frequent malpractice of lab technicians, which ends up muddling results, with life ruining consequences. John Oliver has talked about it: this video
Related video of Last Week Tonight on different kinds of junk science: this video There does seem to be some issues with how the court system has failed to keep up with the modern day. Issues with scalability, accessibility and science literacy are leading to a general distrust of the system.