GIGO

Science in the Courtroom

The place of science in the courtroom has taken rather a beating in recent months, both here and overseas. A number of high-profile cases have had teams of opposing expert witnesses, oodles of the latest scientific tests and mountains of detailed evidence, yet have not been able to answer adequately the basic question of guilt versus innocence.

It's proved frustrating for all involved, including the masses watching on the sidelines. We have come to expect -- however incorrectly -- that courtroom science will provide us with definitive answers. The footprint comparisons, the blood tests, the DNA profiling: all have been developed in the hope of increasing certainty.

Science and its tools of objective fact, cause and proof, provides us with our best chance of identifying truth, but only if that science is permitted to operate independently. Once it is caught up in the highly charged arena of vested interests that operate in any courtroom, criminal or civil, then it becomes much harder to ensure that independence and objectivity is retained. Certainty becomes so much more unattainable.

But even when those answers are unequivocal, the final responsibility lies with those who are left to interpret them, ultimately the judge or jury. And it's hardly surprising that they are often suspicious of scientific evidence, even to the point of ignoring it altogether. One can only hope that this has not -- and will not -- cause too many miscarriages of justice.

In 1943, a jury declared that Charlie Chaplin was the father of newborn Carol Ann, and required him to pay child support. This despite the evidence that his blood type made it physically impossible for him to have fathered the baby -- a fact that three physicians testified to at the trial.

As Peter Huber wrote, in his excellent book Galileo's Revenge: Junk Science in the Courtroom:

When Charlie Chaplin was appointed to serve as Carol Ann's father, blood-test evidence nothwithstanding, the truth was undermined, but a young woman and her infant child undoubtedly won some help from a man who could easily afford to give it -- and whose behavior, in any event, had been less than gentlemanly. Verdicts of this kind may perhaps help keep a few flies better zipped in Hollywood. By some measures, this is fine justice. By all measure it is appalling science.

Vicki Hyde is the editor of New Zealand Science Monthly.