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A comment on Accused murderer wins right to check source code of DNA testing kit. Parent comment

Re:Accused murderer wins right to check source code of DNA t... by yarcob on Monday February 08, 2021 @09:54AM (#26065258)
From the Wikipedia page

> In June 2005, the Chief Coroner of Ontario ordered a review of 44 autopsies carried out by Smith. Thirteen of these cases had resulted in criminal charges and convictions. The report was released in April 2007, indicating that there were substantial problems with 20 of the autopsies.

That sounds more like 45% to me.

Also this bit from the article about a baby that allegedly had a skull fracture:

> Later exhumation of the child and examination of the skull have shown that there was no skull fracture. It is thought Dr. Smith confused the normal gap between the baby's skull plates for an injury.

Holy shit that is bad. Even as a lay person I know about these gaps.

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Re:Accused murderer wins right to check source code of DNA t... by dathinab on Monday February 08, 2021 @10:13AM (#26065552)
> there are gaps between skull plates.

Between Baby skull plates, not adult ones ;-)

They grow together at some point.

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Re:Accused murderer wins right to check source code of DNA t... by yarcob on Monday February 08, 2021 @10:24AM (#26065729)
I edited my post to make it clear I don't think skulls have gaps in general.
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Re:Accused murderer wins right to check source code of DNA t... by AnIdiotOnTheNet on Monday February 08, 2021 @10:25AM (#26065736)
> Holy shit that is bad. Even as a lay person I know that there are gaps between skull plates.

Sure, but can you tell them apart from a fracture caused by injury? Presumably someone knowledgeable in medicine should be able to, but maybe it is one of those things that isn't as obvious as we, the uneducated outsider, might think.

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Re:Accused murderer wins right to check source code of DNA t... by R0b0t1 on Monday February 08, 2021 @11:15AM (#26066430)
That's an extremely flawed argument. If you can't explain it to a layman then you don't understand it. If you can't tell whether it's a gap or a fracture -- you can't get a conviction.

"It just looks like it" is not a valid reason.

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Re:Accused murderer wins right to check source code of DNA t... by AnIdiotOnTheNet on Monday February 08, 2021 @12:36PM (#26067547)
It is possible that they could have well supported their assessment with evidence and still been wrong.
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Re:Accused murderer wins right to check source code of DNA t... by AS37 on Monday February 08, 2021 @11:33AM (#26066682)
Interestingly there's an area of psychology called Naturalistic Decision Making which studies how experts make decisions that they can't explain. (Example: a firefighter may be able to pinpoint where a fire is before they enter a house and see it.)
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Re:Accused murderer wins right to check source code of DNA t... by R0b0t1 on Thursday February 11, 2021 @05:19PM (#26108176)
I know, but that is reason for suspicion, not evidence for a conviction.
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