Accuracy optional in forensic science?

The Washington state legislature says scientific readings taken by faulty equipment can be used to convict on DWI charges.

With that type of convict-at-any-cost mindset among the tough-enforcement crowd, it's no wonder we see the problems that surfaced with Texas crime labs, or that there's a national crisis in the reliability of forensic science.

Forensic science isn't "objective" science, it's goal oriented. Police scientists tend to find the answers prosecutors want because, as a Dallas scientist testified to the Senate Criminal Justice Committee in Houston, it's prosecutors who tell the scientists what avenues of inquiry are "probative" -- in other words, prosecutors tell the scientists what questions to ask, not defense attorneys. If defense counsel want to ask their own scientific questions - for example, to perform tests that might exclude the defendant as a suspect - the defendant must pay for outside lab testing, or convince a reluctant judge to release the funds.

Forensic science is contextual, not neutral, and outside the classroom it's always employed with a purpose. In court, innocent people get roped in by bad science largely because the purpose of the science is to convict, not to exonerate. In Washington state, now they've made that behind-the-scenes truism official.

Hat tip to the DUI blog for a great post on this, by the way, which earns Mr. Taylor a place in the "Often checked" column, since he is.