Pseudo-science supports false beliefs that convict the innocent (economics and the poor), or the best justice system you can buy Introduction Pseudo-science is a belief, claim, or practice that is usually presented a scientific belief, practice or claim but in the real sense does not adhere to the scientific methods. According to Bell, Suzanne, Barry, and Robert, (2008); any practice or body of knowledge can be classified as pseudoscientific when it is presented using the norms of scientific research but fails to meet the norms.
In the policing department, in the event of criminal activity taking place, the forensic team plays the role of investigating the scene of the crime for the purpose of providing found evidence to the court of law during the mentioning of the case. In many cases, it is hard or practically impossible for any person to question forensic outcomes since it is hard to determine how the end results were obtained.
In many instances, many individuals who have been convicted as a result of forensic investigation outcomes, as well as some officers working in the forensic department, has doubted stating that the way the forensic investigations are carried out are pseudoscientist in nature. In reality, a majority of officers working in the investigation department cannot testify that the process is entirely one hundred percent because a lot of biasness has been detected in the past and current times.
Hence, it has been proof that the application of pseudoscience in the justice system only supports false beliefs that end up convicting the innocent. According to Real CSI (Crime Scene Investigation), the forensic science is applied in all situations and is treated like it is the king in the world of crime and criminology The most common strategy that forensic science experts uses is that fingerprints, bite mark and ballistics for the purpose of determining the real perpetrators of the crime.
The reason is that when a person is involved in an offence and touches any of the items around the scene of the offence, the person’s fingerprints are reflected on the item. Hence, the forensic team has a strategy of getting the fingerprints from all items found at the scene of crime regardless of the number of people that touched anything around the area.
The most unfortunate thing is that the entire fingerprint-collecting process appears to be scientific in nature as it has a process that it is used to obtain the fingerprints. However, the process has over the time proved that the process is not entirely scientific a thing that has made the process to appear pseudoscientific. The reason is that a lot of biases have been noted to be emanating from the fingerprint process. A lot of inconsistencies, contradictory, and claims that the forensic team cannot prove has been obtained.
One of the things that have made the forensic strategy of fingerprints to appear biased and hence pseudoscientific in nature is because the forensic investigating team cannot prove that in deed no person’s fingerprints are similar to that of someone else. According to the investigative team which the team states that it is scientific, every individual around the world has his/her unique fingerprints that can be easily identified hence easily revealing the identity of the person who committed the crime whenever a print analysis test is done.
Unfortunately, many cases have been reported where innocent people has been arrested by the law enforcers as having been involved in crime while as they have nothing or do n’t know anything about the offence. According to the forensic team, any person is usually arrested and involved with a crime after his/her fingerprints are reflected on the fingerprint test. In the case where an innocent person gets arrested and jailed for a crime that the person knows nothing about, it is a clear indication that either there are people with similar fingerprints.
It could also mean that the fingerprint testing process that the forensic team uses do not meet all the scientific norms required hence resulting to wrong outcomes a thing that leads to the conviction of the innocent and leaving the criminal roaming freely and engaging in other or similar forms of crime. On different instance, there are situations where some people can touch a particular item in the scene of the offence.
In such cases, the forensic science claims it is easy to distinguish the different people involved regardless of the number of people that touched a particular item that was used by the investigating team for the fingerprint analysis. The most unfortunate thing is that when the test is conducted, it shows partial fingerprints that cannot tell exactly whose fingerprints those. Since the print team is the only reliable way that forensic science believes can identify the person or people involved in the crime and the analysis has mixed fingerprints, the experts use their knowledge and skills to come up with a conclusion about the perpetrators.
According to Downs, and Anjali, (2012) many of such instances are where the forensic team fails to apply other scientific strategies or explicitly state that the fingerprint analysis is not efficient and uses shortcuts to make a biased fingerprint test result. As a consequence, an innocent person ends up being blamed for a crime he/she did not commit. It also becomes hard for the accused person to prove that he/ she was not involved, and maybe the fingerprint analysis was wrong.
The reason is that as earlier stated, in the world of crime and criminology, the forensic science is perceived as the king and whatever results obtained are taken and considered to be the gospel truth that has unmasked the perpetrators of a crime. Hence, the assumption made by the forensic science team where the team takes the person who has closely-related fingerprints regardless of the state that he/she comes from is then used to presume that indeed that particular person was responsible for committing the crime. For example, according to Real CSI, in 2004 a series of bomb blasts were realized that led o the death and injury of approximately 2,000 individuals in the subways Madrid. Upon the dust settling, the forensic team a found a series of partial fingerprints in a bag.
According to a forensic expert who got to learned about the issue, the forensic team could not clearly identify the person who is the owner of the partial fingerprints found on the bag. The FBI determinant analyzed the fingerprints, found a match and the results ended up showing the person that could have been responsible for the series of explosions (http://www. bs. org/wgbh/frontline/film/ real-csi/). According to the results obtained, an individual who was practicing law as an attorney in a different country was pointed out to be the culprit a thing that led to the conviction of an innocent person. The defendant stated that even he has never been in Spain but was hard to go against the forensic result where partial fingerprints ended up being the determinant factor which even the forensic team cannot authenticate.
According to another independent expert (Ken); the partial prints could not himself tell the exact person whose the fingerprints were matching. Later on, a different test was conducted only to show that an error had been made, and a Nigerian was pointed out again as having been the perpetrator a thing that even the experts publicly confirmed that they had made a mistake. According to Dr. ETR, who is a fingerprint expert in London, the lack of integrity and professionalism in a big way influences the forensic experts with fingerprint biases.
In the case where the examiners had realized prints and had come up with a match, the doctor could retest by changing the tests and asks the examiner to test again. To the doctor’s shock, the same examiner would come up with a different person as being the match of the analysis. From the doctor’s survey, fingerprint biases adversely affect the outcomes of the examining process a thing that misleads the entire justice process as innocent people are the one that is presented in court.
Although there are cases where fingerprints analysis has developed positive results, there are also many instances where errors and lack of application of professionalism and integrity have influenced biases. Unfortunately, the court has no way to prove that the forensic fingerprints results are not accurately and are used to determine the conviction. According to a national science academy, a lot of forensic science strategies that are used to unmask criminals have failed to undergo scrutiny.
According to the Academy, different forensic methods are filled with assumptions because the lack of scrutiny has denied the methods chances to prove that the methods are not scientifically correct and accurate hence no change to improve them to perfection. As a result, similar errors continue being repeated over and over again (Turvey, 2012). For example, in a different case where a child was murder and dumped near a river, a man who was a bar attendant was accused of having been the perpetrator.
According to the forensic team, a bite ark proved that the waiter (Brook) was the person who had bitten the child to death a thing that led to Brook’s life incarceration (http://www. pbs. org/wgbh/frontline/film/real-csi/). Only years later when Brook was in prison that a similar case happened, again and again, another innocent person who was the child’s stepfather was determined by Bite Marks test to be the perpetrator a thing that scientists and experts consider as invalid science. Such forensic methods are considered invalid due to lack of eye witnesses, valid objects that can be used or any other tangible evidence.
Unfortunately, intangible evidence like the conduct of a person or any awful smell that the expert would assume is a scent of a particular crime hence automatically concluded that the individual was involved and upon making their recommendations, the said person ends up being convicted. Conclusion Pseudo-science supports false beliefs that convict the innocent is an exact argument that has gradually been proved by numerous errors that have been realized in the presumed scientific methods that end up failing to apply the accurate scientific norms necessary.
The latter has been demonstrated by umerous errors and conviction of innocent people due to fingerprints biases as well as other forensic test methods like bites marks. Many are cases where the fingerprints have failed in producing the real perpetrator due to the similarity in different people’s fingerprints or partial fingerprints. The lack of accurate proof and the fact that forensic methods are highly trusted and believed to be accurate have contributed to people having false beliefs that only prosecutes the innocent and leaving crime perpetrators free and moving on with their criminal activities.
