Science & Law Blog
Features news, issues and research at the intersection of law and science.
Author: Law Professors David L. Faigman, of the University of California, Hastings, David H. Kaye, of Arizona State University College of Law, Michael J. Saks, also of Arizona State University College of Law, Joseph Sanders, of the University of Houston Law Center, and Edward K. Cheng, an assistant professor at Brooklyn Law School edit the Science & Law Blog, which is part of the Law Professor Blogs Network.
Blawg Related Categories: Arizona State University • Brooklyn Law School • University of California, Hastings College of the Law • University of Houston Law Center • Law Professor
Recent Posts from Science & Law Blog
-
Osborne and the Right to Post-conviction DNA Testing
The Supreme Court will consider whether an individual convicted of a crime has a constitutional right to obtain a DNA sample that might exonerate him. The case that raises this issue has produced four appellate…
-
Genetics Datasets Closed Due to Forensic DNA Discovery
Until last Friday, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other groups had posted large amounts of aggregate human DNA data for easy access to researchers around the world. On Aug. 25, however, NIH removed…
-
Hot Tubbing: Old Wine in New Bottles for Expert Witnesses
The New York Times has discovered that expert witnesses retained by parties often are partisan. This certainly is fit to print, but is it news? Not to anyone who has been reading law reviews and…
-
The Birthday Problem in Las Vegas
The other week, an editorial in the Las Vegas Review-Journal misconstrued the now infamous 2001 findings of partial matches in the Arizona DNA database. The study was discussed on our blog on July 20, and…
-
Fingerprints' Chemical "Footprints"?
Today's New York Times reports a story that appears in this week's Science. According to the Times, "With a new analytical technique, a fingerprint can now reveal much more than the identity of a person.…
-
DNA Database Woes and the Birthday Problem
The Los Angeles Times has reported that "A discovery leads to questions about whether the odds of people sharing genetic profiles are sometimes higher than portrayed. Calling the finding meaningless, the FBI has sought to…
-
The Psychology of Fuel Efficiency
A recent discussion started by John Lynch on the Society for Judgment and Decisionmaking listserv focuses on an interesting new article by Larrick and Soll in Science, entitled the "MPG Illusion." The paper reemphasizes the…
-
The persuasive power of neuroscience
The March issue of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience contains an article stimulated by the frequent appearance of news stories announcing the latest brain signature -- for love, aggression, greed, lying, etc. A group of…
-
Rounding Up the Usual Suspects III: People v. Nelson
On April 5, 2008, I mentioned People v. Nelson, 48 Cal.Rptr.3d 399 (Ct. App. 3 Dist. 2006), rev. granted, 147 P.3d 1011 (Cal. 2006), as a leading case on the admissibility of the various probabilities…
-
The Transposition Fallacy in the Los Angeles Times
In an earlier posting, I noted a story in the Los Angeles Times about the perceived need to adjust the probability for a random match when an individual emerges as a suspect because of a…