And here's a good description about how it's quite common for a "fire expert" (which may simply be a normal firefighter) to misclassify an accidental fire as arson, implicating innocent survivors as murderers:
There was another one in TX where a father was jailed for arson/murder? thinking he intentionally set the fire which killed his sons, I think, eventually new science cast doubts on the conviction. In the second revisit of the case it seemed the children had been playing with incendiary devices and accidentally set fire to a shed they were playing in.
Most of the evidence against the father was circumstantial and inferential (divorce? time he arrived home, etc.)
He's not the most sympathetic guy, given his peccadilloes, but the case was mostly circumstantial with some junk science thrown in for good measure.
However, the overturning of his conviction was due to the injustice carried out on mr Willingham and the exposition of the junk science behind it. The overturning of mr Graf's conviction was the first one based on what was learned from the Willingham case.
I also have been thinking of other examples. Imagine someone sued a vaccine manufacturer claiming that the vaccine cause autism. Imagine also that years later it turns out that vaccines can "cause" autism, but only in case of things like leaky gut. Was the court and legal system designed for cases like this?
The fact that vaccines have their own court specifically specified by law suggests that the legal system is not designed for that type of case, and special provisions needed to be added to handle the more common instances.
The legal didn't adapt in this case. The legislative system applied a patchwork fix. Further, the fix is narrowly narrowly tailored to vaccines, meaning that the legal system is still not equiped to deal with the same kind of issue if it does not involve vaccines.
"Experts", as in the vast majority of all scientists and physicians with relevant credentials amongst whom there's a near unanimous consensus on their efficacy and safety.
Of course, I bet that astrologers are in near-unanimity about the efficacy of horoscopes!
Not that I think vaccines are either ineffective or unsafe — just that 'these conclusions are accepted by people who accept these premises' is hardly persuasive to those who don't accept those premises.
Scientists/physicians have done the necessary research studies to demonstrate both efficacy and safety. They are, in fact, legally required to do both before their products can even be administered to patients. Studies have been done involving tens of millions of patients, entire diseases have been wiped off the earth, etc.
Meanwhile, astrologers are in possession of plenty of empirical data that it's a bunch of hooey with no evidence supporting its efficacy. (It is, of course, generally regarded as safe.)
Yeah, I got that you meant to be saying that. But you gave a specific instance, and in that specific instance, the problem didn't exist.
So: Could you give, say, ten more instances, and see in how many of them the problem exists? That way, we can all get some idea of how general the problem is.
But if you merely claim that "the problem is likely more general", with nothing behind that but your belief that your statement is probably true, well, don't expect to persuade many people that way...
I don't know if there is a good solution to the problem. Some questions need to be answered "soon," while it's always possible that we'll eventually understand a problem well enough that we'll laugh at our earlier understanding.
I wish more people knew about the case you're reference. Here's an excellent article:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/07/trial-by-fire
And here's a good description about how it's quite common for a "fire expert" (which may simply be a normal firefighter) to misclassify an accidental fire as arson, implicating innocent survivors as murderers:
https://californiainnocenceproject.org/issues-we-face/fire-i...