SOCIETY “NEEDS to be defended” against the unquestioning acceptance of science in courts, a British legal expert has told a conference at NUI Galway (NUIG).
Such is the standing that “scientific evidence” holds with juries that “anything purporting to be science” is often accepted as truth over fully plausible alibis, according to Dr Michael Naughton of Bristol University.
Dr Naughton, founder and chair of the Innocence Network in Britain, was speaking at an NUIG conference at the weekend on human rights and forensic science.
Dr Naughton said both partial and “mixed” DNA were accepted even where alibi evidence clearly conflicted. Forensic science tended to be regarded as being very “black and white”, but could be unreliable, he said.
US lawyer Colleen Rohan said the gap between “scientific reality” and what was presented as science in court was “getting a bit big”. “Experts” were often deemed to be so because they had worked in the field for many years, without questioning their suitability to attest.