大量的偽科學在法庭上被當作證據

大量的偽科學在法庭上被當作證據

The scientific evidence used to sway the opinions of jury members and judges in US courtrooms may not be all that reliable, according to the findings of a new study in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest.

發(fā)表在《公共利益心理學》期刊上的一項新研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，用來影響美國法庭陪審團成員和法官意見的科學證據可能并不那么可靠。

Analysis found that some 60 percent of all psychological assessments that are admitted as evidence appear to be based on junk science, although only about 5 percent of these dodgy testimonies are ever challenged by lawyers.

分析發(fā)現(xiàn)，在所有被承認為證據的心理評估中，約有60%似乎是基于垃圾科學，盡管這些可疑的證詞中只有約5%曾受到律師的質疑。

The study authors began by pooling data from 22 separate surveys of forensic mental health practitioners, who were found to use a total of 364 different psychological assessment tools when acting as experts in legal cases. These tools serve a variety of purposes, such as determining a defendant’s competence to stand trial or indicating whether or not a parent is deserving of child custody.

這項研究的作者們首先匯集了22個獨立調查的法醫(yī)學心理健康從業(yè)者的數據，這些人在擔任法律案件的專家時，總共使用了364種不同的心理評估工具。這些工具有各種各樣的用途，例如確定被告受審的能力，或表明父母是否應享有兒童監(jiān)護權。

Ben Taub

A team of coders were then employed to scan the scientific literature for references to each of these 364 assessment tools, and to determine whether they were generally accepted as reliable by the scientific community.

然后，一組編碼人員被雇傭來掃描這364種評估工具的科學文獻，以確定它們是否被科學界普遍認為是可靠的。

Results indicated that only 67 percent of the psychological tests used by forensic experts in court cases are generally accepted by scientists as valid. However, only 40 percent of these assessment tools were given favorable reviews in the Mental Measurements Yearbook, which is seen as an authority on the effectiveness of psychological testing.

結果表明，只有67%的法醫(yī)學專家在法庭上使用的心理測試被科學家普遍接受為有效的。然而，只有40%的評估工具在《心理測量年鑒》中得到好評，該年鑒被視為心理測試有效性方面的權威。

The researchers then narrowed their focus onto 30 of these 364 assessment tools, which were used in a total of 372 court cases in the US between 2016 and 2018. Despite only 40 percent of these tests being seen as solid by the scientific community, their admissibility was challenged by lawyers just 19 times.

然后，研究人員將他們的研究范圍縮小到這364種評估工具中的30種，這些工具在2016年至2018年期間被用于美國總共372起法庭案件。盡管科學界認為這些測試中只有40%是可靠的，但它們的可采性僅受到律師19次質疑。

This means that suspect scientific evidence went unchallenged in 94.9 percent of cases. What’s more, only 6 of these 19 challenges were successful.

這意味著，在94.9%的案例中，可疑的科學證據沒有受到質疑。更重要的是，這19個挑戰(zhàn)中只有6個成功了。

The team notes limitations with the study, primarily in regards to scope. "We did not conduct a comprehensive survey of the case law regarding the admissibility of psychological tools; rather, we conducted a limited but organized investigation into a sample of legal cases citing a sample of psychological tools. Our methods provide us a rough nonparametric sense of the population of cases."

研究小組注意到這項研究的局限性，主要是在范圍上。“我們沒有對心理工具可接受性的判例法進行全面調查;相反，我們對一些法律案例進行了有限但有組織的調查，并引用了一些心理學工具的樣本。我們的方法為我們提供了一個粗略的非參數總體情況。”

In their write-up, the study authors explain that lawyers can’t be blamed for letting so much junk science enter their testimonies, since they are not trained psychologists and are therefore unable to identify the weakness of an assessment tool unless they happen to be alerted to it by an expert.

在他們的文章中，該研究的作者解釋說，不能因為讓這么多垃圾科學進入他們的證詞而責怪律師，因為他們不是訓練有素的心理學家，因此無法識別評估工具的弱點，除非他們碰巧被專家提醒。

Furthermore, since precedent holds so much sway in legal proceedings, and so many of these questionable tools have been seen as admissible for so long, there is now a precedent for allowing bad science to stand as evidence in US courtrooms.

此外，由于先例在法律程序中具有如此大的影響力，而且這么多有問題的工具長期以來一直被認為是可以接受的，現(xiàn)在又有了一個允許糟糕的科學作為證據出現(xiàn)在美國法庭的先例。