• ryven@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 days ago

    They said he had a gun, but a) I’m not convinced of the accuracy of techniques like striation matching which are used to determine whether a bullet was fired by a specific gun, and b) it could have been planted by the police, even if it was the murder weapon (they might have found it in NYC, lied about not finding it, and then planted it on their preferred suspect to construct an evidentiary link where none existed).

    • Wrench@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      The whole gun planting take seems like conspiratory nonsense to me. And I’ll trust the forensic science on the striations.

      • Machinist@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        I don’t have a source, but I’ve been hearing for a while now that there is a lot of pseudo science in matching barrels to bullets.

        Polygraphs ended up being pretty much complete bullshit and roadside drug tests are real bad about false positives.

        IDK, it’s basically a tool mark. I’ve looked at those under microscopes. They vary a whole lot when things are running well. I would think you could only really match something if there was a distinctive abnormal feature.

      • underisk@lemmy.ml
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        3 days ago

        the famously rigorous and well tested field of forensic “science”.

        • Wrench@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          Rofl. OK. So forensics is fake science now, too? Because it could implicate someone you’d rather see go free?

          How is this kind of mental gymnastics any different than the covid deniers.

          • underisk@lemmy.ml
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            3 days ago

            tacking the word “science” on to something doesn’t make it scientific. much of it is based off of wild assumptions and “common sense” that was never actually studied or confirmed through testing. its about as scientific as alchemy.

          • Baylahoo@lemmy.world
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            3 days ago

            It’s famously subjective. My highschool taught it and showed how you could push any narrative as long as the evidence was gray. It’s almost always gray in these situations.

          • Chip_Rat@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            I am all for science but yeah, forensics shouldn’t be considered a science. It has some scientific elements. And a lot of bullshit.

          • Pup Biru@aussie.zone
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            3 days ago

            a lot of forensics is legitimately junk science that’s been disproven by much better science

      • Infynis@midwest.social
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        3 days ago

        It does seem weird to me that he would still have all the evidence on him in Middle-of-Nowhere PA, a couple days later, but I mostly just talk about that as a way to point out this is all still allegations

        • Wrench@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          Eh. He could have intended to use it again, or didn’t find an opportune time to ditch/destroy it. Or maybe he’s not the master People’s assassin that everyone wants him to be.