Junk science: It’s not just for Ted talks, NPR features, and airport bestsellers. It can also ruin people’s lives.

Russ Lyons points us to this disturbing article by Brett Murphy, “They Called 911 for Help. Police and Prosecutors Used a New Junk Science to Decide They Were Liars.” Here’s how the story goes:

Tracy Harpster, a deputy police chief from suburban Dayton, Ohio, was hunting for praise. He had a business to promote: a miracle method to determine when 911 callers are actually guilty of the crimes they are reporting. “I know what a guilty father, mother or boyfriend sounds like,” he once said.

Harpster tells police and prosecutors around the country that they can do the same. Such linguistic detection is possible, he claims, if you know how to analyze callers’ speech patterns . . .

Oh, and one more thing, maybe sounds familiar to those of you who have been following the social priming literature etc.:

So far, researchers who have tried to corroborate Harpster’s claims have failed.

Just as non-replication has not stopped the Tedlords and Edgelords and Nudgelords from promoting their ideas to eager businesses and governments, so has this criminological pseudoscience had its success:

Prosecutors know it’s junk science too. But that hasn’t stopped some from promoting his methods and even deploying 911 call analysis in court to win convictions.

A photo posted on Facebook by the Moraine, Ohio, police department when announcing the retirement of Deputy Chief Tracy Harpster. Credit: Moraine Police Department via Facebook
In 2016, Missouri prosecutor Leah Askey wrote Harpster an effusive email, bluntly detailing how she skirted legal rules to exploit his methods against unwitting defendants.

“Of course this line of research is not ‘recognized’ as a science in our state,” Askey wrote, explaining that she had sidestepped hearings that would have been required to assess the method’s legitimacy. She said she disguised 911 call analysis in court by “getting creative … without calling it ‘science.’”

What Askey didn’t say in her endorsement was this: She had once tried using Harpster’s methods against Russ Faria, a man wrongfully convicted of killing his wife. At trial, Askey played a recording of Faria’s frantic 911 call for the jury and put a dispatch supervisor on the stand to testify that it sounded staged. Lawyers objected but the judge let the testimony in. Faria was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

After he successfully appealed, Askey prosecuted him again — and again called the supervisor to testify about all the reasons she thought Faria was guilty based on his word choice and demeanor during the 911 call. It was Harpster’s “analytical class,” the supervisor said, that taught her “to evaluate a call to see what the outcome would be.”

This judge wouldn’t allow her to continue and cut the testimony short. Faria was acquitted. He’d spent three and a half years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. . . .

Murphy continues:

Junk science in the justice system is nothing new. But unvarnished correspondence about how prosecutors wield it is hard to come by. It can be next to impossible to see how law enforcement — in league with paid, self-styled “experts” — spreads new, often unproven methods. . . .

Harpster makes some astonishing claims in his promotional flyers. He says he has personally consulted in more than 1,500 homicide investigations nationwide. He promises that his training will let 911 operators know if they are talking to a murderer, give detectives a new way to identify suspects, and arm prosecutors with evidence they can exploit at trial. . . .

I followed the paper trail Harpster left as he traveled the country, working law enforcement’s back channels. A story unfolded about a credulous, at times reckless, justice system functioning as an open market for junk science. Those responsible for ensuring honest police work and fair trials — from training boards to the judiciary — have instead helped 911 call analysis metastasize. It became clear that almost no one had bothered to ask even basic questions about the program. . . .

In reality, people have been wrongfully accused and convicted of murder after someone misinterpreted their call for help, while those who used 911 call analysis against them face little or no consequences. . . .

There’s also an episode where he gets training at the FBI. Which reminds me of this amazing graph that was apparently part of an FBI training, several years ago:

15 thoughts on “Junk science: It’s not just for Ted talks, NPR features, and airport bestsellers. It can also ruin people’s lives.

  1. I see claims that most forensic science has similar issues (starting with bite-marks and rifling scratches on bullets, down to “we don’t actually know how unique the markers that we use to compare fingerprints are”).

      • Quote from above: “I guess one problem here is that so many of the incentives go in the wrong direction.”

        I guess one possible solution to this is talk about the incentives all the time. Maybe it’s not even that important to attempt to explain how and why and what exactly all these incentives are and entail.

        Then you could mention how people all react to incentives, like all the time, and they have no real choice or there is no real difference between people concerning incentives and behaviour and the choices they make. People perhaps have no spine, or no personality really. Their behaviour is all because of systems and incentives.

        This talk about the incentives also contributes to basically attempting to train people to actually take your carrot on a stick seriously, and to actually look at your carrot on a stick, and keep looking at it. After all, it’s the incentives man! We gotta keep talking about the incentives, not really how and what and why. Just the incentives!

        Then you could come up with entire new set of incentives, and maybe attempt to gain even more power and influence by setting up Collaboration of Science or some center like that. This lets you make a lot of the crucial decisions, and lets you reap most of the rewards of this all, and gets you lots of money from people and institutions who have the best intentions, no doubt.

        You don’t really need to think about the incentives anymore after this, you especially also don’t really think about whether everything you are doing might actually be good or bad for science. This is because you only focused on the words the incentives, and especially how to somehow allign them with other stuff.

        I think all this talk and stuff concerning the incentives and Collaborations of Science centers and clusters and societies is largely why I left social science…

        • Quote from above: “Then you could come up with entire new set of incentives, and maybe attempt to gain even more power and influence by setting up Collaboration of Science or some center like that. ”

          Just to be clear, I like collaboration, or at least some forms of it. Or maybe I like cooperation. Is there a difference between collaboration and cooperation?

          Anyway, I am currently collaborating on a project as well. My front garden was all grown over with weeds and who knows what. I convinced my community that it is in everyone’s best interest to make sure my garden is nice and clean. For the community of course!

          Everyone comes around to take out the weeds in my garden. It’s truly a collaborative effort, and beautiful! I sit there on the porch, with a cold beer, and tell them which plants to take out. They get a water break every 3 hours, don’t you worry!

          I plan to oversee the re-arrangement of their own gardens as well. They are not really grown over with weeds like mine was, but I have certain plans for them. It’s all good for the community, and society at large!

        • Quote from above: “Anyway, I am currently collaborating on a project as well.”

          Sure, I’ve heard some criticism about my project. That my trees might grow too large and shade out other surrounding gardens so that nothing grows there anymore, and that people don’t look into and enjoy other gardens anymore, and that people don’t attempt to sow any seeds anymore in their own gardens.

          To that I just say that we just have to see how this all works out. I let everyone chose between the 3 options I give them concerning which plants to take out by the way, so they are basically deciding as a group and I don’t really have too much say in things. Anyway, we’ll just see how this all works out over time. That’s science after all, right?

          Also, look at that: a squirrel!

          Did you know that my project introduces squirrels and butterflies and flowers in my front garden! If you oppose my project, you are basically also opposing the introduction of butterflies and squirrels and flowers. So, I suggest you be careful of even thinking about criticizing my project, unless you want to be seen as someone who doesn’t like butterflies and squirrels and flowers!!

    • Radley Balko’s book “The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist” covers the history of the bite mark analysis and its complete garbage underlying science.

  2. I would LOVE to absolutely skewer this stuff in court. The problem is it’s not like there’s one or a few lawyers who just do this kind of thing all around the country. And it’s not like they would try this on a well funded defense… So it’s just preying on poor people basically. Horrible. Maybe there’s some way to get convictions overturned when they hinged on this stuff?

    • Trouble is it is costly to run a trial. Most defendants cannot afford them and it puts their council in a disadvantaged position when negotiating with the crown. It leads to railroading with heavy handed plea deals that are unjust but ultimately agreed to due to lack of funds. It doesn’t help that there is an army of defense council known as “dump trucks” whose sole focus is to negotiate more pleas in a day.

      My point is if this kind of thing is likely to be used, and not seriously questioned, it’s in these (sadly very common) circumstances. It makes it all that much harder to do anything about since the defendant agreed to the deal.

    • The skeptics in Martin Gardner’s tradition were very annoyed that federal agencies in the USA keep using the polygraph even though there was never good evidence that it worked and pretty much everyone else had given it up.

  3. I have often thought about all the social scientists who in the past decades have made claims, recommendations, conclusions, etc. based on what might very well be extremely inconclusive, sub-optimal, or even nonsensical science (if that’s even the correct word to use in this context).

    The may have showered the world with nonsense, falsehoods, etc., or even worse things.
    They may have caused more harm than good.

    It’s quite shocking to me to think about such things.

    It’s partly why I left social science.

    • Quote form above: “It’s partly why I left social science.”

      Another reason why I left social science is the idea that it might be very easy to manipulate matters concerning social science research.

      If fraudulent social scientists like Diederik Stapel can clumsily mess around with data sets and get away with it for decades, I wonder what some more sophisticated methods might lead to.

      Given all the computer-power and such things available at this point in time, and combining that with the possible role and power of science (of perhaps a different word should be used here) in decision making, and combining that with the seemingly increasing bureaucracy and institutional powers, I even wonder whether certain social science can be trusted anymore.

      Maybe there is a C.I.A. of Science.
      Or Conspirators of Science.
      Or Corrupters of Science.

      Who knows anymore…

      It’s partly why I left social science…

      • Quote from above:

        “Maybe there is a C.I.A. of Science.
        Or Conspirators of Science.
        Or Corrupters of Science.”

        Upon further thought, I believe you have DARPA and probably lots of other institutions and nudge-units and who knows what centers and clusters and societies.

        I wonder what kinds of people work in places like that.

        Do you have to be a bit of a psychologically unbalanced and/or immature person, scientism-person, narcissist, psychopath, or elitist to think you have the knowledge, wisdom, and/or right to steer or nudge people and/or societies?

        Who knows anymore…

        It’s partly why I left social science…

        • Quote from above: “Do you have to be a bit of a psychologically unbalanced and/or immature person, scientism-person, narcissist, psychopath, or elitist to think you have the knowledge, wisdom, and/or right to steer or nudge people and/or societies?”

          I have recently began to wonder whether there might be a significant part of social scientists that might fit these terms.

          I also began to wonder how easy or difficult it might be for a small group of social scientists that might fit these terms to attempt to gain so much power and influence in (parts of) social science that much of any possible criticism and corrective processes might become virtually impossible and practically useless.

          It’s quite shocking to me to think about such things.

          It’s partly why I left social science.

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