Today’s Research Symposium was organised by the Division of Business, Law and Information Sciences (basically a long winded name for “everything that’s important for universities”). Titled, “DNA Evidence: The CSI Effect”, it turned out slightly more interesting than i anticipated, and also slightly different from what i thought.

The CSI Effect is a term given to a trend where with the present day law dramas, such as Crime Scene Investigation (therefore CSI) and Law and Order unintentionally blurs the reality for television watchers such that they believe that technology, particularly that of DNA evidence, is highly advance and reliable. In the seminar though, the focus of the majority of the speakers were strongly on CSI alone, rather than a combination of other law dramas. This would prove to be interesting, at least to me, because if one is to blame CSI, then one should blame all i had think. Particularly because if you look at the statistics as a whole there are many law/police/detective and similar genre dramas that are watched by people the world over. With similar type of concepts, backgrounds, storylines and scenes in these dramas, people can be equally influenced by all these dramas to start thinking that perhaps, DNA as an evidence is 99-100% reliable.

but i am getting ahead of myself.

One of the cases used as an example by the first few speakers (mostly from the local law scenes) was that of Robert Blake and the killing of his wife. While acquitted, it was noted that it was because of lack of physical evidence (DNA), which resulted in a comment from one of the jury, “if she (the prosecutor) would’ve had all the information, he would’ve been guilty.” This also resulted in a comment by the District Attorney into saying that Robert Blake was a “miserable human being” and that the jurors were “incredibly stupid”. And it’s not hard to see why.

Considering the evidences raised by the witnesses, short of an actual weapon with all the “dna evidence” the jury wanted to see, he was pretty much guilty beyond reasonable doubt, at least for me. to be acquitted at that point, is like agreeing to violence against women, plotted or otherwise.

Back on topic though, this raised an interesting point as well for people working on forensic sciences. with such television shows, dramas, movies and what not, juries are affected by the possibility of the reliability of DNA evidence. While helpful, sometimes DNA evidence is altogether unnecessary. besides that, there’s always the 1%-4% lab error rate, which can be fairly big considering the number of people that might possibly be a DNA fit.

Furthermore, juries, from studies, have shown to have unreasonable expectations of forensic evidence. a study of juries that were in a particular case, raised quotes like, “you can find DNA anywhere! therefore, it shouldn’t be hard to get the evidence we need!” or ” Everything should be sampled! where’s the soil, the hair, the blood, the saliva…” one juror even questioned, “how did people get charged before the advent of DNA?” (at this point, my head kind of went “dot dot dot” and i am sure everyone laughing did too)

The problem behind all those thoughts by the jurors is that they fail to compute all the costs that goes into DNA testing, as well as find out more about the technology. DNA testing could be picking out 10 points on a strand to see if they match. some evidences may not even make it into the court because they are not necessarily important to the case. if those are admissible evidence, if those 10 points were any different, the accused might have been someone else instead. Similarly, companies that provides the chemicals for DNA testing aren’t non-profit or government organisations either. As such, chemicals can get costly, and the more they test so as to “convince” the jury base on their idea of quantity over quality, the more the tax money flows outwards.

The other failures that juries sometimes fail to see or understand, is that science can only go so far as to prove that that item was indeed a part of the defendant/victim. DNA can transfer, and also, depending on the relationship between the 2 parties, there can be so much evidence it can be overwhelming. Furthermore, science can sometimes be unable to prove/tell how an item/evidence get to be at the scene, nor how long “it” had been there. Also, DNA evidence can be contaminated, rendering the evidence either useless, or incorrectly displaying another identity that might not have been involved in the crime.

on the other side of the law, because of such drama shows, there’s also a possibility of criminal minds working their way around those possibilities of being found out. from wiping out evidence, to the possibility of planting false evidence. obviously then, it would be harder to prove, materially, that the right person has done it. and if a jury is going to depend on such material evidences of criminal actions, they would not be getting any or they will get one that will colour their judgement.

All it boils down to is that the jury will have to fall back on good old common sense, something which, as one of the speakers pointed out, is sorely lacking in some trials. The jury needs to have a clear understanding of the mechanism of forensic sciences: the fallacies of it and the possibilities of admitting other forms of evidence into their mindsets. The idea of “reasonable doubt” can not be speculative, which is made possible by the possibility of errors in forensic sciences, so that justice can indeed be served.

Someone then questioned, should the judicial system consider eradicating the needs for jurors then, since they might need better education, information and understanding of the technology, something which might need too much time? However, one of the key speakers pointed out, everyone has a certain bias. when all these different biases are put together on the table, they might prove to be a fairer justice that a person is being subjected to, than that of a singular person.

My own conclusion:

Consider the impact of how “violent games and movies influence children”. While obviously children would have more malleable, gullible minds than adults, it is also true that constant exposure to such ideas presented by the television might make it harder to seperate fact from fiction. consider the book by Dan Brown, “Da Vinci Code”. The uproar caused by it was partly due to the fact that few people were able to differentiate between what are the facts in the book, and what are the fiction. They question the Church about the existence of this “family” and the Society’s existence.

and these are adults.

While i am not a psychologist, i have personally felt that: when being put alongside news, and other fact giving programmes on the television, it can sometimes be hard to differentiate the facts from the fiction, particularly when the trend is repeated across different dramas in the same genre. The media is often viewed as an information giving source, and dependency on the media can result in believing most of what happens on the media. While consciously realising that parts of it can be fiction, e.g the story line being presented, part of it might be subconsciously “recognised” as a fact, e.g the background to this storyline.

beyond all that, jurors are important to a legal proceedings though. admittedly, while it is a flawed system, it would be better and fairer a justice than subjecting people to the bias and opinion of just one person. So, perhaps, to remedy this problem of the CSI Effect, educating and informing the jurors will be better than just eradicating the need for jurors altogether. Also, perhaps if there’s a way to do this, the process of forensic sciences needs to be more transparent. E.g, reflecting the costs, the time it needs, the amount of information it can generate, both useless and useful, the lab error rates and finally - what makes this evidence NECESSARY to the trial.

technorati tags:law, CSI, CSI Effect, symposium, thoughts, jury, reasonable doubt, university, school, homework

Two weeks ago, i was sitting at the bar, having my usual wednesday nights mud cakes. Chewie came up to me, and we had our usual random quiet night talks. Halfway through, he turned to me, “oh yer, before i forget, i am getting fired.” i stopped eating and looked at him shocked. his smile was still there, but the twinkle in his eyes were gone.

Let me explain a few things. The franchise owner of our restaurant owns 3 franchises around this area. One in civic, one in Woden, and one in batesman bay. As such, he can’t possibly oversee all his restaurants personally. under the franchise rulings, if the franchise owner does not personally over see the shop, he has to nominate someone to do it. Which was what Big Guy did - he nominated Chewie for our franchise.

Some where at the end of last year, he decided he was tired of handling 3 different franchises. while not entirely far apart, the personalities of all 3 franchises differ so much that we don’t even have the same tipping culture. Besides, there’s more than bills to pay and a brand name to worry about when you are franchising. He managed to sell the one down in Batesman bay, and now it’s just us… because he wants to concentrate on developing Woden’s franchise. That bit baffles me though - Our branch is so much better than Woden’s branch. Why give up something that’s already there to build what’s not there?

anyways, I could see Chewie isn’t happy. there’s nothing he can do about it though. the new franchise owner does not want to be another Big Guy. He undertook the 3 months franchise owner training, and would be training in-store for the next 3 months when he officially buys over the restaurant. Also, he doesn’t have the finances to keep Chewie. This made alot of us sad though. Chewie has become like an unofficial daddy for all of us, infact, we all behave like one big family.

although, initially, Big Guy didn’t want to have Chewie at his branch either, but now apparently he offered a job to Chewie, so he would still be working, just not with us.

With the new owner though, there was a notice today, which is something i am not quite used to. Since there’s a transfer of ownership, there’s also a change of houserules AND legalities - as well as pay. The proposed new pay, which is the main thing most of us were interested in when Don pointed it out to us, was that our pay would be LOWERED by a dollar each. There’s also an introduction of Casual Pay Rates, and rules like “you can’t work for 10 days in a row.” At present, all of us are permanent part-timers with benefits. This includes superannuation (like a retirement fund), Holiday Pay (which we can cash in if unused) and some other shit. There’s only 4 real pay levels: Trainee, Proficient, Supervisery (only 2 people are on it anyways -.-) and Management (and that’s only Chewie there). all these rates, while negotiable, are pretty much a tight fit.

The starting rates are 13.25 or something, then 14.75 (mine) then 16.75, and finally some weird amount i didn’t bother to read. so basically, the new guy’s proposal is something like 12.75, 13.25, 15.25 and since he won’t be paying himself, whatever amount.

As a result of these changes, we were asked to “vote” if we agree on it, or do we expect some changes.

or and casual rates are 16.75, at my level.

Well, obviously i already don’t agree with the pay rates. i don’t really care if i have casual rates or permanent part time rates, but either ways, it’s a lesser rate than what i be earning now (some basic maths will show you). Secondly, if you ask me, i would stay permanent part-time anyways. even if we keep it at the right rate of 17.80 or somethin per hour… mathematically speaking, i earn more in a week with the “holiday” pay thing than without. Superannuation is such a negligible amount, i don’t give 2 shits about it.

And finally, logically speaking, while this is a good thing for worker rights, it’s not very smart to say we aren’t allowed to work 10 days straight. We are often short staffed. if on the day of the “10th” day of someone, some idiot doesn’t turn up for work, the ones who CAN and have to work, would have to cover extra sections/do more work. which basically goes back to encrouching on our abilities to provide good services and get good tips.

And i wish i can vote against Chewie leaving =/

oh wells, bed time. DNA Seminar tomorrow afternoon.

technorati tags:work, changes, constituition, rates, new, personal, blog

It’s been a really full and trying day. i started the day off thinking that i would be working from 11, when it’s really 12. there were no customers till 1 either, so not only did i have a huge lack of sleep, i was bored stiff for a good hour and a half, and then some. Cookie decided to “cheer” me up by “gifting” me with a plate, because none of the shops we normally “borrow/lend to” claimed it. so he started telling me, “YOU NEED A PLATE!!”

“erm, i have 2 at home.”

“so? you’re a povo uni student! now you can have THREE!”

This idiot can count.

Rushed for classes, and i had a couple who sound like they were making out right behind me…. and i was seated in the front part of the hall. i was starting to grow a little testy when someone “whispered” to them pretty loudly, “shut up or get out!” i silently prayed for this angel. thank you God. i was starting to get tired by then, and coupled with the usual lecture slowness, i was slowly being lulled into a sleep.

don’t get me wrong, my lecturer was awesome. the class was great. infact, both lectures were uber. Law and Society had some movies up, to show the differences between a french court and the local aussie court. It also showed some fairly “dark humour” kind of tape. Some reporter caught a footage of a boy being beaten up. instead of lending a hand, he recorded the whole beating THEN called the police. and yet was still hailed a hero, because he caught such an awesome footage. oh, this video was based on a true story.

Am i the only one who see the irony here? and people wonder why nobody can be bothered to lift a finger to help the troubled ones.

in the mean time, my other lecturer decided to go through the process of policy making - thoroughly. it’s not like it’s a bad thing, but by then i was struggling to stay awake. while i didn’t manage to get any good notes down because of that fatigue, i think i can start making policies now in my dreams.

Oh, and as you can see, my readings have pretty much quadrupled, and i still have one more lecture tomorrow before i am done for the week =/

i just received this on monday. i been wanting to show off to you guys, just coz i am kinda.. exhilarated. This is the child i have been sponsoring since july 2004. see how she has grown! the bottom pict is the latest. she still can’t read yet, but just the fact that she’s now 4 warms my heart. i wish i can do more though, than just sending her money and cards. well, technically, since she’s receiving supplies, it ain’t purely cash. but.. you know, i kinda want to carry her around and just talk to her and just be more involved in her growing up.

Anyways, i will discuss more about classes tomorrow. time for a good sleep… till 7am anyways when i need to get up and make myself lunch or something.

technorati tags:world vision, homework, university, life, readings, lectures, tired, exhaustion, fatigue, sleepy, personal, blog