by M. Chris Fabricant ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 2022
A brilliant rebuttal of junk science in the courtroom.
A chilling account of forensic science—beloved of prosecutors, judges, and TV writers but often wildly inaccurate.
Fabricant, the Innocence Project's Director of Strategic Litigation, points out that before pharmaceutical companies can market a drug, they must prove that it works. Forensic science, on the other hand, is entirely unregulated. When allowing “experts” to testify, a judge is not required to rule on their expertise, only on legal precedent. Fabricant recounts cases of convictions and the junk science involved. Perhaps the most outrageous is bite mark analysis, but readers—especially those fond of TV detectives and their infallible crime labs—will be flabbergasted by his list of forensic techniques long used by labs, including the FBI’s, and proclaimed by highly paid “expert witnesses” that, when investigated by competent researchers, turn out to be unreliable or worthless. These include arson investigation; hair and fiber microscopy; lie detector tests; voice spectrometry; and analyses of handwriting, bloodstains, shoe and tire prints, and bullet lead. Even fingerprints do not come out unscathed in Fabricant’s rigorous investigation. In 2009, after years of hearings and testimony by genuine experts, the National Academy of Sciences issued a massive 300-page report documenting the worthlessness of junk science that outraged the forensic establishment. Prosecutors and district attorneys downplay the findings because almost all are elected officials, and getting convictions keeps them in office. The report is not law, so they and judges often ignore it, and juries “tend to believe what prosecutors tell them.” The author’s case reports and denunciation of junk science make fascinating reading, but this is not a story with a happy ending. As Fabricant shows, Americans seem obsessed with punishing evildoers regardless of the fallout, and their elected officials loudly proclaim agreement. The rate of incarceration in the U.S. is by far the highest in the world, disproportionately affecting Black Americans, who are “incarcerated at five times the rate of white people.”
A brilliant rebuttal of junk science in the courtroom.Pub Date: April 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63614-030-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Akashic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2022
Share your opinion of this book
More About This Book
PERSPECTIVES
Awards & Accolades
Likes
37
Our Verdict
GET IT
Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2023
New York Times Bestseller
by Walter Isaacson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 12, 2023
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
Awards & Accolades
Likes
37
Our Verdict
GET IT
Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2023
New York Times Bestseller
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
Share your opinion of this book
More by Walter Isaacson
BOOK REVIEW
by Walter Isaacson with adapted by Sarah Durand
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
More About This Book
BOOK TO SCREEN
by Judith Butler ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 19, 2024
A master class in how gender has been weaponized in support of conservative values and authoritarian regimes.
A deeply informed critique of the malicious initiatives currently using gender as a political tool to arouse fear and strengthen political and religious institutions.
In their latest book, following The Force of Nonviolence, Butler, the noted philosopher and gender studies scholar, documents and debunks the anti-gender ideology of the right, the core principle of which is that male and female are natural categories whose recognition is essential for the survival of the family, nations, and patriarchal order. Its proponents reject “sex” as a malleable category infused with prior political and cultural understandings. By turning gender into a “phantasmatic scene,” they enable those in positions of authority to deflect attention from such world-destroying forces as war, predatory capitalism, and climate change. Butler explores the ideology’s presence in the U.S., the U.K., Uganda, and Hungary, countries where legislation has limited the rights of trans and homosexual people and denied them their sexual identity. The author also delves into the ideology’s roots among Evangelicals and the Catholic Church and such political leaders as Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán. Butler is particularly bothered by trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), who treat trans women as “male predators in disguise.” For the author, “the gap between the perceived or lived body and prevailing social norms can never be fully closed.” They imagine “a world where the many relations to being socially embodied that exist become more livable” and calls for alliances across differences and “a radical democracy informed by socialist values.” Butler compensates for the thinness of some of their recommendations with an astute dissection of the ideology’s core ideas and impressive grasp of its intellectual pretensions. This is a wonderfully thoughtful and impassioned book on a critically important centerpiece of contemporary authoritarianism and patriarchy.
A master class in how gender has been weaponized in support of conservative values and authoritarian regimes.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780374608224
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
Share your opinion of this book
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.