“Extreme Forensics” on TLC

I was vac­u­um­ing recently while the TV was on TLC. I noticed a show com­ing on called “Extreme Forensics”. This par­tic­u­lar episode high­lighted a case where a researcher used laser-spectroscopy to deter­mine that two sep­a­rate sam­ples of wood con­tained the same (99.995%) traces of titanium.

This is a prime exam­ple of what the NAS report is talk­ing about, foren­sic test­ing which need to have their under­ly­ing sci­en­tific reli­a­bil­ity investigated/proven.

While there might have been a con­fes­sion in this case, and the wood analy­sis helped in the inves­ti­ga­tion, it should have been strongly chal­lenged in court.