<story><title>Dr. Whitehurst and the FBI Lab Scandal (2017)</title><url>https://whistleblowersblog.org/government-whistleblowers/intelligence-community-whistleblowers/dr-whitehurst-and-the-fbi-lab-scandal/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>motohagiography</author><text>A similar case of a forensic lab being a perjury factory was the Motherisk program in Ontario, which forged drug detection in hair samples to remove kids from custodial care. These systems are rotten.&lt;p&gt;In politics, you can see people who are corrupt like this getting rewarded with promotions for having taken one for the team. I see it in companies as well, where if you take on the risk from committing fraud, you can use it as leverage. 
There are numerous cases where I see managers telling subordinates to fudge data of all kinds, and the ones who don&amp;#x27;t lie get managed out, and the ones who do lie get promoted. The tactic is to get someone to do something compromising or  illegal on your behalf, so you can take credit for the outcome, but the person bullied into lying holds the risk. The only people who ever get persecuted or prosecuted are the ones who threaten to give away the game. The dynamic is covered in the concept of a Moral Maze (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;hbr.org&amp;#x2F;1983&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;moral-mazes-bureaucracy-and-managerial-work&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;hbr.org&amp;#x2F;1983&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;moral-mazes-bureaucracy-and-manageri...&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;p&gt;You can&amp;#x27;t fix corruption and adulteration. The only way out is to fork a new organization and create a gate that prevents the corruption from taking root in the new org, and even then I&amp;#x27;ve seen it creep back. The alternative is to make grisly examples, but nobody has the stomach for that.</text></comment>
<story><title>Dr. Whitehurst and the FBI Lab Scandal (2017)</title><url>https://whistleblowersblog.org/government-whistleblowers/intelligence-community-whistleblowers/dr-whitehurst-and-the-fbi-lab-scandal/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>boomboomsubban</author><text>I remember the report absolutely demolishing the veracity of most forensic practices coming out, but has the field changed at all since then? Are hair samples and such still commonly used as evidence?&lt;p&gt;My cynical side worries it&amp;#x27;s only gotten worse, as CSI made the job &amp;quot;sexy&amp;quot; attracting a pool of people that would not be overly concerned with the science part of forensics in the first place.</text></comment>