Brain Scans in the Courts: Prosecutor's Dream or Civil Rights Nightmare? (medical, against)

[Sonic_Spork]

Yeah as I said in the first bit of my previous post, I feel it would have to be a very seriously tested, 100% reliable, totally foolproof and tamper proof, kind of tech. I mean, years and years of trials. People trying to trick it. People getting hypnotized and then trying to beat it with hypnotic suggestions. Anything. Whatever we can think of to try and "break" the results, and it still being able to accurately read the brain. Before I'd approve of its use in the justice system, for sure.

What sucks is that even if we had that, with heaps of hard evidence that the machine cannot be in any way fooled or hacked, that it is truly THE solution... All it would take is some blogger somewhere to claim otherwise and say "here's what the man doesn't want you to know!" and like half or more of the population would doubt its efficacy. Everything is fake news now. Everything. Except what people want to believe.

But what I find somewhat interesting when talking to people about something like this, is that there's a deep streak in America, of, "If I can get away with it, I should be able to do a crime, and get away with it." We love a rebel. Unless we've been a victim of crime, I guess. Hell, plenty of movies about the plucky criminal pulling off the heist. I think that plenty of folks don't really want a highly functioning and truly just, justice system.

[Izzie1213]

Then there is the sociopath that has no basic humanity and the end justifies the means. A true sociopath would not feel any guilt.

[Phil75230]

Originally Posted by Izzie1213

Then there is the sociopath that has no basic humanity and the end justifies the means. A true sociopath would not feel any guilt.

Correct, but even we today have brain scans and theories of brain structure sophisticated enough to spot the most blatantly obvious sociopaths. I understand it has to do with detecting blood flows through the brain (especially the limbic system or amygdala - the latter, so I read is crucial for processing emotions), particularly O2 absorption or weakly radioactive tracers injected into the blood. They did this back around 2000, and showed compelling results. But this is pretty much the limit of my knowledge of the neurology of psychopathy

[rstevens62]

Originally Posted by Phil75230

Correct, but even we today have brain scans and theories of brain structure sophisticated enough to spot the most blatantly obvious sociopaths. I understand it has to do with detecting blood flows through the brain (especially the limbic system or amygdala - the latter, so I read is crucial for processing emotions), particularly O2 absorption or weakly radioactive tracers injected into the blood. They did this back around 2000, and showed compelling results. But this is pretty much the limit of my knowledge of the neurology of psychopathy

Yeah and alot of other 'markers' in the past, eventually turned out to be totally inaccurate, what makes you think they are right today?




IF you say that is because we know more today than we did back then or we have more advanced tools for detection....well, people in the 1900s thought the exact same things!! Whose to say in 2080, some things we consider to be facts today, will be proven totally wrong?

[Coldjensens]

Originally Posted by rstevens62

Y Whose to say in 2080, some things we consider to be facts today, will be proven totally wrong?

I can guarantee you that will be the case. In fact by 2020 there will be "facts" we know today that will be proven totally wrong. It happens constantly. Science is imprecise.

[Rescue3]

As to the OP's concerns, I see about zero chance of brain scans getting into a criminal court any time soon. Here's why:

It isn't so much the biotechnology that courts have problems with, it is the interpretation of the results. If the scientific world agreed that a certain biotechnology proved evidentiary beyond a reasonable doubt, courts would accept it - just as they accept blood alcohol levels as proof of intoxication. Meanwhile, polygrams (the lie detector test results) and VSAs (voice stress analyzers) are still verboten in every court in the land because science cannot agree that a +3 equals 'no deception indicated' and that a -3 truly means 'deception indicated.' (O.J. Simpson reportedly scored a -22 on the polygraph, while Aldridge Ames passed his CIA polygraph by rearranging the questions in his head. OJ walked, and Ames is doing life w/o parole. Go figure.)

When I started my career in the late 1970s, DNA's use in criminology was a theory. During the 1990s, it took nine months to get results out of the lab. In the 2000s, O.J. Simpson was acquitted in the face of overwhelming DNA evidence. Today, DNA is everywhere - juries want to see it in white collar crime cases or they threaten acquittal. Science agreed that the technology had advanced to where there is no longer room for reasonable doubt.

When neurology advances to the point where science agrees that some sort of brain scan can be both accurately read and interpreted to the exclusion of all other possibilities, then we'll have to worry about 4th and 5th Amendment issues. Since the latest from the SCOTUS is that you need a warrant just to read a suspect's cell phone, I'm pretty certain that the brain is going to remain off-limits for the foreseeable future.

[Phil75230]

All three of these are similar, so I'll address them as such.

Originally Posted by rstevens62

Yeah and alot of other 'markers' in the past, eventually turned out to be totally inaccurate, what makes you think they are right today?




IF you say that is because we know more today than we did back then or we have more advanced tools for detection....well, people in the 1900s thought the exact same things!! Whose to say in 2080, some things we consider to be facts today, will be proven totally wrong?

Originally Posted by Coldjensens

I can guarantee you that will be the case. In fact by 2020 there will be "facts" we know today that will be proven totally wrong. It happens constantly. Science is imprecise.

Originally Posted by Rescue3

As to the OP's concerns, I see about zero chance of brain scans getting into a criminal court any time soon. Here's why:

It isn't so much the biotechnology that courts have problems with, it is the interpretation of the results. If the scientific world agreed that a certain biotechnology proved evidentiary beyond a reasonable doubt, courts would accept it - just as they accept blood alcohol levels as proof of intoxication. Meanwhile, polygrams (the lie detector test results) and VSAs (voice stress analyzers) are still verboten in every court in the land because science cannot agree that a +3 equals 'no deception indicated' and that a -3 truly means 'deception indicated.' (O.J. Simpson reportedly scored a -22 on the polygraph, while Aldridge Ames passed his CIA polygraph by rearranging the questions in his head. OJ walked, and Ames is doing life w/o parole. Go figure.)

When I started my career in the late 1970s, DNA's use in criminology was a theory. During the 1990s, it took nine months to get results out of the lab. In the 2000s, O.J. Simpson was acquitted in the face of overwhelming DNA evidence. Today, DNA is everywhere - juries want to see it in white collar crime cases or they threaten acquittal. Science agreed that the technology had advanced to where there is no longer room for reasonable doubt.

When neurology advances to the point where science agrees that some sort of brain scan can be both accurately read and interpreted to the exclusion of all other possibilities, then we'll have to worry about 4th and 5th Amendment issues. Since the latest from the SCOTUS is that you need a warrant just to read a suspect's cell phone, I'm pretty certain that the brain is going to remain off-limits for the foreseeable future.

1. It's true that science has been very wrong in the past. See "ether" theory (of the medium light supposedly traveled through). Sounds perfectly rational with late 19th century understandings of astronomy and physics, but disproved soon after. Same thing for any other theories (not "guesses", theories in the scientific sense).

2. As I said, we are just in the very early stages of understanding the brain. I'd say comparable to our understanding of astronomy 200 years ago at best, and likely 350 years ago if you ask me. That's why courts are wise to be very leery about using brain scans as evidence.

3. Still, with further research, we will gradually get better handles on how the brain operates. That will let us develop better theories about neurology.

4. Nothing in science is ever proven. It can only say "We're as sure of this as a reasonable person can be that this is the best explanation for such-and-such". While it's true that presence of evidence does not equal proven true, it's also true that presence of evidence does equal a legitimate reason to keep any ideas based on it a reasonable interpretation for how something works. It's the flip side of absence of evidence not equating with evidence of absence, yet absence of evidence equals legitimate reason for doubt.

[ironpony]

I still don't understand how this machine would work though. It was said in the OP that it can trace real-time brain activity. What does that even mean?

How do you tell if someone is guilty of a crime based on their brain activity? That's like saying you can tell if someone committed a crime or not based on their heart rate readings. It's not possible to tell a crime from something like that at all. Or is it, and I'm missing something?

[Phil75230]

Originally Posted by ironpony

I still don't understand how this machine would work though. It was said in the OP that it can trace real-time brain activity. What does that even mean?

How do you tell if someone is guilty of a crime based on their brain activity? That's like saying you can tell if someone committed a crime or not based on their heart rate readings. It's not possible to tell a crime from something like that at all. Or is it, and I'm missing something?

"In real time" means measuring changes as they take place. fMRIs can do that, measuring brain activity as it occurs, namely by measuring oxygen-absorption rates of certain areas of the brain. Also doable via injecting weakly radioactive tracers into the blood, and tracing the blood flow through certain parts of the brain. The PET Scan picks up which parts of the brain.


Anyway, as I said in this thread, brain scans aren't a magic wand technology. Still, it would be one more piece of evidence to consider - as I imagine it, at least, particularly regarding the severity of the sentence if the person's found guilty.

[ironpony]

But I don't understand how reading someone's brain activity can prove a crime? Can it actually read what someone did, such as actually watch their memories of them murder the victim, with the victim's face, clear as a bell, on a TV monitor for the police to see?