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Forensic Science: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

LastWeekTonight · 10.6M views · 2017-10-02 · 18:51

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Overview

A John Oliver Last Week Tonight segment on how forensic science used in criminal trials is often unscientific. It looks at unreliable methods and lab malpractice, and ends with a joke about a TV procedural that might change public perception.

On Hacker News

Cited as a light-hearted but informative overview whenever threads touch on junk science and unreliable forensic evidence in courts.

Discussed on HN; no positive recommendation is recorded in this export · HN mentions 2017–2024

Topics

Law, policing & justiceMedia, journalism & propaganda
Search by tags
forensicsjunk sciencecriminal justicewrongful convictionsjohn oliver

What people said

lesuorac · 2024-01 · Reference

> Prisoners are deprived of rights... by due process... Nice sound bite; but not really true. It's certainly true a process is followed but that process is pretty shitty. Plenty of people get released after the murder weapon is actually tried for fingerprints and low-and-behold it was somebody else! How does a person go through trial with even the murder weapon being tested? It's not required by the process. Plenty of people have been convicted because "their bite marks match". Is there actually some peer-reviewed standard of bite marks where if I gave you somebody's bite and a bite mark you could match them together at 90% accuracy? No. How are non-reproducible methods used to incarcerate people? The process doesn't require accuracy. For more, John Oliver: Forensic Analysis [1] [1]: [VIDEO]

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rmellow · 2023-11 · Reference

Not sure if this is what you meant, but Norm's conclusion, > how in good conscience could he act on basically "taking the word of some guy in a white lab coat." is actually quite correct. There is science behind DNA evidence, but there is also frequent malpractice of lab technicians, which ends up muddling results, with life ruining consequences. John Oliver has talked about it: [VIDEO]

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plopz · 2020-02 · Reference

Related video of Last Week Tonight on different kinds of junk science: [VIDEO] There does seem to be some issues with how the court system has failed to keep up with the modern day. Issues with scalability, accessibility and science literacy are leading to a general distrust of the system.

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Sources

Video by LastWeekTonight, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

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