PT134.S1.Q19 > Question

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The court analyst concludes that courts should not allow DNA tests as evidence in criminal cases. The analyst supports this with the principle that if there isn’t widespread scientific agreement about how reliable a test is, then it is unreasonable to allow that test as evidence. And the reliability of DNA tests is controversial among scientists.

The analyst poses a rule for when courts should allow certain evidence, and then claims that DNA tests fail this rule due to controversy about their reliability. This assumes that any controversy about a test’s reliability is incompatible with widespread agreement about that test’s reliability. However, it’s possible that there is a widespread agreement that DNA tests are reliable at least to a certain threshold, despite controversy about their exact reliability past that point.

The fact that courts have the authority to admit or exclude evidence is irrelevant to an argument about whether or not they should admit certain evidence.

The analyst never claims nor implies that the standard of evidence in a criminal case should be absolute certainty. The analyst’s proposed standard for scientific tests is “widespread agreement in the scientific community.”

The analyst assumes that because DNA tests’ reliability is controversial, that must mean there’s no widespread agreement. But if there’s agreement that they are very reliable, and controversy only about the exact reliability, that assumption no longer makes sense.

The use of scientific witnesses is irrelevant to this argument, which focuses on the opinions of the general scientific community as a standard.

Whether or not evidence can be controversial in noncriminal cases is irrelevant to whether DNA tests meet the analyst’s proposed standard for criminal cases.

PrepTest 134 - Section 1 - Question 19

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