The Volokh Conspiracy

Chiropractors?

Environmental forecasters

You need to qualify what kind of "expertise" you're talking about. Indeed, many *theological* "experts" are "Creationists," but they're generally invoking premises of faith -- as opposed to naturalistic-science. So, seminary and bible scholars can be legitimate "experts" about religious doctrine, even if their premises are strenuously disagreed with by those of other philosophical persuasions. (And of course, there are a handful of different "versions" of creationism.)

Of course, I'm separating "creationsim" from the whole "intelligent design" debate, which got into whether the two distinct epistomological bases could somehow be harmonized. (Even those who are hostile to "intelligent design" theory as naturalistic science generally do concede it's perfectly valid as religion.)

(1) Bite-mark analysts.

(2) Whoever that guy in Mississippi was who claimed he could tell from the bullet wound whether the trigger was pulled by one person, or by two. (He deserves his own category.)

People who claim to be experts in identifying handwriting. Many years ago, I worked on the Howard Hughes "autobiography" forgery, where the world's purported top expert opined firmly that the writing was Hughes's. It wasn't. What's particularly amusing about this is the way in which people get recognized as "experts": there aren't schools; you become an "expert" by getting a two-bit J.P. court or some such to allow you to testify, then you bootstrap that into testifying in the county court, and eventually you end up in the big leagues.

None of this is original with me; there are some good law-review articles exposing the racket.

Those who administer polygraph examinations.

I'd have to agree with Alan Gunn.

I once participated in a training session in which FBI agents were being trained in testifying and how to deal with cross-examination. One agent was a "handwriting expert." A few other AUSAs and I were tasked to rattle their cages in crosses in a hypothetical case. I decided to focus on whether handwriting analysis was a real science.

At the end of it, she left the room crying and none of the FBI agents would talk to me.

And I'm not really that good.

dowsers; naprapaths; astrologers; Scientologists

Anybody who is from the discovery institute

Discovery Institute

Dowsing?

Following up on Esquire's comment, it sounds like you are being a little circular. I get the impression you are defining expert not on the basis of qualifications, but on the basis of whether or not you agree with their likely opinion. You seem to be conflating three different failures:

1) People who do not have expertise in a certain area but pretend they do
2) People who have expertise in an are that you hold in contempt.
3) People who have expert qualifications but who whore themselves in a real scientific field and testify to things they should not testify to.

For instance, let's say that you are involved in a suit in which a renter is suing a landlord for renting her a haunted apartment. Two "experts" on ghosts and the paranormal are presented. One expert says that he or she has studied the paranormal for twenty years, has a PhD in some related field such as history or cultural anthropology with an emphasis on the paranormal, and who testifies that there is no evidence to show that ghosts exist. One expert provides the same background and qualifications and says that he or she is convinced not only that ghosts exist, but that the plaintiff has good reason to believe that one is in her apartment.

My impression is that you would consider the first a "real" expert and the second not. It's not that people can't be experts in the paranormal. It's that you don't believe that a "real" expert would come to a particular conclusion.

Do you believe in vampire experts? I do. I happen to have listened to lectures at a forensic sciences meeting by an expert on vampires and vampirism. The person is a physical anthropologist who did extensive work on relating decompositional changes under different environmental conditions and related them to cultural myths about the appearance of vampires when exhumed.

Further, in most jurisdictions, an expert is simply someone who has more knowledge about an area than the average layperson. There is no reason that someone cannot be an expert in "Creationism" or "Voodoo" or plumbing or roof repair.

Whether or not they meed Daubert or Frye criteria as "scientific" in some sense is a different question. A licensed plumber is an "expert" on doing plumbing work, but is not, in general, held to Daubert standards. What is the "error rate" or "scientific basis" on testifying about whether or not a plumbing job was done competently?

A person can, in fact, be an expert in the area of economic forcasting, just like one can be an expert in weather forecasting. Whether or not they can make accurate forecasts is a different matter. It could be that it takes an expert in economic forecasting to competently address the limitations of economic forecasting.

I understand what you are getting at, but I think you need to define it better.

There are two groups of chiropractors, those that are complete loons, and those that just work on people's backs. There's some evidence that they can be effective for lower back pain, at least as effective (which isn't saying much) as conventional medicine...And, the relief appears to be quicker, which is a benefit to the patient (Disclosure: I'm an allopathic physician (MD) who is board certified in emergency medicine, so I don't have a dog in that fight).

In the medical realm, 'Dr.' Mercola and the convicted conman Kevin Trudeau are on the top of my list.

1. Anybody reporting or editorializing (same thing?) for the New York Times.

2. Al Gore

There were a series of cases in the seventies going into the late eighties where plaintiffs sued "experiential education" groups, like EST or Transcendental Meditation, claiming they were brainwashed. The plaintiffs always had experts on brainwashing which seemed to be bunk to me at the time.

Cult deprogrammers.

"Voiceprint" identification "experts". I mean specifically the cranks who claim to be able to take spectrograms of an unknown person (e.g. from a 911 tape or recording of a ransom message) and a known person and determine that they were made by the same person.

JohnAnnArbor wrote,

"It's amazing how many people equate "natural" with "good" automatically. Well, disease is natural."

Right on. Hemlock is natural, but I don't think it's very good for you. So is digitalis which is foxglove, but it wouldn't be a good idea to ingest it. At least 25% of our drugs come from herbs. They all have side effects, but the same folks who think prescription drugs are all bad. take herbs and never question safety or efficacy.

It is good to remember that the drug companies have a heck of a time beating the placebo effect when they are conducting trials of new drugs. Claritan, for instance, barely beat the placebo; just by enough to get FDA approval. The mind is a powerful thing. The companies and people who sell herbs, vitamins, homeopathic remedies, et al, know this and do they ever use it to part the folks from their money.

Organic? Besides getting lousy looking vegetables etc. and paying a fortune for them, why are we living longer and longer even though pesticides have been in use for many, many years?

Ditto electric power lines.

I am skeptical about a lot of the behavioral experts used for criminal trials, include those that testify about insanity (and hence culpability) and those that testify about the type of person who must have committed the crime (that argue defendent is probably guilty because he has a certain kind of background).

It seems to me that these experts are probably not better than the average person at knowing the mind of the defendent or the actual perpetrator.

I also think that whether or not you believe the global warming scientists to be doing good science, it would be interesting to compare them to the other groups using the same standards - certainly in the past there were economic (malthusians, marxists) and environmental (ice age alarmists, etc) scientists that were clearly in the pseudo-expert category.

"Counselors" of all stripes, most psychologists, and anybody who claims to be doing whatever it is they do "...for the children.". Especially the quacks featured in these two books:

1.) "Whores of the Court." by Margaret A. Hagen
2.) No Crueler Tyrannies." by Dorothy Rabinowitz

In a criminal trial, I once watched the defense attorney try to qualify someone as an "expert in the dynamics of violent encounters." The [derogatory adjective repressed because of bar rules] judge denied the guy expert status, there being no such field, but gave the defense counsel leeway to ask a few questions anyway, as a "fact" witness (he was purely a hired-gun trial expert who knew nothing about the facts of the case but what the defense told him). That allowed him to accomplish the sole purpose of the witness, which was to leap out of the chair and put a choke-hold on the defense lawyer in the space of about 3 seconds, to show the jury just how reasonable it was for the homeowner to shoot the innocent kid coming to knock on the door to ask for directions.

Some quick research finds at least one such expert practicing... I don't THINK this was the guy in the trial I watched, though.

Chiropractors get another vote.

Homeopaths probably deserve reiteration- they delay people who need authentic medical care from getting it.

Scientologists

Spoon benders

Therapuetic Touch Healers

Those lunatics that claim they can decypher dog barks

con't. I typed in a bit of Goffman for other reasons, but it will serve as a sample : here

The EPA and their Arsenic in Water study and new standards of 10 ppb instead of 50 ppb. It was an incredibly flawed study of poorTaiwanese villagers who live in poverty and have poor diets. It is going to cost the US taxpayeer millions and millions of dollars to "remedy" a problem that does not exist. Remember, that is money that is not available to fix problems that we know are killing people, such as highways in congested areas that don't have a physical barrier between the opposing lanes of traffic. Also, the rest of the developed world is quite happy with 50 ppb of arsenic in their water. That alone says a lot about the reliability of the EPA's data.

Check out Posner's book "Public Intellectuals." I think he covers some of the same ground.

Congress.

It seems to me there are two key questions for evaluating whether a particular field or methodology for arriving at an opinion (rather than the expert herself) is "fake" or not.

1. What is the error rate?
2. What method was used to determine the error rate?

If the error rate is 50% or greater, the field or methodology is almost certainly bunk. Likewise, if the methodology used to determine the error rate deviates in important ways from generally accepted scientific methods, the field is probably "fake."

Me! and believe my I know.

"Multiple Chemical Sensitivity" experts and other experts on imaginary causes of disease, like EMF.

Granted, chemicals can and do cause illness but MCS sufferers react only to chemicals they know or think they know are present and don't react to chemicals they are un-aware are present--even if those chemicals are ones they proclaim they are sensitive to. (This is a generalization but, I think, generally true :-) )

Aromatherapists
acupuncture
palm readers
birth trauma therapists
appraisers

With regard to linguists as experts, I don't know the circumstances of the case in which word choice allegedly showed the speaker to be the guilty party, but there are many things on which linguists have legitimate expertise. There are also topics we don't know enough about to provide useful expert testimony, and there are topics that some people know enough about but not necessarily the people presented as experts. The term "linguist" includes not only people with scientific training in the study of language but people who are experts on some particular language (who may be useful as experts on the facts of that language but have no expertise on language and linguistic behavior in general) , literary people whose expertise on language in a scientific sense is usually very limited, and miscellaneous social scientists interested in topics having to do with language whose qualifications are enormously varied.

Topics on which I know of linguists giving what I consider to be valid expert testimony include: (a) debunking opposing "voiceprint" frauds; (b) establishing the territorial boundaries of aboriginal peoples on the basis of analysis of the surviving placenames; (c) testifying in trademark cases regarding the genericity of a term; (d) determining whether a criminal defendant understood sufficient English to have understood her Miranda rights and rights to refuse a search;
(e) evaluating the adequacy of interpretation at trial; (f) determining whether an immigrant with limited English understood a criminal proposal put to him by an undercover agent and whether his behavior and spoken responses constituted agreement. (g) determining the origin of the person on a tape recording from his speech;

It is also the case that not every linguist is qualified to address every topic. For example, only the minority of linguists with expertise in acoustic phonetics (along with other people with such expertise in fields such as electrical engineering and psychology) are qualified to testify on voiceprint identification.

I would second Ex-Fed on cops as drug experts. I don't know if it fits into your project, but in my experience prosecutors love to put up a cop as an expert in drug distribution based on his police experience and police training. He then proceeds to describe what drug dealers are like, and *surprise* they are just like your client! Cheap profiling dressed up as expertise. While I'm ranting, do juries really need 'expert' help on drug crimes? In a recent jury trial I was involved in we voire dired the jury on past use of controlled dangerous substances. The pool was around 50% yes, and the panel we seated was about 1/3 past users, as I recall.

Opps. I pasted the wrong quote above. Danged computers. It should read:

Scote wrote,
Multiple Chemical Sensitivity" experts and other experts on imaginary causes of disease, like EMF.

Granted, chemicals can and do cause illness but MCS sufferers react only to chemicals they know or think they know are present and don't react to chemicals they are un-aware are present--even if those chemicals are ones they proclaim they are sensitive to. (This is a generalization but, I think, generally true :-)

Sorry for the confusion.

Meteorologists. They're not in the spoon bender/flat earther category - they really are educated and do a scientific study of the weather and the various phenomena that affect it. That said, even with the best scientific tools we can only take a guess at the weather forecast. I would love to hear the following dialog:

Person: "What's the weather going to be like this week?"
Meterologist: "I don't know. I'm mostly just interested in the empirical analysis of thermodynamic systems."

But alas, most weather people are in the predicting business. The predictions can be useful, but they are on the edge of the area where people can claim special expertise.

This is undoubtedly too specialized, but if you think chiropractors who work on humans are bad, you should see the ones who work on horses! Utter quackery.

The most damaging pretenders are the congressmen, lawyers, journalists, and social critics who comment on economic issues with no understanding of even basic economics.

They pollute the public discussion and rarely face any consequences.

I just realized I passed a group of them on the metro today. Lyndon LaRouche and LaRouchePAC.

"Cancer Cluster" analysis and "Gulf War Syndrome" experts.

Any lawyer who claims they know the law - i.e. to be able to predict how a judge would rule.

"Experts" on future dangerousness in capital cases.

Bite-mark "experts."

Law enforcement "experts" who testify to various aspects of the behavior, methods and culture of criminals.

Psychiatrists and psychologists.

Anyone who predicts Bernstein's work will garner academic interest?

1. Social Scientists and anyone who works in "social services."

2. Appraisers.

btw, Homeopathy and Naturopathy are legitimate alternatives to Allopathic Medicine. Sure, mainstream folks like AMA and BigPharma want you to think that, say, heart disease is best treated with lots of drugs and surgery, but that doesn't make it so. Sheesh. Homepathic meds have worked for me, my family and my friends. Try it yourself before including it in some list.

Psychoanalysts. No better than Scientologists. Really.

Child abuse "experts" who use leading questions and crackpot theories.

Homepathic meds have worked for me, my family and my friends. Try it yourself before including it in some list.

Translation- establish a personal level of anecdotal evidence before bowing to Big Pharma scams like the scientific method.

Bracketologists. Sports analysts.

Critical theory professors.

Polygraphers.

Polygraphs have been in regular use for years to try to find spies in the various security branches. I can't think of a single instance in which a polygraph by itself (ie without other independently discovered evidence which would have been sufficient in itself) has ever caught one.

I vote for hack writers who engage in frivolous exercises designed solely to tar climate change scientists and genuine quacks with the same brush.

How about some of the fringe radical types who get passed off as serious biblical scholars and so on in these Discovery Channel and History Channel specials on the Bible or the ancient world?

Ah! advice.

I'm offtopic and must therefore keep this short: Mark Buehner is a funny fellow, but I ask in response whether it is better to trust one's own experiences or the pronouncements of others? I started down the homeo path years ago when a friend and I both started having reflux. He went mainstream and Pfizer is living well of his choice. (BigPharma's key to monster cashflow is finding and peddling drugs that don't cure but create lifetime symptom suppression.) I at first followed that route and then went homeo and was cured. Further experience with other health issues for me and my family has been just as positive. Should I ignore my own experience, a finer and more personal form of EXPRERIMENT, or should I rely on that merry bunch of folks in the Iron Triangle of medical research - big pharma - big government?

Oh, and anecdotes are evidence. They are simply one form of evidence that is arguably less persuasive than 100,000 anecdotes statistically worked over into a conclusion that pleases the researchers.

"'Multiple Chemical Sensitivity' experts and other experts on imaginary causes of disease, like EMF." - scote 3.26.2007 5:56pm

He has those partially listed: "clinical ecologists." Like homeopaths, I think these guys have the potential to sound impressive to juries and press. They have their own journals, use statistics and jargon that looks legitimate to the uninitiated, and mainstream articles discrediting them take the form of pointed editorials or dense medical articles that soberly conclude the effects are psychological. These "experts" probably win against their critics in many forums.

I'm actually curious about the success rates of all of these groups--whether victory is defined by the overall tone of a journalistic piece or by a jury verdicts.

How about:
9-11 conspiracy theorists (some positive noise in press).

OK, just one more. We deposed an "expert" who billed himself as an "accident reconstructionist." He said that his investigation concluded that Defendant was cause of the accident, and not the Plaintiff. Here is a summary of his analysis. (If I was at the office, I'd write it word for word)

"In reaching this conclusion, I give no weight to the testimony and statements of [named eyewitnesses]. Witness are often incorrect as to what they witness when a traumautic accident happens, and the trauma tends to make witnesses think they saw something they did not. Instead, according to my calculations of the tire tread marks (taken about 6 months after the accident!), the trajectory of the Defendant's vehicle in relation to the Plaintiff's vehicle as diagrammed in the police report, the directional angle of the sun at that time of day, the Plaintiff's deposition, and the deposition testimony of [ambulance driver who testifed to what the Plaintiff told him], it is clear that Defendant was the sole cause of the accident."

At the settlement conference, the federal judge told Plaintiff's counsel that if we were to file a Daubert motion, all we would have to do is write that Defendant moves to exclude and attach his report and it would be granted. And, if that is all he had to show liability on behalf the Plaintiff, he'd better settle for whatever he can get that day because Plaintiff would get nothing, either on an MSJ or at trial.

Plaintiff initially demanded the policy limits of $500,000. He got $6,000, only for nuisance value. Wonder how much of that went to this "expert."

I don't sense that the courts are overrun with homeopathic or chiropractic testimony. Testimony on future dangerousness would top my list. Rampant, yet highly dubious.

OT:

happylee writes:

Should I ignore my own experience, a finer and more personal form of EXPRERIMENT...?

Well, if you are the sort of person who jumps to conclusions of causality then yes, you should ignore your own experience. A more "personal" experiment is not a more valid experiment and in your case is clearly the opposite. A "personal" experiment is not a substitute for a proper controlled scientific experiment which takes into account the psychological traps of judgement and perception we can fall into.

and anecdotes are evidence. They are simply one form of evidence that is arguably less persuasive than 100,000 anecdotes statistically worked over into a conclusion that pleases the researchers.

Well, you a little right and very wrong. Anecdotes are stories. The refrain "Anecdotes are not evidence" is shorthand for "Anecdotes are not valid scientific evidence," so while you can claim they are "evidence" they are only evidence that you are telling a story which you claim to be true. They are still not valid scientifically.

As to your second point, a rigorous placebo controlled clinical study is not an anecdote x 100,000. That you don't see that explains why you so firmly believe in a Regency Era school of medicine which doesn't accept that germs cause disease! Such views were known to be hokum in the Early Victorian Era! However, your firmness of belief in the face of scientific evidence to the contrary is sound example of the kind of fact-resistant wishful thinking that leads to the phony kind of expertise that is the subject of this thread.

Google "Dr. Sutisno" within www.austlii.edu.au

Child sexual abuse experts. Some prosecutors will have a doctor interview an alleged victim, and based solely on the interview, put the doctor on the stand to say, "Yep, the prosecutor is right, this child was sexually abused." No analysis. So studies. No science. Just bolstering.

I have no objection to doctors who offer true expert advice--i.e., who show real science to back up their conclusions. But some trial courts appear to apply a child sexual exception to pretty much every rule, statute, and constitutional provision.

I haven't had time to read all of the comments above, so I apologize if this has already been suggested.
I think you should spend some time asking whether "criminal profilers" are legitimate experts, based on actual cases. For example, now we know who the "Unabomber" was. It would be very interesting to look at all of the profiles made of who he was expected to be, and see how accurate they were. (I don't mean guesses by media experts, I mean actual, professional profilers who were paid by the FBI, by the police, by governmental agencies, etc., to actually come up with a profile of the Unabomber.) It could be that they were extremely accurate, or wide off the mark, or a combination of the above. But that would be a very informative study, and would be beneficial both to law enforcement, and to those involved in the criminal justice system (prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, etc.). Perhaps an objective, unbiased study has already been done, but I'm not aware of one.
I suggest the Unabomber as an example only because it's a significant and well-known case, and there were probably a lot of experts working on his profile over the years. But there are no doubt hundreds if not thousands of less well known cases that could be researched, with a retrospective look at accuracy once the real criminals were known. (This would also require certainty that the convicted criminal was actually guilty.) A study could also be made about which (if any) profiling techniques were most effective.
I would really like to see this done, if not by you, then by someone. This may be too large a topic to merely be one example of possibly "phony" experts, and I think it's possible that while some profilers could be considered "phonies," others are legitimate professionals worth listening to. I honestly don't know enough to have an informed opinion, but such a research project would have a significant impact on criminal justice matters.

"9-11 conspiracy theorists"

Hey Frank B: actually, those you cite do not claim to be expert at what happened on 9/11. Rather, they simply point out the many, many holes in the "official" story: itself a "conspiracy theory." Since you seem to know exactly what happened, please enlighten us.

I nominate all the PNAC-like "think tanks" who predict, for example, that the Iraqis would greet us with flowers and candy. They're apparently considered expert enough to have the ears of some of the most powerful people on earth.

Also, I propose whoever wrote that preposterous book "The Secret" and all the people running around endorsing it.

Global warming denialists

Gregg Easterbrook is a sportswriter who regularly features himself as a commentator on scientific issues he clearly never bothered to learn more about than what he was taught decades ago in high school.

How about business process patent examiners?

IP infringement "experts" who don't know the case law reagrding similarity tests?(See SCO vs IBM)

1) Anti-vaccine activists. They are literally putting millions of children at risk of serious injury and death. The attempt to link autism with the MMR vaccine is just the most mainstream case, but they are successfully sowing a seed of doubt which is resulting in many more parents refusing to have their kids vaccinated at all.

2) Financial analysts who do technical analysis. They have a language all of their own that sounds impressive to the layman but their results are extremely weak, at best. Through outlets like CNBC and the WSJ they are able to deliver their bunk on a daily basis.

3) Mutual fund advisers. Raking in huge commissions from the oblivious public who are completely unaware that low commission index funds will outperform any actively managed fund their adviser will recommended at least 80% of the time.

Mr. Fulford,
Thanks for the link to the article by Pournelle. I've now been reading his other articles and posts for a half-hour, and I'll probably spend the rest of my "down time" during the day reading more. It's a gold mine there.

Yeah, I did consider the Clinton administration dubious at best....

And I'd say that priests/rabbis/inmans are well qualified to talk about ethics, being that religion deals heavily with morals and ethics (and yes, I'm aware of the difference between the two).

Not sure how it relates, but it reminds me of this NYT article about how lawyers manufactured expert data:

It seems that when you give some doctors a chest X-ray, whether they say "this patient has silicosis" or "this patient has asbestos poisoning" depends on what the lawyers paying for the diagnosis are looking for.

link

Dr. Obvious is brilliant. I can't stop laughing.

And to join the fun, I say Dr. Bernstein should add to his list Manmade Global Warming "experts" who claim that evil mankind is locked in a war with the environment, bla bla. (Reminiscent of evil capitalists at war with virtuous proles, bla bla -- hey, maybe that's why the modern manmade hotglobo movement is run by a bunch of marxoid rejects...hmmm.)

Check out Quackwatch, the James Randi Educational Foundation, CSICOP and the False Memory Syndrome Foundation.

It's interesting, reading this list, to see the standards that people set. All disciplines that involve making predictions involve error, yet it seems that the criteria seen here is that any error makes something a pseudoscience. Thus, for instance, because meteorologists are imperfect at making predictions, they are fakers. Because profilers are imperfect in their statements, nothing they say can be trusted.

This reminds me of a conversation I once had with a patient about cigarette smoking and lung cancer. I told him that he should stop smoking because it was damaging his lungs (he already had moderate lung disease) and his risk factors (family, smoking level, etc) suggested that he was a prime candidate for smoking related lung cancer or heart attack. His response was to ask me if I could tell him with certainty that he was going to get lung cancer. I told him no. He said "See, you don't know nothing." And, in fact, he didn't die of lung cancer or heart attack. He died of pneumonia secondary to his COPD.

There are still folk out there who claim that nobody can "prove" that smoking causes lung cancer, and that all of medicine is pseudoscience in this area.

Well, in fact I do know something. And the fact that my prediction was inaccurate doesn't mean that I can't accurately state the increased odds of something happening or make statements about causation.

If a good meterologist tells me it's going to rain tomorrow, I'll carry an umbrella. I'm not going to claim that it's just pseudoscience and be surprised when I get wet. If a cop friend of mine comes to me and says "Don't trust that guy. He's ringing all my bells as a con artist," I'm going to be very careful in my dealings with the man. I'm not going to say that the cop's 25 years of street experience is meaningless and then be surprised when my bank account gets cleaned out.

The problem is that expectations for a lot of these things -- forensic psychiatry, profiling, etc. -- are simply too high. It's not a matter of being 100% right versus being fake. The problem is often not with the discipline, it seems to me. The problem is with what people demand from it and how it is represented.

And (blowing my cover; this is what I do for a living) most help desk support specialists. :D

Paul Cameron and the rest of the "gay people are sick" and "we can make gay people straight" crowd.

HIV-denialists.

How about actors/actresses/musicians who get to 'testify' before congress? Anybody remember the Meyrl Streep and the ALAR scare?

Scientists who testified before the FDA regarding cigarrette smoking for the last 50 yrs (and all big tobacco scientists who claim to have proven how safe cigarretes are and who still claim nicotine is not addicting)

All DEA field agents who testify in court regarding suspicious activity of drug defendants - "talking on cell phone", "meeting unknown hispanic male at restaurant for lunch" "looked both ways on street when entering vehicle, possible counter-surveillance" bla bla bla

WHile were at it, K-9 drug cops, who claim that the dog alerted to some area or another on the car after encouragement from the handler and who never seem to have data on the number of false positives or mistakes made by the dog, which are considered to be infallable.

Anybody conducting research on the dangers of marijuana on behalf of the federal government.

J.F. Thomas