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In a series of posts, I am going to intro­duce the reader to the exis­tence of ISO 17025 and its impor­tance.  I am going to intro­duce it in bite-sized bits for easy diges­tion.  Just like all mat­ters of learn­ing, knowl­edge is incre­men­tal over time and builds upon pre­vi­ous exposure.

So far we have answered the fol­low­ing questions:

• What is ISO 17025?
• Why do we need stan­dards? Why ISO 17025 and pol­icy, pro­ce­dures and instruc­tions matter.
• Why is ISO 17025 so impor­tant to us in foren­sic science?
• Why should the crim­i­nal defense com­mu­nity care about ISO 17025?
• How can ISO 17025 pro­vide a sim­ple method to develop themes to cross-examine experts?
• How can ISO 17025 be used by the crim­i­nal law prac­ti­tioner to help get dis­cov­ery?
• Can ISO 17025 can answer the ques­tion as to who the actual ana­lyst is?

This post we exam­ine how ISO 17025 can help min­i­mize the par­tic­u­lar prob­lem of fraud­u­lent cre­den­tials of foren­sic scientists.

It seems as if the foren­sic sci­ence arena is par­tic­u­larly attrac­tive to charlatans.

There are tes­ti­fy­ing state expert wit­nesses who over-state their cre­den­tials and qual­i­fi­ca­tions. The most shock­ing of which was prob­a­bly the infa­mous Fred Zain who was the sub­ject of our Week 13 Foren­sic Sci­ence Geek of the Week Chal­lenge.

Fred Zain

But there are also more sub­tle forms of down­right dis­hon­esty: the “sem­i­nar” folks and the  “I have  been doing this for a long time and there­fore must be doing it right” folks. I have blogged on this before

• The Impor­tance of Proper Cre­den­tials in Foren­sic Sci­ence where I wrote before:

There is a large demon­stra­ble dif­fer­ence between a true cre­den­tialed sci­en­tist who has attained a PhD or in the case of a Med­ical Exam­iner a MD or in the case of an engi­neer a PE through a brick and mor­tar insti­tu­tion ver­sus a machine oper­a­tor. A machine oper­a­tor is sim­ply a per­son who is an expert in employ­ing a check­list: an expert in push­ing a but­ton on a machine. This type of per­son is not an expert in any­thing beyond that check­list or that but­ton. Whereas, a true cre­den­tialed sci­en­tist is some­one who can explain the why.  The why is the key.

• Hon­ori­fi­ca­bil­i­tu­dini­tat­i­bus or a Faux Sci­en­tist where I wrote:

A lot of wasted ink is devoted in a faux scientist’s resume to “sem­i­nars”.  Almost all of these “sem­i­nars” do not have a func­tion to test under­stand­ing, reten­tion or pro­fi­ciency in the con­cepts pre­sented. Most are, at best, atten­dance based. Some folks hon­estly read the news­pa­per dur­ing the sem­i­nar. Still oth­ers Face­Book as the lec­tur­ers present. Some even sleep. Some have their agency pay for it and don’t even show up at all.

For any sci­en­tist, a resume full of “sem­i­nars” that are attendance-based and has a lack of proficiency-based train­ing with tests is a red flag to me.  It should be to you too.

On the extreme, our recent his­to­ries are replete with indi­vid­u­als who over­state their cre­den­tials when even the most very basic exer­cise of due dili­gence would per­haps dis­cover indi­vid­u­als such as the recently indicted and con­victed Ohio State tox­i­col­o­gist[i].

ISO 17025 requires per Sec­tion 5.2 (Per­son­nel) for lab­o­ra­to­ries to exe­cute due dili­gence on all test­ing and report­ing per­son­nel, includ­ing con­trac­tors, to make sure that the tech­ni­cal per­son­nel and their stated cre­den­tials are in fact ver­i­fied, not just sim­ply stated.

[i] James Fer­gu­son was charged with two counts of fal­si­fi­ca­tion for lying on the stand dur­ing a 1990 mur­der trial. At the time, James was Franklin County’s chief tox­i­col­o­gist.  Fer­gu­son was a key wit­ness in the Lick­ing County trial of Vir­ginia LeFever, who was con­victed of poi­son­ing her hus­band more than two decades ago.