This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://biologos.org/blogs/guest/forensic-science-bringing-justice-by-investigating-the-past
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://biologos.org/blogs/guest/forensic-science-bringing-justice-by-investigating-the-past
Thank you for another very interesting article on science. I have always thought that the AiG attitude on historical science would not allow anyone to be convicted of a crime unless the judge and jury had all been witnesses, but I had not considered the cases where straightforward observational science can become controversial.
Now that I think about it, I remember reading about a study in Mexico that found that the people who ate the most chili peppers had the highest rates of cancer. If one disliked spicy food, that might be the end of it, but someone decided to look deeper into the data. They found that the poorest people ate more chilis than those who were better-off, and that the poor lived in areas that had the most pollution from industrial waste.
That wouldn’t automatically exonerate chili peppers, but might suggest that factors other than chilis were involved.