The Sherlock Effect, Thomas W. Young
The Sherlock Effect, Thomas W. Young
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The Sherlock Effect
How Forensic Doctors and Investigators Disastrously Reason Like the Great Detective

Author: Thomas W. Young

Narrator: Thomas W. Young

Unabridged: 12 hr 40 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 11/23/2021


Synopsis

Forensic science is in crisis and at a cross-roads. Movies and television dramas depict forensic heroes with high-tech tools and dazzling intellects who—inside an hour, notwithstanding commercials—piece together past-event puzzles from crime scenes and autopsies. Likewise, Sherlock Holmes—the iconic fictional detective, and the invention of forensic doctor Sir Arthur Conan Doyle—is held up as a paragon of forensic and scientific inspiration—does not "reason forward" as most people do, but "reasons backwards." Put more plainly, rather than learning the train of events and seeing whether the resultant clues match those events, Holmes determines what happened in the past by looking at the clues. Impressive and infallible as this technique appears to be—it must be recognized that infallibility lies only in works of fiction. Reasoning backward does not work in real life: reality is far less tidy.

In courtrooms everywhere, innocent people pay the price of life imitating art, of science following detective fiction. In particular, this book looks at the long and disastrous shadow cast by that icon of deductive reasoning, Sherlock Holmes.


About Thomas W. Young

Thomas W. Young, MD, a forensic pathologist and full-time forensic doctor for nearly thirty years, has testified in court over 460 times both as a prosecution and defense expert. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and the National Association of Medical Examiners: two organizations that represent the mainstream of forensic science and pathology. He has written extensively and been published peer-reviewed journals. He served as a chief medical examiner successfully for nearly twelve years and is a former director of a training program in forensic pathology. As a forensic practitioner, what makes him uniquely qualified to write this book are not only his credentials, his research on real-world trials and case studies, his examination of current practices, and his close study of deductive and inductive logic. Thanks to his years as a chief medical examiner and as a current independent forensic pathology consultant, Dr. Young has a deep understanding of the problem about which he writes.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Duy

Cuốn sách khá hay, nói về những vấn đề nghiêm trọng trong ngành điều tra hình sự. Về cơ bản, rất nhiều người và kỹ thuật trong ngành này là không đáng tin cậy, nhưng vẫn được sử dụng rộng rãi. Điều ra hình sự không ngon ăn như trong phim! :D Có một điều tác giả lập luận rất buồn cười: khi phân tích m......more

Goodreads review by Richard

This book is heartbreaking and we need it.......more

Goodreads review by Sarmad

من المهم قراءته ، للرجوع لكفية التفكير العلمي المتدرج و عدم القفز و الرضوخ إلى النظريات فقط.......more