Every Monday on Global Comment, we share the slow, thoughtful, considerate words that our brains – and souls – need but that it’s easy to miss in our busy world. We distil the best of the web and recommend just three links every week that you absolutely must see.
No fluff, no fuss, just three exceptional reads.
Here are this week’s recommendations:
A Lab Test That Experts Liken to a Witch Trial Is Helping Send Women to Prison for Murder (Duaa Eldeib / ProPublica)
In investigations across the country, the lung float test has emerged as a barometer of sorts to help determine if a mother suffered the devastating loss of a stillbirth or if she murdered her baby who was born alive. The test has been used in at least 11 cases where women were charged criminally since 2013 and has helped put nine of them behind bars, a ProPublica review of court records and news reports found. Some of those women remain in prison. Some had their charges dropped and were released.
But the test is so deeply flawed that many medical examiners say it cannot be trusted. They put it in the same company as the discredited analysis of bite marks and bloodstain patterns, 911 calls and hair comparisons, all of which lack solid scientific foundations and have contributed to wrongful convictions.
It is pseudoscience masquerading as sound forensics, they say. Some even liken the test to witch trials, where courts decided if a woman was a witch based on whether she floated or sank.
The predators’ playground: Unraveling 40 years of sexual misconduct at a single California high school (Matt Drange / Insider)
Students, parents, and alumni have grappled intensely with the scope of abuse at Rosemead since that first story appeared. The resulting reckoning, with students demanding reforms, alumni begging school board members to act, and the sheriff’s department opening a criminal investigation, marked a sharp break with the culture of silence that has suffocated Rosemead for decades. Dozens of the former students I spoke with for this story told me that reading about Burgess’ victims made them realize that they were not alone. Many shared their experiences with friends and family for the first time; at least nine have sought out therapy to unpack the damage that attending Rosemead High inflicted on them.
The school’s roster of educators who exploited students’ trust spans generations. Interviews with nearly 300 people, including alumni and their parents, current and former employees, and law enforcement, along with hundreds of pages of documents, including disciplinary records and internal emails, show that widespread reports of abuse have persisted from at least the 1980s through the present day.
At times like this, people will try and divide us (Humza Yousaf)
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Image: ZQ Lee