AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
I went in yesterday with four things to do: print out/ read articles for my seminar class, grab a book from the library, borrow a pair of books from Clark, and go to Law Class. Let's review:
1. Well, that was easy enough.
2. That, too.
3. Oh, wait. Clark was out sick. No problem, I went to his office, and the admin for CSPO let me in. Only the books on Clark's shelves utilize an organizational scheme only apparent to Clark. After ten minutes, I found only one book that was tangentially related to the ones I needed, only to discover when I returned to my office that it was the same one I had just checked out from the library (they had different covers, but yes, I'm an idiot). So a total fail on this front.
4. Our law class featured a guest lecturer, an Arizona judge who will remain nameless (but who is pretty high up in the judicial hierarchy, so this should appropriately strike you as terrifying) who claimed expertise in all areas neuroscience. Only... she had no idea about anything neuroscience. I can't even duplicate her bizarre thoughts / sentences. She kept confusing gray and white matter, kept making bizarrely vague allusions to "frontal lobes" and "you know, the amygdala." She said "there's no free will because your brain knows what you will do before you do." I think she was trying to talk about conscious experience, but she kept repeating that line as though there were a guy named brain in my head who is really in charge. She kept talking about "psychopath" versus "sociopath" with the grand definitional heuristic of "sociopath means they don't have a conscience." Huh? She then talked about a "murder gene." She then said, "You know, not to be stereotypical, but those Native Americans who are supposed to be kind and gentle are actually really violent and alcoholics." You know, not to be stereotypical. She then said that it was surprising that some serial killers had "mainstream upbringings with conservative values." She then said that "everybody empathizes, you can't help it." This came MAYBE five minutes after talking about sociopaths and psychopaths.
I'm not even hitting the bad science stuff. She said she would admit neurologic PET scan data because, unlike other judges, she had read about it. She offered no justification for its use - and there's plenty of reasons not to want to accept pet scan data as somehow indicative of someone's behavior or capacity to act morally - just that she thought they were good pictures that would help the jurors out. I repeat:
AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
That was about the first half of class; the second half she spent sharing two cases she had presided over in which a serial murderer was involved. It turned into 45 minutes of "war stories." I feel this is a common enough phenomenon; the doctor types I was exposed to certainly fell back on "cases" and spinning yarns as a way to connect with one another. Lawyers seem to do the same. But there was something a little too gleeful in the way she talked about sentencing the men to death. She joked about their last words and deeds, and did imitations of their courtroom testimony. In addition to angry at the wall of stupid that was being spewed at me w/r/t neuroscience, I started to feel dirty. That's when I realized, and when I wrote in my notebook:
This is lawyer porn.
And apparently it works, as the lawyers-to-be in the room was enthralled with these ridiculous stories. I mean, no one was Paul Reubens or wearing trench coats or anything, but sheesh.
All of which could be summed up as wow, that was a colossal waste of time/ a day, and wow, am I ever terrified that she represents "expertise" in neuroscience at the judicial level. I'd hate to see the uninformed.
Alright, ugh. On that note, I'm going to Rochester. See some of you in a few. I got my potato mashing muscles ready.
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Now playing: Guns N' Roses - Shackler's Revenge
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