The Smell Test

Some guy in the Casey Anthony trial is hoping she’ll be found guilty so he can claim his new “electronic nose” is an effective forensic tool.* This seems silly to me. If he wants it to be used for stuff, why not prove it works with a double, single-blind study, where they test it vs. a dog, and they have it test for things that are there or aren’t there, and see how it does at detecting the stuff, and then see how it did vs. the dog? It seems to me that’s the only way to be sure it even works at all! But maybe they’ve already done this and they’re keeping it a secret just so we’ll all think he’s a fraudster and we’ll leave all kinds of scent-related evidence all over the place when we commit our murders? Oh, who knows!

But if his thingy is proven to be effective, he should totally make ads for it on TV! He could call it: “The Smell Test”, and run ads that say stuff like: “Do you suspect your child of smoking marijuana but you can’t find it? Are you tired of getting bitten by police dogs who don’t even find anything when you try to call the cops on him/her? Then get “The Smell Test”, and you’ll find those drugs in no time! In fact, we’ve got our 100% satisfaction guarantee where if we don’t find what you’re looking for, we’ll plant it and say we did! So remember: that’s “The Smell Test”! Look for it wherever shady lawyer huckstering stuff is advertised!”

And they could also make ads for the unit's use in questionable accusation cases, where they say: "Hey, did someone do something wrong, but they say they didn't do it? Did they have a corpse in their trunk, but they claim they didn't? Were they smuggling drugs but they say it was something else? Let's find out! Does it pass "The Smell Test"? Get one and see!"

* (They’re about to announce the verdict in around 15 minutes, so we’ll find out soon!)