Keeping the data accurate and not fabricating results is one of the most crucial aspects of an experiment. The analyst changed the data in the first video to create a replica of the scene by working backward after the initial test did not match the intended outcome, which prompted him to hit the skull multiple more times. In a real experiment, the outcome is the outcome, and it doesn’t matter if it is similar to what was predicted by the hypothesis, rather try to explain why the result is different.
While in court, they played a video of the analyst hitting the blood very unscientifically. They used a random location with an unspecified amount of blood and force to make the pattern making it unable to be exactly reproduced. The blood spatter analyst was able to create the pattern they found in a scenario that wasn’t possible given the situation of the crime which goes back to going to fabricating the desired outcome, further proving how unscientific this experiment was. As seen in the second clip, blood spatter analysis needs to be very scientific and take the outcomes of how they are not trying to fabricate the scene. Dr. Henry Lee showed by paying close attention to how the blood looked on the wall you can tell that the way the analyst said the crime happened was impossible. The many inconsistencies with the experiment made the case easy to pick apart in court. There was no credibility in the experiment due to a lack of care when it came to conducting it when it should have been an extremely powerful tool.
In the different cases we looked at in class, blood spatter analysis proved Sam Sheppard’s innocence by looking at the physics of how the blood came off the body. According to the analysis, Sam would have had to be sprayed with blood. A corner of the room was spotless meaning that some of the blood must have been blocked by the body of the perpetrator, but Sam did not have any traces of blood on him on the morning after the crime. Overall, if done correctly bloodstain pattern analysis should be extremely scientific and helpful for gathering evidence; however, it is easy for bias to be formed when an unwanted outcome occurs.
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I also think that the prosecution’s expert in the first clip didn’t properly test his hypothesis and instead like you said worked backward to try to have the evidence match his hypothesis. So like you said, I think blood pattern analysis is a very credible science as long as it’s done correctly.