`Kentucky school fire forensic case`

$8M arson/electrical-fire case. SEM-EDS analysis returned by a Kentucky lab found 13% technetium in the nail samples. Tom's punchline: "We can solve this case — just sell the nails." Garbage data. Case settled before he testified. Lesson: question your data.

Which leads me to another story. I had a case down in Kentucky of a school that burned down — I think it was an elementary school. The roofers were putting nails in the roof, and the question was: did they hit an electrical cable and cause an arc that started the fire? We had some analysis come back from a laboratory in Kentucky. They did an SEM-EDS analysis, and it found thirteen percent technetium. I said, oh, we can solve this case — it's only worth $8 million, we'll just sell the nails. That much technetium is valuable. This is where, again, you have to question the data. This was garbage data. The case settled before I got up to tell the jury how stupid the other people were.