Unnatural Selection

Matthew Hutson in Psychology Today:

Jurybox_2Jury consulting has become a big business over the past three decades. Hundreds of firms now rake in several hundred million dollars a year. Many offer “scientific jury selection” services, deploying demographics, statistics, and social psychology to cull potential jurors and engineer the perfect panel of people. But as these gurus aim to extract sure verdicts from parties of unknowns, their grasp on the chemistry of human nature appears to require a working knowledge of alchemy…. Despite all the money and research poured into predicting and shaping jury decisions, to a large degree the state of the art remains just that: art.

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