Can you find the scientific basis for DREs?
Google "Drug Recognition Expert". Just now that search turned up 17,000 web sites. Now go through those sites looking for the scientific basis of DREs. The foundational studies. The scientific papers. The accuracy statistics and test standardized interpretation criteria. No luck? Or maybe that one recurring hit, Smith's limited data paper from 2002.

Ok. Google "Drug Recognition Expert" science. Again, no science.

 

OK. Do what doctors like me do when we have medical questions. Search every article catalogued in the vast medical literature going back decades. Do a PubMed search for "Drug Recognition Expert." (you'll have to type in the search term yourself). Just now, seven (7) hits. Out of 19 million medical journal articles, seven deal with DREs. And they're not really medical articles. They're law enforcement articles published in medical-ish journals.

DRE officers are taught that they can push on a person's muscle and tell that person has smoked marijuana. Really? And anyone anywhere is surprised there is no science to back this up?

DREs are not science. They are pure carney trick.


STAndards for Reporting Diagnostic Tests
"The objective of the STARD initiative is to improve the accuracy and completeness of reporting of studies of diagnostic accuracy, to allow readers to assess the potential for bias in the study (internal validity) and to evaluate its generalisability (external validity).

"The STARD statement consist of a checklist of 25 items and recommends the use of a flow diagram which describe the design of the study and the flow of patients."

How scientists evaluate diagnostic tests

STARD & Bayes
Drug Recognition Exams are diagnostic tests. The DRE officer measures physical characteristics and based on those measurements determines whether a person is or is not impaired by a drug in one of a number of classes. DRExams are tests. How accurate is the test? How does science decide how accurate a test is?

You'd figure testing a test would be easy. Do the test on a bunch of people, see what percent of the time the test gives the right answer, bingo, there's your accuracy. Turns out the easy obvious way doesn't work. Gives the wrong answer. Leads to wrong arrests and false convictions.

Turns out testing a test is hard. More than 200 biomedical journals—Journal of the American Medical Association, New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, British Medical Journal, Cancer, Neurology, Gut, Heart, Circulation, Family Practice, Annals of Internal Medicine, etc.—instruct authors to report diagnostic test research using the STARD standard.

Browse over to the STARD statement and have a look at the STARD checklist. Testing a diagnostic test is hard. There's a science to it.

You should also know that scientists use Bayes' Theorem to interpret the results of scientific tests. Interpreting the results of a diagnostic test is hard. There's a science to it.

DRE Junk Science
 Drug Recognition Expert validation wise, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration hasn't gotten the news. NHTSA "science" ignores STARD. NHTSA "science" ignores Bayes' Theorem. NHTSA DRE science pretty much happens at the this-looks-easy-I-bet-any-fool-can-do-it level. NHTSA's DRE test validation testing strategy is to test a bunch of people and see how often the test gives the right answer. Bingo, there's your accuracy. Trouble is, this doesn't work. Gives the wrong answer.

NHTSA's DRE validation methods have no basis in science. They don't work. Which means DRE tests themselves have no basis in science. They don't work. DRE tests lead to wrong arrests and false convictions.


How NHTSA evaluates DREs
The rigor of NHTSA eye science.

NHTSA's validation standard
NHTSA evaluates DRE research not with the scientific factors listed in the STARD checklist, but with the agency's own win-convictions standard .
"Proof of the effectiveness of the DEC program began to be accumulated from the very outset of the program. LAPD personnel demonstrated they could conduct examinations that led directly to the conviction of drug impaired drivers and other drug law violators."
2007 Drug Evaluation And Classification Training Program The Drug Recognition Expert School, pg III-3

NHTSA identifies the research validating DREs
 NHTSA's 2007 Drug Evaluation And Classification Training Program The Drug Recognition Expert School, pg III-3 ff says the basis of DREs lies is three studies. I've included links to copies of the reports I can find (one was apparently never published).

Bigelow, "Johns Hopkins" NHTSA 1985
Volunteers were given an upper, a downer, marijuana, or nothing. They were told to cooperate fully with the LAPD drug officer who "examined" them. Working together the officer and the fully cooperative "suspect" were able to work out whether the subject had been drugged with a high dose of an upper, or a high dose of a downer, or MJ, or nothing—proving that people who have been drugged can tell the difference between uppers, downers, and MJ. Well, no kidding.

At middle doses the test failed. About one third of unimpaired "weak" MJ users were misclassified as guilty. But, says NHTSA, "It is unlikely those 'weak' does drivers would have been stopped by officers." [ibid, page III-3]

In other words, "The test doesn't work, the test misidentifies as guilty people who are actually innocent. But that's OK because we only use the test on people who are guilty."

Bigelow 1985,
aka the "Johns Hopkins study"

Identifying Types of Drug Intoxication: Laboratory Evaluation of a Subject-Examination Procedure

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The LAPD 173 STUDY

 

Compton, RP. (1986). Field evaluation of the Los Angeles police department drug detection program. DOT HS 807 012. Washington, DC: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

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Adler and Bourland, 1991
This unpublished manuscript * [!!] is NO LONGER AVAILABLE, as it once was, through the Arizona Department of Public Safety, or; Mesa (Arizona) Police Department Traffic Section.

It's not clear to my non-attorney mind how unpublished manuscripts get past Frey or Daubert or 702, but there you have it. If you have a copy of this, did I mention unpublished manuscript, please let me know. FST (at) fieldsobrietytest.info

[* reference: Talpins and Hayes The Drug Evaluation and Classification(DEC) Program Targeting Hardcore Impaired Drivers , American Prosecutors Research Institute, 2004, footnote 51, page 17, PDF page 23]

Adler and Bourland, Arizona’s DRE Program:A Comparison of DRE Opinions to Toxicology Results

 

 

That's it. Those are the reports NHTSA says validate DREs. A further report often cited is Adler and Burns, 1994. It's hard to find, so I've linked you to a copy directly I got directly from the Arizona DOT.

Adler & Burns, Arizona DRE Validation, 1994:
This study "validates" the Arizona DR Experts, not the DR Exam. In a scientific sense, as detailed by STARD, the DR Exam is not really a scientific test at all – it has no interpretation formula or criteria.

Most of the subjects in this study confessed. Others had drug paraphernalia found on them. The data here are consistent with the bulk of the DRE officers' accuracy coming from the fact they mostly arrested people who confessed or had drug paraphernalia with them.

Adler & Burns 1994
aka , Arizona DRE Validation, 1994:

Drug Recognitions Expert (DRE) Validation Study

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Greg Kane, MD
SFST, HGN, &
Drug Recognition Exam
Expert Witness
 Let me help you
Exclude junk science DRE evidence
Show the jury why NHTSA science proves DREs don't work.

 

email: FST (at) fieldsobrietytest.info
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