Tom Maguire is an impossibly stupid man, and his commenters are probably even dumber. Maguire had anticipated the possibility that voice analysis would determine that Zimmerman was lying when he (allegedly) told the police that he was screaming for help. His argument was that we can’t use science to identify voices unless we can recreate exactly what those voices were saying. So, for example, if you scream in fear of your life into a tape recorder, the only way to match that recording is to have another recording of you screaming in fear for your life. We couldn’t use your 911 call from moments earlier. Also, you can’t use science to identify a voice if there is any background noise. This, of course, ignores the entirety of the Orlando Sentinal’s explanation:
Though the term “biometric analysis” may sound futuristic, it basically just means using personal characteristics for identification. A fingerprint scanner is an example of a biometric device.
Much as the ridges of a human hand produce a fingerprint, each human voice has unique, distinguishable traits, Owen says. “They’re all particular to the individual.”
Another benefit of modern biometric analysis, Owen said, is it doesn’t require an “in context” comparison. In other words, Owen didn’t need a sample of Zimmerman screaming in order to compare his voice to the call.
The technology Owen used to analyze the Zimmerman tape has a wide range of applications, including national security and international policing, he said. A recently as January, Owen used the same technology to identify accused murderer Sheila Davalloo in a 911 call made almost a decade ago.
Owen testified that it was Davalloo, accused of stabbing another woman nine times in a condo in Shippan, Conn., who reported the killing to police from a pay phone in November 2002.
Davalloo was convicted, according to news reports.
Owen says the audio from Zimmerman’s call is much better quality than the 911 call in the Davalloo case. Voice identification experts judge the quality based on a signal-to-noise ratio; in other words, comparing the usable audio in a clip to the environmental noises that make a match difficult.
And the call on which the screams are heard is better quality than is necessary, Owen says.
“In our world, that’s the home run,” he says.
The article even includes the testimony of someone who doesn’t believe the biometric method is rigorous enough. And he also confirms that the voice is not Zimmerman’s. I’d add to this that, while it is by no means adequate to present as evidence at trial, no one but a moron can listen to the audio of the 911 call and not conclude that the screamer is a young man or boy.
It’s remarkable that Maguire reacts to this news by instantly adopting the pose of a defense attorney:
If I were the prosecutor I would be begging for better experts – sending up a guy who doesn’t believe in the science won’t be helpful. Sending up a guy who says he can’t match it to Zimmerman so it must be Martin will be ripped up by defense experts who will explain the limitations of the techniques. They will uncharitably point out that it might not be possible to match the voice to either person, the judge can then expound on “innocent until proven guilty” and “resonable doubt”, and away we go.
He questions the assumption that if it’s not Zimmerman, it must be Martin. Does he have a theory that there was a screamer on the grassy knoll? He knows that the reason the voice was not matched to Martin is because the researchers didn’t have a sample of his voice. Does he have any reasonable expectation that the match will not be made if and when a sample is provided?
The cognitive dissonance is overwhelming:
MY HEAD IS SPINNING: Am I anti-science because I don’t accept on faith the pronouncements of these two experts in a field far beyond my expertise? Or am I pro-science because I am trying to reach an independent opinion guided by other experts whose qualifications I am unable to evaluate? That might seem like a hard question, but since I am a righty, I know libs know the answer.
His “other experts” is really just a discussion of speaker recognition software that was among the first results of his Google Search. The study explains how computers can be used to recognize voices and some of the challenges those computers must overcome in order to do a good job.
Then we have this piece of brilliance. What if both men were screaming at the same time? What would that do to the 48% match to Zimmerman’s voice?
THAT WOULD TIE IN TO THE 48% MATCH:
From ‘myiq2xu’, who may also be aided by stronger coffee:
Did anyone consider the possibility that BOTH men were screaming and yelling at the same time?
If Zimmerman did half the screaming they have a 96% match.
We can only hope that was a failed effort at snark. He acts is if he believes that the test showed that the screamer was Zimmerman with 48% confidence. What the test showed was that the voice shared less than half of the measured characteristics of Zimmerman’s known voice. In other words, it certainly was not Zimmerman.
Maguire doesn’t offer a conjecture about why Mr. Tom Owen would make up his conclusion. Nor does he challenge Mr. Owen’s assertion that the 911 tape is very high quality. He’s just throwing sand in his reader’s eyes so that they can maintain the fiction that there remains any real doubt about the fact that Trayvon Martin was screaming in terror prior to being executed by George Zimmerman.
Was he trying to get Zimmerman’s gun when he died? Wouldn’t you?