Expertise side-lined: science, fraud and bogus molecular detectors in the Mexican ‘War on Drugs’ Luis Reyes-Galindo
[email protected] Abstract The paper presents a summarised chronology of the controversy surrounding the use of fraudulent handheld molecular detectors in Mexico, as well as the responses to the controversy from three critical sectors: the Mexican media, the different government branches and national scientific institutions. The paper also includes interview material with the most prominent critics and of the molecular detectors in Mexico and compares the voices of ‘scientific activists’ with the institutional responses. Finally, an analysis of all these different responses to the controversy is made, along with a short discussion of the relevance for expertise studies, as well as a critique of the application of existing expertise frameworks in developing country contexts such as Mexico’s. A brief history of molecular detectors Since the early 1990s, several devices marketed as handheld molecular detectors or using similar monikers began to be marketed in the police, security, rescue and military equipment market around the world. In 1993, after warnings from several law enforcement agents who had documented the widespread use of these seemingly miraculous apparatuses which were in fact nothing more than dowsing rods marketed under a veil of pseudoscientific jargon, the US government indicted the manufacturers of the earliest MD models – known as the Quadro Tracker – and subsequently banned their sale in the USA.