Category: Academic Reportage

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Sukhun Kang, Assistant Professor of Technology Management, University of California, Santa Barbara

Some clinical trials aren’t designed to answer scientific questions. They’re designed to market drugs. In our recently published research, my team and I analyzed over 34,000 industry-funded trials and found that hundreds of studies across seven medical fields were likely designed to promote a drug to physicians rather than to generate scientific data. For some fields, nearly 1% of clinical trials were for marketing purposes.

Known as seeding trials, these studies prioritize marketing over science while disguising their commercial purpose as legitimate research. Pharmaceutical companies use them to familiarize physicians with new products under the guise of data collection. Participants sign consent forms, believing they are contributing to medical knowledge.

In reality, patients are absorbing risks that serve corporate interests rather than resolving genuine uncertainty about the therapeutic potential of a drug.

The term seeding trial first entered the medical literature in 1994, when then-commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration David Kessler and his colleagues described such studies as attempts to entice doctors to prescribe new drugs through trials that appear to serve little scientific purpose.

Three decades later, the problem of seeding trials persists.

How seeding trials work

While the structure of a seeding trial looks similar to legitimate clinical trials on the surface, the objectives are different.

In a typical clinical trial, researchers recruit patients across clinics and hospitals to test whether a treatment is safe and effective.

In contrast, the pharmaceutical company behind a seeding trial enrolls large numbers of physicians at many sites, each seeing only a few patients. The goal is exposure: getting doctors to prescribe the drug, not generating robust data. Doctors may be selected based on their prescribing volume rather than their research credentials.

In a legitimate trial, the number of study sites reflects the number of patients needed to answer a scientific question. In a seeding trial, the number of sites reflects the number of doctors the company wants to reach.

Seeding trials often target drugs already on the market and operate as Phase 4, or postmarketing, studies. These types of studies are typically conducted after a drug has been approved to monitor its long-term safety or effectiveness. This trial stage receives less regulatory scrutiny than trials for initial drug approval, and the aims of the study may have limited relevance to actual patient care. For example, a seeding trial might measure whether patients prefer the taste of a new formulation or how quickly a drug dissolves in the stomach, rather than whether it actually improves health outcomes.

Legitimate trials also have independent oversight, with committees of scientists and ethicists who monitor the study’s progress and can halt it if patients are being harmed.

In a seeding trial, this oversight is often minimal. The sponsor of the study – typically the pharmaceutical company funding the research – maintains heavy control over the trial’s design and conduct.

Cases that exposed seeding trials

Seeding trials had attracted little public attention until litigation in the 1990s forced open the internal files of two major pharmaceutical companies, revealing that studies presented as science had been designed as marketing campaigns.

The most notorious example is Merck’s ADVANTAGE trial for the painkiller Vioxx (rofecoxib), which was first approved in 1999. The company presented the study, which ran from 1999 to 2001, as scientific research, but internal documents revealed that its primary purpose was to encourage physicians to prescribe Vioxx to their patients.

Meanwhile, Merck was accused of downplaying the significant cardiovascular risks associated with the drug. The consequences were severe: Approximately 30,000 lawsuits and nearly $5 billion in compensation followed Vioxx’s withdrawal from the market.

Parke-Davis’ STEPS trial for the painkiller Neurontin (gabapentin) – first approved in 1993 for epilepsy – followed a similar pattern of disguising marketing as research. Internal documents showed that the trial, which ran from 1996 to 1998, aimed to disseminate marketing messages through the medical literature and encourage clinicians to prescribe the drug off-label for conditions it was not approved for, such as neuropathic pain and bipolar disorder.

Unlike Vioxx, gabapentin was never withdrawn. The trial’s commercial legacy outlasted its scientific one.

These cases came to light only because litigation forced the release of internal company documents. Without that exposure, they would have remained indistinguishable from ordinary research.

How common are seeding trials?

My team and I study how pharmaceutical firms innovate and respond to regulations. To estimate the prevalence of seeding trials, we analyzed nearly 34,400 industry-funded Phase 3 and Phase 4 studies that posted results on ClinicalTrials.gov between 1998 and 2024. The trials covered seven therapeutic areas where researchers had previously documented seeding trials, including major depressive disorder, epilepsy, Type 2 diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis.

We screened these trials for criteria that prior research has identified as hallmarks of a seeded trial, such as low patient-to-site ratios and limited independent oversight.

Ultimately, we identified 204 trials – 0.59% – that had characteristics consistent with marketing-driven study design. The prevalence of these probable seeding trials in different disciplines ranged from 0.15% in osteoarthritis to 0.98% in rheumatoid arthritis.

These figures might understate the true scope of marketing-driven research. The criteria we used capture only the most identifiable cases of studies driven by marketing purposes. Definitively identifying seeding trials requires access to internal sponsor documents revealing the intent of the study, and those documents surface only through litigation or whistleblowers.

Many trials occupy an ambiguous middle ground, generating useful data while simultaneously serving promotional objectives. Without systematic surveillance, the full extent of marketing-driven studies remains unknown.

The criteria to identify seeding trials also require careful interpretation. A low patient-to-site ratio, for instance, can reflect the practical difficulties of enrolling patients in studies of drugs already on the market, such as trials testing new drug combinations or new uses for an existing treatment. These markers are best understood as signals of possible marketing intent warranting closer scrutiny, not proof of marketing intent.

Whether the prevalence of seeding trials has shifted with the expansion of transparency requirements over the past decade cannot be determined from existing registry data.

What can be done

Seeding trials may be uncommon, but they are not accidental. They reflect structural incentives in a system where the companies that fund research also stand to gain from its results. Strengthening transparency in clinical trial registration, funding disclosure and oversight would help ensure that clinical research serves patients first.

Along with other researchers, we’ve proposed reforms that cluster around two areas. The first is standardized reporting that discloses trial funding, investigator payments, enrollment criteria and the rationale for site selection. The second is independent oversight, such as committees funded through pooled industry levies, which are fees collected from pharmaceutical companies to finance independent monitoring. Random audits with publicly available results are one form of such oversight.

Some infrastructure for tracking financial relationships between industry and physicians is already in place. In the U.S., the Open Payments database allows public tracking of industry payments to physicians. But regulatory variability across countries creates openings for companies to conduct marketing-driven trials in jurisdictions with weaker oversight, particularly in low- and middle-income countries.

Clinicians can protect themselves and their patients by screening for a set of red flags before agreeing to participate in or cite a trial in their research. These include unusually low patient-to-site ratios, selecting investigators based on prescribing volume, sponsor-dominated oversight and study endpoints of limited clinical relevance. Consent forms are among the few documents patients see before enrolling, and clearer disclosure of the commercial and scientific purpose of a study is among the reforms we have called for.

For patients, clinicians and regulators alike, the question to ask of any trial is the same: Whom does it really serve?

Sukhun Kang does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Clinical trials that are actually marketing ploys targeting doctors – how seeding trials put profit over patients – https://theconversation.com/clinical-trials-that-are-actually-marketing-ploys-targeting-doctors-how-seeding-trials-put-profit-over-patients-280398

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Nigel Melville, Associate Professor of Information Systems, University of Michigan

Judging by a slew of recent corporate announcements, your next “co-worker” might be an artificial intelligence agent – doing the work of an assistant, job scheduler, morning debriefer, learning coach and more.

JPMorgan Chase, the largest U.S. bank, describes a clear vision for a new world of omnipresent AI agents: “Every employee will have their own personalized AI assistant; every process is powered by AI agents, and every client experience has an AI concierge.”

In brick-and-mortar retail, Walmart is already implementing its vision around agents, which involves support of customers, in-store employees and other business areas, with supervisor agents assigning tasks to subagents much like managers oversee employees.

What these and many other large organizations realize is that agents don’t just answer questions, like an AI-powered search engine or simple chatbot. They complete real work by planning tasks, taking actions and checking results to achieve a goal.

But there’s a problem. Companies in industries ranging from finance and tech to logistics and legal are rapidly embracing the promise of AI agents. But the flesh-and-blood workers they’re meant to assist – and sometimes replace – are struggling to adapt, hurting morale and productivity in the process.

The result is a growing climate of fear about AI job insecurity. FOBO – fear of becoming obsolete – is now a thing. A recent survey by consultancy KPMG found that 52% of workers report they are concerned that AI could eventually take their jobs. And some are fighting back. In another survey, nearly one-third said they are actively sabotaging their company’s AI strategy.

To make matters worse, some of these AI agents are going rogue, deleting data or executing other unintended actions.

My research on AI and agent capabilities, value and risk, as well as emerging studies of the cognitive implications of AI, the future of work and the role of AI in workplace inequality, suggest two key lessons for anyone navigating this new AI agent reality:

First, learn how the agents you’re working with operate, including what they do well, where they fall short and how to catch mistakes.

Second, lean into your fundamentally human strengths. These are things agents can’t replicate. Doing so can also help you sustain your own health and well-being.

Rise of the AI agents

AI agents began entering the workforce in 2025 – mainly in tech, finance and customer service – as the next stage of the generative AI revolution. But in 2026, the AI-powered automators are increasingly being deployed in other areas, such as legal and compliance, supply chain management, research and development, healthcare services and retail.

One example is global transportation giant FedEx, which is planning an entire AI agent workforce for its logistic network. The company plans to create “manager agents,” “audit agents” and “worker agents” to create a trail of accountability for their actions, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The theme of agents working together is echoed by North American food service company Gordon Food Service, which is using cross-team agents to reshape its product sourcing strategy.

As companies rapidly adopt the latest AI systems, agents are taking on increasingly diverse roles in the workplace that leverage their ability to do autonomous work.

It’s all driven by economics, with 88% of early corporate adopters reporting a return on investment on at least one use of an AI agent, according to a Google survey of senior business leaders.

Retail giant Amazon says customers who engage with its Rufus AI agent while shopping are 60% more likely to make a purchase compared with those who don’t get help from Rufus. Overall, Rufus is expected to generate over $10 billion in additional annual sales for Amazon, compared with a baseline without Rufus.

Anticipating gains from agents, global consultancy McKinsey already has 25,000 agents doing various tasks. It plans to have as many AI agents as human workers by 2027.

And new model releases, such as Anthropic’s Mythos, will expand what is possible and likely accelerate agent deployment.

Agents still can’t do it alone

A 2023 study I conducted found that AI has the capacity to simulate human capabilities such as cognition, decision-making, creativity and collaboration with people and other agents. The simulation is imperfect, however, so agents need support.

For example, agents are resourceful and relentless. They try repeatedly until they get results, without the loss of motivation humans sometimes experience. But they can also behave unpredictably, even taking harmful actions, such as deleting emails or conducting a smear campaign. And research illustrates that agents can be easily tricked into bad behavior, such as overcorrecting when told not to do something, being persuaded by human appeals to urgency and simple manipulation tricks.

Agents can be quirky too, using odd emojis in formal business writing or responding cynically when you just want the facts. And unlike humans, agents lack emotion, self-awareness or intent. When they fail, such as by pursuing misaligned goals, it’s not personal any more than an espresso machine can break out of spite.

In short, agents can act in unpredictable ways, and it’s difficult to know when that will happen. Managing this uncertainty is a new task for employees, and it comes at a time when many employers have heightened expectations of productivity gains from adopting AI agents.

The bottom line is that if you understand how your agent behaves, you’ll be able to be more productive working with them, be in a better position to avoid risks and be more valued yourself.

Get to know your agent

So what do you do if your boss suddenly tells you you’ll be working with an AI agent from now on?

Just like you would with a new human colleague, the first thing you should do is get to know it. In essence, you need to learn how to collaborate with agents effectively, how to evaluate their performance, what makes them tick and associated ethical implications.

And then jump right in. Give the agent a task and observe how it responds. Try different approaches and pay attention to its output quality, behavior and style. Focus on three essentials:

• Clarity of intent: Define exactly what to do in clear instructions, what information your agent needs, the role your agent is performing, limitations on behavior, and what success looks like for the task.

• Evaluate results against clear criteria.

• Guide the agent during the task by answering questions as they arise.

Overall, this will help you effectively use and critically evaluate AI agents.

Leaning into your humanness

Your agent deskmate still needs you – and your humanness – to be effective.

There’s a growing understanding that in a world of ubiquitous agents, certain skills, such as analyzing information, are becoming less important, while other skills, such as interpersonal and communication skills, are increasing in importance. Think about it: No AI agent can read a room like a human can and pick up on the vibe.

But making the switch will not be easy. It will require psychological work.

Researcher Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic suggests connecting with others as only humans can do, and unlocking your curiosity, while your agent handles the drudgery. In other words, focus on qualities that AI agents don’t have, such as the ability to pick up on nonverbal cues, deliver a pitch with a human touch, manage conflict and build relationships. These skills are the glue that holds human teams together.

AI agents are likely to become a significant part of the workplace. But how and how fast that will happen is unknown.

To make the best of it, learn how to work effectively with agents and embrace your own humanness. This way, you’ll be in a better position to make informed decisions about how to interact with humans and agents alike.

Nigel Melville consults for organizations in the area of AI, owns shares in several tech companies that provide AI services, and has received grants from IT leadership organizations to conduct research on AI in organizations. He does not own shares in any companies that focus on agentic AI.

– ref. So your new ‘co-worker’ is an AI agent – here’s how to make the best of your human-machine relationship  – https://theconversation.com/so-your-new-co-worker-is-an-ai-agent-heres-how-to-make-the-best-of-your-human-machine-relationship-276011

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Andrea Hagan, Instructor of Criminology & Justice, Loyola University New Orleans

The United States is experiencing one of the steepest declines in violent crime in modern history, including a murder rate at its lowest point in more than a century.

Homicides across 35 major American cities fell 21% in 2025, amounting to 922 fewer people killed. Robberies dropped 23%. Gun assaults declined 22%. Carjackings plummeted 43%.

Yet the Trump administration has yanked hundreds of millions of dollars from the programs that helped make those numbers possible.

As a scholar focused on how policy decisions and structural conditions shape crime in marginalized communities, I see a pattern forming that could put these historic gains at serious risk.

‘Wasteful grants’

In April 2025, the Department of Justice terminated 365 previously awarded grants. About US$500 million in promised funds evaporated, affecting more than 550 organizations across 48 states.

The cuts stretched across the public safety landscape: community violence intervention, victim services, law enforcement training, juvenile justice, offender reentry and criminal justice research.

Then-Attorney General Pam Bondi described the cancellations as eliminating “wasteful grants.” The White House argued that the grant programs had been “funding DEI and cultural Marxism” rather than helping to keep Americans safe.

The DOJ’s fiscal year 2026 budget proposal reduces the pool of funds for public safety and justice programs by an additional $850 million – about a 15% decrease from the prior year.

Bipartisan programs

On the ground, the effects of the cancellations were immediate.

Initiatives implementing a federal law to support ex-inmates with temporary housing, job training and healthcare lost $40 million in funding, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York Unversity.

Many of the terminated programs had deep bipartisan roots.

Project Safe Neighborhoods, a crime-reduction initiative launched in 2001 under President George W. Bush, lost its training funds, the Council on Criminal Justice found. Also axed was an anti-terrorism program that had trained more than 430,000 state and local law enforcement officers and other partners since 1996.

More modest programs were targeted as well.

In rural Oregon, a DOJ grant had allowed the Union County district attorney to hire an investigator who, after a few years of probing a 43-year-old cold case involving the killing of a 21-year-old woman, finally developed some leads. When the money was cut, the investigation stopped.

Funding cliffs

The funding cuts couldn’t have come at a worse time. States and local jurisdictions were already facing looming cuts, as billions of dollars provided by President Joe Biden’s COVID recovery plan run out on Dec. 31, 2026.

Many local governments had used that money to build violence prevention programs from the ground up: employing community-based mediators, launching youth employment initiatives and expanding behavioral health teams.

And now? A double funding cliff with the sudden cancellation of DOJ grants, paired with the expiration of COVID recovery money.

In Chicago, this cliff has already forced a 43% cut to the city’s domestic violence prevention budget for 2026 – even as its share of domestic-related homicides rose 13% over the previous year.

Larger and more targeted

Criminology research helps explain the particular risks of abrupt disinvestment. Emory sociology professor Robert Agnew’s General Strain Theory identifies a direct relationship between increased strain – economic pressure, blocked opportunities, the withdrawal of institutional support – and higher risks of criminal behavior.

Historical precedent reinforces the concern. In 2013, federal across-the-board spending cuts eliminated services for more than 955,000 crime victims in a single year. The capacity of the FBI and related agencies was slashed by the equivalent of more than 1,000 agents.

Between 2014 and 2016, the violent crime rate climbed 7%.

The 2025 cuts are substantially larger and more targeted, and have devastated some groups.

Equal Justice USA, a national organization working to end the death penalty and reduce violence through community-based interventions, shut down in August 2025 after losing more than $3 million in DOJ grants.

Local programs like Baltimore’s LifeBridge Health’s Center for Hope lost $1.2 million to provide therapy for gun violence survivors.

“What shocked me the most … was what feels like the utter cruelty of it,” said Adam Rosenberg, who runs the center, referring to the cancellation of the funds.

As of April 2026, the DOJ has not paid out $200 million in approved grants to assist victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and human trafficking.

This comes after the department last year allowed more than 100 grants for human trafficking survivors to expire, affecting more than 5,000 victims, despite Congress allocating $88 million for these services.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania warn that cuts to violence prevention programs are likely to lead to increases in gun crime.

What happens next

The initiatives now losing funding are the ones that helped drive crime down in many American cities.

Community members trained in conflict mediation help extinguish tensions before they turn lethal. Youth programs provide alternatives to street economies. Forensic labs process the evidence that solves cases. Reentry programs keep people from cycling back through the system. With each serving a distinct function, together they form the infrastructure of public safety.

As funding for crime prevention from two main sources runs out, whether progress continues depends on what happens next.

Andrea Hagan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. US violent crime is at its lowest in more than a century – but the funding that helped reduce it is disappearing – https://theconversation.com/us-violent-crime-is-at-its-lowest-in-more-than-a-century-but-the-funding-that-helped-reduce-it-is-disappearing-276834

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By A.D. Carson, Associate Professor of Hip-Hop, University of Virginia

After languishing on death row in Texas for nearly two decades, James G. Broadnax was executed on April 30, 2026.

In 2009, a nearly all-white jury convicted him of robbery and double murder. Broadnax’s lawyers believed the initial rejection of all Black candidates from the jury pool was unconstitutional. They also believed it was unconstitutional that prosecutors used 40 pages of Broadnax’s handwritten lyrics, which they characterized as “gangsta rap” that doubled as a “self-admission” of Broadnax’s criminal “mentality.”

The lyrics shown to the jury were not introduced during the phase of the trial that determined Broadnax’s guilt for robbery and murder. They were presented only during the sentencing phase, when the jury considered whether he should receive the death penalty.

In 2025, I published “Being Dope: Hip Hop and Theory through Mixtape Memoir.” The book uses prose and lyrics to explore common misconceptions about rap and rappers. Along with the way lyrics continue to be used to demonize people inside and outside the courtroom – in ways that no other art form has to contend with – I highlight how “rap” is often used as shorthand for violence, drugs and criminality.

When rap lyrics become death sentences

In 2019, Erik Nielson, a scholar whose work focuses on the use of rap music as evidence in criminal trials, co-wrote “Rap on Trial” with legal scholar Andrea Dennis. In the book, Nielson and Dennis highlight a pattern of prosecutors treating rap lyrics as confessions or evidence of motive, even though they’re typically fictional or exaggerated. Meanwhile, even though other art forms routinely involve characters, lyrics or imagery that depicts violence, they’re rarely used as evidence of guilt in the courtroom.

Dennis and Nielson, who’s a signatory on one of the amicus briefs that was filed in support of Broadnax, maintain a database of over 800 cases in which lyrics have been used as evidence.

It includes some well-known cases, but most of the entries in the database involve people who are not well known as rappers.

For instance, during the closing arguments in the trial of Dominique Green, Texas prosecutors read aloud graphic lyrics from a Geto Boys song. Green hadn’t written the lyrics, and there was no clear connection between him and the song. Critics like Nielsen say the move was intended to shape how the jury perceived Green, who was sentenced to death in 1994 and executed in 2004.

Broadnax met a similar fate. While high on PCP and marijuana, he’d initially confessed to the killings of Stephen Swan and Matthew Butler in the Dallas suburbs in 2008. He later retracted his confession. In March 2026, Broadnax’s cousin and co-defendant, Demarius Cummings, signed a sworn statement admitting to pulling the trigger to kill Swan and Butler. Cummings had been tried separately and had already received life without parole.

Cummings said that he initially went along with Broadnax’s confession, but after 17 years – and learning in February 2026 that his cousin would be executed – he felt compelled to correct his previous statements.

Evidence corroborates Cummings’ admission. His DNA was found on the grip of the murder weapon and on the clothing of one of the victims. Broadnax’s DNA was not found on either.

Despite a flurry of last-minute appeals and amicus briefs, the state executed Broadnax.

From ‘Jim Crow’ to ‘authentically’ Black

In my view, the willingness of courts to accept rap lyrics as evidence emerges from popular entertainment’s long-standing deployment of negative stereotypes about Black people.

In the U.S., minstrel shows were among the first widely popular forms of mass entertainment. Performers were often white people who donned blackface to mock Black people through song, dance and slapstick comedy. Characters like Thomas Rice’s “Jim Crow” employed tropes of Black people as buffoonish, lazy and lascivious – stereotypes that underpinned the racist legal code of segregation that came to be known as Jim Crow laws.

Alongside legal segregation, separate and unequal categories emerged for Black music. In 1920, Mamie Smith released “Crazy Blues,” the first commercial blues recording by a Black artist. Recordings like Smith’s were cordoned off into their own separate category, called “race records.” In 1942, Billboard began charting another invented category that it dubbed the “Harlem Hit Parade.” Black music would go on to be called, at various points, “rhythm and blues,” “soul” and “urban contemporary” into the 1970s.

These genres helped market this music as “authentically” Black. I use quotes because I argue that these genres have always reflected the audience’s listening practices and expectations, as much as anything real or unique about Black people.

A boogeyman for America’s ills

By the 1980s and 1990s, rap music was likewise pigeonholed as a “Black” genre. And “gangsta rap” soon emerged as a subgenre that became, for some listeners, an effective stand-in for all the purported ills that plagued Black communities.

N.W.A. rapped about police brutality, violence and poverty, among other topics. Tracks like “F— Tha Police” were lyrically provocative and confrontational.

When Milt Ahlerich, an assistant director at the FBI, sent a letter to N.W.A.’s record label warning that the track could lead to disrespect and violence against law enforcement, the troupe saw a marketing opportunity, going on to brag that they were “the world’s most dangerous group.” And many audiences went on to interpret their tracks as documentary evidence of everyday Black life. In fact, I argue that this broader interpretation of rap music led, at least in part, to the eagerness with which the public initially supported the so-called “war on drugs,” which ended up disproportionately targeting Black communities in places like Decatur, Illinois, where I grew up.

Even when artists go to great pains to distinguish their art, many audiences simply want to believe all rap music and rap artists were doing and saying the same things. Their unwillingness to engage beyond the surface means a refusal to examine rap’s layered explorations of life, pride and pain, described through lyrical humor, social commentary and witty wordplay.

As Rolling Stone journalist Ed Kiersh wrote in 1986, “To much of white America, rap means mayhem and bloodletting.”

‘Being Dope’ is personal

For me, this is personal. I have been a rapper all of my professional life. In “Being Dope,” I write about teaching high school in Springfield, Illinois, where a local radio host used my music to try to paint me as unprofessional or worse, and called for me to be fired over it.

I decided to pursue a Ph.D. and study the rhetorical appeal of rap music. I wrote a rap album as my dissertation, and after becoming a professor of hip-hop, I published the first-ever peer-reviewed album with an academic press.

Rap has many functions. It’s a daily practice undertaken by ordinary people, not just the ones who aim to be famous. When I discuss the public perception of rappers, I highlight how I continue to grapple with the uneasiness my identity as a rapper can elicit in other people. I also focus on the stories of friends and family members, as well as people like Willie McCoy, Eric Reason and Jordan Davis – Black Americans whose deaths were blamed on rap music, a form of scapegoating I call “rapwashing.”

So when I see “rap” or “rapper” in a headline to imply guilt or provoke negative associations, I’m reminded of the truth in Kiersh’s statement. It’s even more troubling when rap lyrics are used to help deliver a death sentence.

Gangsta rap’s effectiveness as a prosecutorial tool, like the minstrel shows before it, depends on audiences mistaking caricature for authenticity, and hinges on hearing artistic expression as documentary evidence of criminal actions. Using gangsta rap to justify state-sanctioned executions only extends the dark legacy of Jim Crow into the present.

A.D. Carson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. After the execution of James G. Broadnax in Texas, questions persist over use of rap lyrics as evidence – https://theconversation.com/after-the-execution-of-james-g-broadnax-in-texas-questions-persist-over-use-of-rap-lyrics-as-evidence-280901