Via The Note, comes this NY Post article about Marcel Matley, CBS's go-to guy on document analysis. It's far worse than you think. The Post article, titled "CBS WRITING ACE HAS RATHER WACKY BACKGROUND" reports that Matley's experience and training are both limited and weird. But let the Post tell you:
The expert chosen by CBS to check Dan Rather's disputed National Guard documents got his start as a graphologist analyzing "Spirituality in Handwriting" and lacks recognized document training, The Post has learned.The last might be answered by Matley's last big job: authenticating the Vince Foster suicide note for the Clinton administration. Matley's professional web site is linked here
Analyst Marcel Matley lists "Spirituality in Handwriting" and "Female/Male Traits in Handwriting" on the Web site for a foundation he serves as librarian. They were privately printed, but another analyst provided portions to The Post.
In "Spirituality in Handwriting," Matley assesses a woman's "libidinal energy" based on her handwriting....
In "Female/Male Trait in Handwriting," the San Francisco-based Matley said he could analyze a woman's handwriting "to show her how she can have her womanly qualities fully realized."
The article continued: "For your male client, you will be able to recognize the facade of machismo — and also recognize the hurt boy- child who uses that as a defensive hiding place."...
In addition, in a 1995 California court deposition obtained by The Post, Matley acknowledged that he had no formal training in a document lab, in identification of papers, inks or "machines, typewriters, photocopies." He also acknowledged he'd had no training from the U.S. Secret Service, FBI, U.S. Army, California Department of Justice or any other law-enforcement body.
CBS spokeswoman Sandy Genelius said the network regards Matley as a reputable handwriting expert but declined to say why they chose him.
FYI: looks like he's wiped his site. Here's the Internet Archive version from February.
Posted by: Kevin at September 14, 2004 02:39 PMYeah, and the link to "What makes a document suspicious" under his "cases" tab is annoyingly not in the Wayback archive.
Posted by: Kevin Murphy at September 14, 2004 02:57 PMYep, nothing in Google's cache about it either. And I was looking forward to reading his notes on how to spot a suspicious document too...
Posted by: Kevin at September 14, 2004 06:49 PM