Michael Welner for Pacific Standard

August 25, 2015 5:39 am

For the last decade, forensic psychiatrist Michael Welner has led a curious, self-funded effort to create something he calls the Depravity Standard, a crowd-sourced instrument for objectively scoring the level of evil associated with humanity’s most twisted crimes. But can a scientist really define the outer edges of our morality?

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Many thanks to Creative Director Taylor Le

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Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Michael Welner, who has interviewed some of the most high-profile criminals of the past two decades, is working to standardize and quantify human evil.

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Dr. Michael Welner in his office.

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The survey version of the Depravity Standard contains 25 aggravating factors, which respondents rate on a scale from one to 100. Armed with the data, Welner hopes to create an algorithm to inform sentencing decisions.

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