Lab tech allegedly faked result in drug case; 7,827 criminal cases now in question

Im a lab tech in the drug testing industry and I have no idea how this could have happened. We do use testing protocols that were designed by us, but they have to be audited and approved by multiple different governmental and non governmental agencies. There are several levels before you fail a urine drug test. If your sample fails a physical characteristic test when it's given (color, temp, visual presence of foreign substances like undissolved powder) then it's booted as adulterated and you have to donate a second time. If it passes the visual/temp test then it goes to the lab and has to pass a specific Gravity test. If it fails the person is retested, if it passes it moves on to a immunochemical plate test (usually ELISA) which if it is negative it's booted as negative, but if it's positive, the sample goes through an enzymatic based extraction (or other extraction method depending on type of drug present) and then goes to a mass spectrometry lab. This is where I work, in liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry. whatever the result here is, i mark it as such and then send it to a data reveiwer who then either sends it back for a retest because of inconclusive results or approves the positive/ negative status of the test. Then the positive results go through a medical review officer who reviews then before posting results to client. I just can't imaging how this could have happened. Poor oversight I guess.

TDLR: I work in this industry and process several hundred samples a day. We get sued a lot over positive results but almost never lose because of our multi level protocols and check systems approved by outside agencies.

/r/news Thread Link - nj.com