Nuclear testing in the middle of the twentieth century threw up lots of carbon-14 in the atmosphere. It has been slowly washing out since then. Because we have measured the amount of carbon-14 every year, we can use the amount of carbon-14 in it to simply look up (approximately) what year some plant material grew up in. This version of carbon-14 dating has nothing to do with the nuclear-decay-based carbon-14 dating that most people are familiar with, which acts over thousands of years.

I also found that part weird. I can't find in Wikipedia a clear date. Gemini says that the minimum is "100-300 years" but I followed all the citations but couldn't find the source of that range.

My guess it that they used another isotope with a shorter half life (or is another case of forensic snake oil, that would be a interesting second twist in this case).

> nonfiction is wilder than fiction

Yup. Among other reasons, in this case due to the very much nonfictional consequences you’d expect in a “real world” story like this: Had Graw been convicted and stripped of his titles, basically anyone found guilty using evidence from one of his investigations/autopsies, even decades later, could attempt to appeal their case and very likely, this would have completely flooded the courts.

For this reason, this was a huge case here in Munich, and the prosecutors’ office, from what the public could read in newspapers, was very anxious about the outcome all throughout like 2024 to 2026, IIRC.

Funny because it reads almost exactly as a Ferdinand von Schirach story

I would not doubt at all that that has already happened. Lawyers have already been caught with AI output:

https://www.cityam.com/lawyer-struck-off-for-using-fake-ai-e...

The Oxford comma is optional according to the Guardian style guide: https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-style-guide-o

In the case, the purported conspiracy was that the powerful forensic pathologist was protected by a shadowy elite

There was no conspiracy here - just the work of one lone man.

Nobody will deny the existence of individual liars and charlatans.

One person acting alone is not a conspiracy. It takes two to both tango, as well as conspire.

The question isn't "does it happen", the question is "how common is it?". If a normal person is dealing someone who seems to have an "everything is always a conspiracy" worldview - then "that stuff doesn't happen" can be both an assertion that the non-normal is nuts, and that the very frustrated normal just wants them to shut up and go away.