Discover Magazine - Verdict on Forensic Science: It's Quite Bad
see also NewScientist - Forensic science 'too unreliable', says report
The National Academy of Sciences issued a report on the state of forensic sciences and their relation to legal proceedings, finding that the state of the art is 'fragmented' and takes an undeserved air of certainty in criminal investigations and court proceedings. Of note is the use of the same term 'match' for disparate comparative procedures on things like hair samples, fingerprints, DNA, and fibers. For instance the error rate for DNA is small and quantifiable, yet the error rate on fingerprints and hair is much larger and mostly unquantified. But the same blanket terms are applied to all, giving the less-reliable methods a gloss of reliability. Crime labs are also seriously underfunded and a positive recommendation is to create an independent department for forensic science that is free from crime investigations to reduce potential bias.
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