From: Adam Flinton 

Dave Ings wrote:
> About 2 years ago there was a lengthy article in the New Yorker magazine on
> this topic, built around a recent case in (I believe) Scotland, the details
> of which escape me now but in general was about someone who was initially
> acused or convicted of a serious crime primarily based on fingerprint
> evidence, but who was later exonerated in an irrefutable manner by other
> evidence. It was claimed that this was one of the first documented cases
> where other evidence considered as compelling as fingerprint evidence was in
> direct opposition to it.
>
> The article made two main points, both of which were news/interesting to me:
>
> 1. Fingerprint matching is a probabilistic process, it isn't the black and
> white "it matches or it doesn't" process of the movies. In
large part, this
> is because almost all fingerprints lifted from crime scense are smudged.
> However this rather large nuance apparently isn't appreciated by most
> officers of the court.
>
> 2. Forensic science isn't. There is no peer review process, no established
> journals of merit, no formal credentials, the practitioners and conferences
> have all the characteristics of a typical trade conference, etc. Further,
> this manifests itself in all the forensic (dare I say) arts: fingerparts,
> fibre matching, etc.
>

Re this. There is all sorts of debate wrt "Shaken baby syndrome"
where various "clues"/symptons were meant to be irrefutable proof
a baby was shaken to death (e.g. bleeding in/behind the eyes). Most of this
has been shown to be bunk & now there are a load of people in gaol
wondering when they'll be released.....& then there is the whole
"1 dead baby is unfortunate, 2 is suspicious, 3 is murder" where
actually it could be more to do with genetics.


Adam

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