Next time you see one of those television crime-scene investigators crack a case with high-tech analysis, better take it with a grain of salt. The National Academy of Sciences, the nation’s most prestigious scientific organization, has surveyed the field of forensic science and found it grossly deficient.
It’s not just that many forensic laboratories are poorly funded and staffed with “experts” who are poorly trained. The more fundamental problem, according to the study, is that there is little evidence of the accuracy and reliability of most forensic methods — especially those that rely on expert interpretation.
The most thoroughly validated technique is nuclear DNA analysis, which has a minuscule likelihood of error when done right. But other well-known methods that can supposedly identify a guilty person or link a weapon or other evidence to a particular crime have no rigorous scientific proof that they work consistently.
That goes for analyses of hair, bite marks, fibers, documents, tools, firearms, shoe impressions, tire tracks, handwriting and blood spatters, among others. The analyses can help focus an investigation but can seldom provide infallible evidence of guilt.
Even fingerprint analysis depends on a subjective judgment by experts as to how closely two prints match, a conclusion that can be biased by the examiner’s knowledge of the suspect or the case. Examiners have sometimes disagreed with their own past conclusions when viewing the same prints in a different context.
The academy’s panel makes sensible suggestions for improvement, such as certification of forensic professionals, accreditation of laboratories, uniform standards for analyzing evidence and independence of the laboratories from police and prosecutors who might bias judgments. In the long run, research is needed to determine the accuracy of forensic methods. For now, judges, lawyers and juries are on notice that high-tech forensic perfection is a television fantasy, not a courtroom reality.
3 comments:
This article is very interesting in my opinion. It is clear that you have chosen a very transcendental view of the field of forensic science going against most of what we learned in forensics class. This brings up questions such as how reliable is the information that is concluded in forensic tests? How can one be certain that two tire marks are identical? It was very interesting to see this separate point of view. In addition, the summary was very well written with much detail and was a very interesting article in general. Two of the things I did not like; however, are that it discredits many of the topics which Mr. Ippolito has taught us, thereby, going against the teachers word. How can it be certain that what you are saying is, in fact, truthful. In addition, you could have chosen a topic less controversial because in retrospect all of what Ippolito has taught us seems to be true with much factual evidence to back it up. I was intrigued to learn that an article like this was allowed to be published in a newspaper because it goes against what this country stands for and that is justice. Anarchy is a virtue of the weak.
What I found interesting about this article was how it really pinpointed the controversies of forensic science. People usually accept science as something that was tested many times by other people and forensic science is seen as a reliable way of determining cause of death and linking perpetrators to crimes. This presentation however, pointed out that like everything else, forensic science also faces criticism. It was interesting to read that things specific tests that are the basis of forensic science like fingerprints, blood spatter analysis, hair comparison, firearms identification etc… are really not that consistent when it comes to producing results. What I also found very interesting was that one would never think a forensic scientist is bias however this article mentioned that with an investigators previous knowledge about the case, there may be some bias, the investigator has to know about the case to identify evidence so it is a tricky situation.
What I would have liked to have learned more of is exactly how unreliable are these tests. With all scientific tests, there is never one hundred percent consistency so I’m curious if forensic science is being picked on because some believe it is not as useful as other sciences. I would also like to know if the argument is being addressed and more reliable means of identification are being worked on.
What impressed me about this article was that it really never occurred to me that these tests had a high rate of inaccuracy. I knew that sometimes they lead investigations to the wrong perpetrator but I thought that only occurred once in a while and was not a consistent error
“Crime Scene Imperfections” is an intriguing article that discusses the controversies that come up in forensics. I thought the presentation was very well done, especially how it talked about how forensics, like everything else, faces criticism. As well as that, it was interesting to learn how many of the tests done in the forensic science actually create false results. Another thing I liked about this presentation was that everyone thinks scientists just follow the facts and don’t actually have biased opinions but after reading this article, I was proven wrong about this assumption. However, from this presentation, I would have liked to learn about the level of inaccuracy with these forensic tests, because they are vital in making decisions about cases. I’m also curious to know about its relative inaccuracy compared to the other sciences, because all of them bring about some level of inconsistency. One thing that truly impressed me about this article was the high rate of that it really never occurred to me that these tests had a high rate of imprecision. Especially since from previous article reviews I got the feeling that cases were inaccurate before they were double-checked by forensics but it is interesting to know that sometimes even then it is erroneous.
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