The forensics is bunk

From Bad Evidence by Liliana Segura and Jordan Smith.

A serious problem with the fundamentals of forensic evidence was identified a decade ago. It is consequential given that guilt and innocence ride on the reliability of the science and that guilt or innocence can entail death penalty cases. We know there's a problem, we have line of sight on what needs to be done and yet, a decade later, little is being done to address the problems. A great example where knowledge is not the same as reform.

Much of the recent upheaval in the forensics world can be traced back to a landmark study released by the National Academy of Sciences in 2009. Titled “Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward,” the report questioned the scientific basis for virtually every forensic discipline used to convict people and send them to prison. With the exception of DNA analysis, it found, “no forensic method has been rigorously shown to have the capacity to consistently, and with a high degree of certainty, demonstrate a connection between evidence and a specific individual or source.”

The NAS report was particularly damning for the so-called pattern-matching disciplines, in which an analyst examines a piece of evidence — say a bloody fingerprint found at a crime scene — and tries to match it to a sample belonging to a suspect. At AAFS, where forensic areas are divided into 11 different sections, many members of such fields responded with a mix of denial and defiance. While some practitioners took up the call issued by the NAS report — the fingerprint community, for example, has worked to develop objective comparison methods and determine error rates — others insisted the old ways of doing things were just fine.

In the intervening years, high-profile forensics scandals and a rising tally of exonerations have made it hard for even the most stubborn forensic experts to ignore the problem of junk science.

A long read but worthwhile.