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A comment on The crisis of American forensics.

Re:The crisis of American forensics by jstewartmobile on Friday February 09, 2018 @07:48AM (#16339777)
Until DNA, forensics has always been pseudoscience voodoo. Detectives I've known guesstimated the fingerprint error rate to be much higher than 1 in 24--and fingerprints used to be the gold standard.

I've even heard a few judges stress the importance of informing jurors before a trial on how most forensic evidence is nowhere near as solid as crime dramas make it out to be. These were sharp guys though, so that is probably not common practice.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The crisis of American forensics by junkcollector on Friday February 09, 2018 @09:31AM (#16340382)
Conceptually, pattern matching isn't wrong. It's the implementation, presentation, and gross exaggeration of efficacy that is the real problem. DNA matching is still often pseudoscience voodoo the way it is used in courts for many of the same reasons that tooling marking is. Just look at Massachusetts, where they are having to retry 10's of thousands of cases because tests were botched by an malicious technician and then passed off in courts as foolproof even when the prosecution knew them to be suspect.
[ Parent | on HN ]