Re:For six years, man who refuses to identify himself has he...
by shakna on Thursday November 21, 2019 @08:24AM
(#21593723)
> Err, does this cast doubt on the reliability of fingerprint evidence?
This isn't really news, though not well publicised in mainstream media.
Fingerprinting isn't really "unique" enough to identify an individual from a very large number of suspects. It is good enough to help identify one suspect from a small pool. (And as soon as you run it against a large criminal database, you've opened yourself up to risking misidentification).
There have been several wrongful convictions based on fingerprint data [0] that were later overruled.
Fingerprinting has been accepted as scientifically accurate, but that hasn't really been verified by studies in the real world. [1][2]
This isn't really news, though not well publicised in mainstream media.
Fingerprinting isn't really "unique" enough to identify an individual from a very large number of suspects. It is good enough to help identify one suspect from a small pool. (And as soon as you run it against a large criminal database, you've opened yourself up to risking misidentification).
There have been several wrongful convictions based on fingerprint data [0] that were later overruled.
Fingerprinting has been accepted as scientifically accurate, but that hasn't really been verified by studies in the real world. [1][2]
[0] https://www.bu.edu/sjmag/scimag2005/opinion/fingerprints.htm
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3093498/
[2] https://www.hsdl.org/?abstract&did=458960