THE NON-SCIENTIFIC NATURE OF FORENSIC EVIDENCE

The National Academies of Sciences considers forensic evidence, from fingerprint analysis to hair-and-fiber to ballistics to bite marks, to be non-scientific

Grits for Breakfast | December 15, 2016

The 2009 NAS report considered DNA evidence the gold standard of forensics and focused more on the non-scientific nature of nearly all other types of forensic evidence, from fingerprint analysis to hair-and-fiber to ballistics to bite marks. DNA mixture evidence may be a mess, but so are many other types forensic evidence used every day in Texas and American courts. You can put a person in a lab coat but that doesn't make what comes out of their mouth science.

The nation since the election been grappling with the rise of "fake news." But fake science, pseudoscience, whatever you want to call it, has been embedded in American courts for decades, harming more people, certainly, than any climate-change denier has to date.

It makes you wonder: How in heaven's name can this much error with such grave consequences have been tolerated and justified by the justice system for so long? We need forensic analysis and Grits continues to think some forensic disciplines are useful. But being useful doesn't make them science, which is a pretension designed to exaggerate the credibility of analysts and overstate the certainty with which jurors and other stakeholders interpret state testimony about physical evidence.

EDITOR’S NOTE: fingerprints, hair and fibers, ballistic evidence, and bite marks have in many investigations proven to be accurate rather than questionable. Unfortunately, it is however true that some 'analysts' have testified in court to results they knew were questionable, if not downright incorrect, and that includes analysts from the FBI lab.

Slamming all fingerprint, hair and fiber, ballistic and bite mark evidence is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.