Eye-witnesses are notorously inaccurate. The FBI says that torture and forced confessions dont work. Now fingerprints come under question...
What's left? Is there no proof anymore? As Pope Benedict (Ratzinger) alleged, are we trapped in a spiral of relatism? What would Mattlock do? Sure CSI:Idaho will have the answer?
Fingerprint Matches Come Under More Fire As Potentially Fallible
October 7, 2005
So when scientists recently tested fingerprint IDs, they told examiners one set of prints were from Mr. Mayfield and the other set from the Madrid bombings. "We told them we were trying to understand what went wrong in that case," says Itiel Dror of Britain's University of Southampton, who did the study with student David Charlton. "Could they please look at the prints and tell us where the examiners had gone wrong."
One examiner said he couldn't tell if the pair matched. Three said the pair did not match and helpfully pointed out why. The fifth examiner insisted the prints -- notorious for not matching -- did match.
Give that one a gold star.
Unbeknown to the examiners, the prints were not from Madrid and Mr. Mayfield. They were pairs that each examiner had testified in recent criminal cases came from the same person. The three who told the scientists that their pair didn't match therefore reached a conclusion opposite to the one they had given in court; another expressed uncertainty, whereas in court he had been certain. Prof. Dror will present the study later this month at the Biometrics 2005 meeting in London.
