More doubts about fingerprints
I'm a little late on getting to this, but another study came out recently questioning the reliability of fingerprints. This one suggests the subjective expectations of examiners play a big role. What's particularly disturbing is that when examiners re-examined prints and were presented with new information about the case they routinely changed their opinions. In other words, the likelihood of a match may depend on the information the examiner has about the case!
I wrote previously about the National Academy of Sciences report on the reliability of fingerprints. That report criticized the lack of research; despite expert's claims about the uniqueness of fingerprints there is no scientific basis for those opinions.
This article raises two disturbing issues. Obviously, one is the effect of bias; they are likely to find what they expect to find. That raises a more fundamental issue though; if the results can be so easily changed, how reliable are. In other words, is it really nothing more than guesswork?
More research is needed. In the meantime, we need to hold their feet to the fire, and force fingerprint examiners to back up their testimony.
The article was in Miller-McCune, by Sue Russell.
Here's the link http://tinyurl.com/llvfa8
A perfect example of this is the Brown's Chicken murder case in Palatine, Illinois. The incident occurred in 1993 and a partial palm print was lifted from a paper napkin, which the fingerprint examiner's were unable to match to any suspect. In 2002, after an ex-girlfriend of one of the defendants, Juan Luna, gave information about the case the examiners claim they were then able to suddenly make a match to Luna. This would be fine if they hadn't had Luna's prints all along, but they did. This is not science and should not be treated as such.