Regarding fingerprints, in the wake of the Brandon Mayfield case which raised serious questions about the accuracy of fingerprint identification by the FBI, the National Academy of Sciences was asked to perform a scientific assessment. Initial results were published in:
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)
Bradford T. Ulery, 7733–7738, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1018707108
Accuracy and reliability of forensic latent fingerprint decisions
Bradford T. Ulerya, R. Austin Hicklina, JoAnn Buscagliab,1, and Maria Antonia Robertsc
Edited by Stephen E. Fienberg, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, and approved March 31, 2011 (received for review December 16, 2010)
ABSTRACT
The interpretation of forensic fingerprint evidence relies on the expertise of latent print examiners. The National Research Council of the National Academies and the legal and forensic sciences communities have called for research to measure the accuracy and reliability of latent print examiners’ decisions, a challenging and complex problem in need of systematic analysis. Our research is focused on the development of empirical approaches to studying this problem. Here, we report on the first large-scale study of the accuracy and reliability of latent print examiners’ decisions, in which 169 latent print examiners each compared approximately 100 pairs of latent and exemplar fingerprints from a pool of 744 pairs. The fingerprints were selected to include a range of attributes and quality encountered in forensic casework, and to be comparable to searches of an automated fingerprint identification system containing more than 58 million subjects. This study evaluated examiners on key decision points in the fingerprint examination process; procedures used operationally include additional safeguards designed to minimize errors. Five examiners made false positive errors for an overall false positive rate of 0.1%. Eighty-five percent of examiners made at least one false negative error for an overall false negative rate of 7.5%. Independent examination of the same comparisons by different participants (analogous to blind verification) was found to detect all false positive errors and the majority of false negative errors in this study. Examiners frequently differed on whether fingerprints were suitable for reaching a conclusion.
http://www.pnas.org/content/108/19/7733.full
Authors
Bradford T. Ulery
aNoblis, 3150 Fairview Park Drive, Falls Church, VA 22042;
R. Austin Hicklin
aNoblis, 3150 Fairview Park Drive, Falls Church, VA 22042;
JoAnn Buscaglia
bCounterterrorism and Forensic Science Research Unit, Federal Bureau of Investigation Laboratory Division, 2501 Investigation Parkway, Quantico, VA 22135; and
Maria Antonia Roberts
cLatent Print Support Unit, Federal Bureau of Investigation Laboratory Division, 2501 Investigation Parkway, Quantico, VA 22135
One might wonder why such an assessment was not done a long time ago.
This is a report on the Brandon Mayfield case:
https://oig.justice.gov/special/s0601/exec.pdf
Bottom line is fingerprints are much more accurate than chicken entrails but hardly infallible as used to be widely believed.