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According to a recent article in the August 2009 issue of Popular Mechanics, forensic science may not be as reliable as we would like to believe. “The Truth About Forensics” goes into lengthy detail regarding the very shaky ground upon which the science of ballistics, finger printing, fiber analysis, and more, currently stands.

While hundreds of thousands around the world watch TV shows like CSI and NCIS, knowing full well we are watching television shows, unfortunately many of us are taking our television watching “skills” seriously and into the jury room with us. The idea of “reasonable doubt” can and does go out the window too often because we are conditioned to believe that forensics is the “god of rightness” - proof beyond the shadow of a doubt that “this fingerprint proves that person did this.”

Unfortunately, there is no scientific data to suggest or refute that fingerprints don’t change over time. No study has ever been conducted. We are taught each fingerprint is unique, yet no scientific data exists to back that claim up. The same goes for ballistics; the bullet may have come from a Glock but is it really that Glock?

To further gum up the works, “forensic science was not developed by scientists.” Guided mostly by a sense of common sense, forensics is the birth child of cops themselves. Here’s just a small section of this amazingly enlightening article:

“A 2006 study of the University of Southhampton in England asked six veteran fingerprint examiners to study prints taken from actual criminal cases. The experts were not told that they had previously examined the same prints. The researchers’ goal was to determine if contextual information - for example, some prints included a notation that the suspect had already confessed - would affect the results. But the experiment revealed a far more serious problem: The analyses of fingerprint examiners were often inconsistent regardless of context. Only two of the six experts reached the same conclusions on second examination as they had on the first.”

Alarming in the extreme. The article includes several examples of the wrong person sitting in prison for more than a third of his or her life while the real criminal continued/continues to carry on “business as usual.” However, there is one area of forensics that is not in dispute… “techniques that grew out of organic chemistry and microbiology have a strong scientific foundation.”

DNA, yes that double-helix structure that forms each human being, goes beyond human interpretation to true science.

For the pros and cons, it is highly recommended that you pick up a copy of this magazine’s August 2009 issue and read up. You never know… the information it contains may be your saving grace.