Science is Missing Element in Nations' Crime Labs

The National Academy of Sciences will be releasing a report this month that is reported to be a stinging indictment of forensic methods currently in use in many labs throughout the country. Forensic evidence is routinely used in prosecutions and is involved in hundreds of thousands of investigations and prosecutions. The nation's crime labs may be missing a critical element...solid science practices.

From New York Times, full article here:

Forensic evidence that has helped convict thousands of defendants for nearly a century is often the product of shoddy scientific practices that should be upgraded and standardized, according to accounts of a draft report by the nation’s pre-eminent scientific research group.
The report by the National Academy of Sciences is to be released this month. People who have seen it say it is a sweeping critique of many forensic methods that the police and prosecutors rely on, including fingerprinting, firearms identification and analysis of bite marks, blood spatter, hair and handwriting.

The report says such analyses are often handled by poorly trained technicians who then exaggerate the accuracy of their methods in court. It concludes that Congress should create a federal agency to guarantee the independence of the field, which has been dominated by law enforcement agencies, say forensic professionals, scholars and scientists who have seen review copies of the study. Early reviewers said the report was still subject to change.