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The Coming Paradigm Shift in Forensic Identificationscience - Saks Science 2005
The Coming Paradigm Shift in Forensic Identificationscience - Saks Science 2005
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REVIEW
The Coming Paradigm Shift in
Forensic Identification Science
Michael J. Saks1 and Jonathan J. Koehler2
L
ittle more than a decade ago, forensic in- different, criminalists conclude that the marks are moving toward a new scientific paradigm.
dividualization scientists compared pairs were made by the same person or object. EWe use the notion of paradigm shift not as
of marks (handwriting, fingerprints, tool Although lacking theoretical or empirical a literal application of Thomas Kuhn_s con-
marks, hair, tire marks, bite marks, etc.), in- foundations, the assumption of discernible cept (9), but as a metaphor highlighting the
tuited whether the marks matched, and testified uniqueness offers important practical benefits transformation involved in moving from a pre-
in court that whoever or whatever made one to the traditional forensic sciences. It enables science to an empirically grounded science.^
made the other. Courts almost never excluded forensic scientists to draw bold, definitive con- Two such forces are outgrowths of DNA typ-
the testimony. Cross-examination rarely ques- clusions that can make or break cases. It ex- ing: the discovery of erroneous convictions and
tioned the foundations of the asserted expertise cuses the forensic sciences from developing a model for a scientifically sound identification
or the basis of the analyst_s certainty. measures of object attributes, collecting popu- science. A third force is the momentous change
Today, that once-complacent corner of lation data on the frequencies of variations in in the legal admissibility standards for expert
the law and science interface has begun to those attributes, testing attribute independence, testimony. A final force grows from studies
unravelor at least to regroup. The news car- or calculating and explaining the probability of error rates across the forensic sciences.
ries reports of erroneous forensic identifica-
tions of hair, bullets, handwriting, footprints,
bite marks, and even venerated fingerprints.
Scientists have begun to question the core
assumptions of numerous forensic sciences
(16). Federal funding has materialized to sup-
port research that examines long-asserted but
unproven claims. Courts have started taking
challenges to asserted forensic science exper-
tise seriously (1). A dispassionate scientist or
judge reviewing the current state of the tra-
ditional forensic sciences would likely regard
their claims as plausible, underresearched, and
oversold.
The traditional forensic individualiza-
tion sciences rest on a central assumption: that
two indistinguishable marks must have been
produced by a single object. Traditional foren-
sic scientists seek to link crime scene evi-
dence to a single person or object Bto the
exclusion of all others in the world[ (7, 8).
They do so by leaning on the assumption of
discernible uniqueness. According to this as-
sumption, markings produced by different
people or objects are observably different. Thus,
when a pair of markings is not observably
1
College of Law, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ Fig. 1. Factors associated with wrongful conviction in 86 DNA exoneration cases, based on case
85287, USA. E-mail: saks@asu.edu 2McCombs School analysis data provided by the Innocence Project, Cardozo School of Law (New York, NY), and
of Business, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712, computed by us. Percentages exceed 100% because more than one factor was found in many
USA. E-mail: koehler@mail.utexas.edu cases. Red bars indicate factors related to forensic science.