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USDOJ should embrace, not fight science-based forensics

Now that Eric Holder, President Obama's appointee to lead the Department of Justice, has been confirmed as US Attorney General, one of his first orders of business should be removing all obstacles to the release of a new National Academy of Sciences report analyzing the scientific basis (or lack thereof) for techniques used by forensic crime lab analysts. The FBI has been fighting the report's release, the New York Times reported this week, but Holder should insist they embrace it.Justice has nothing to fear from real science, but too much so-called forensic "science" amounts to little more than folklore and wives' tales, particularly disciplines requiring comparative judgments by individuals as opposed to science-based analysis. Notes Rick Casey in the Houston Chronicle:Ironically, our awareness of the ineptitude of traditional police ?science? is largely the result of the greatest advance in forensic science, DNA matching...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on February 08, 2009 (boomark / email).