Marching Toward Improved Latent Fingerprint Testimony at the Army's Defense Forensic Science Center

The U.S. Army’s Defense Forensic Science Center (DFSC) has announced a change in its practice of reporting a positive association between a...

Can Forensic Pattern Matching Be Validated?

An article in the latest issue of the International Statistical Review raises (once again) fundamental questions for forensic scientists: ...

SWGDAM Guidelines on "Probabilistic Genotyping Systems" (Part 2)

What makes a "Probabilistic Genotyping System" probabilistic? That a computer program delivers a probability related to a DNA prof...

SWGDAM Guidelines on "Probabilistic Genotyping Systems" (Part 1)

In June, the Scientific Working Group on DNA Analysis Methods (SWGDAM), approved new “Guidelines for the Validation of Probabilistic Genotyp...

November is the month of DFIR books

I keep a wishlist of upcoming books and recently noticed that four high-quality technical books will be coming out in November. These cover ...

Disentangling Two Issues in the Hair Evidence Debacle

Forensic-science practitioners commonly present findings regarding traces left at crime-scenes, on victims or suspects, or on or in their po...

First NIST OSAC Forensic Science Standards Up for Public Comment

One of the responses to the 2009 NRC report on forensic science was the creation last year of an Organization of Scientific Area Committees ...