Episode 257 - Which Forensic Discipline Is The Most Reliable?

To start the episode, Glenn tells Eric a story relating to Edmond Locard and Galdino Ramos, a doctor with an interesting connection to the history of fingerprints. Later in the episode the guys take on a listener question “What forensic discipline is the most reliable?” In order to address the question, they do a quick recap of various studies that attempt to estimate how lay people assess the reliability of different disciplines and contrast those data with black box error rate studies for each discipline, when available. Finally, Eric and Glenn discuss a new paper on DNA from Hicklin, et al. dealing with the accuracy of DNA analysts determining the number of contributors (NOC) to a DNA mixture. This study, and several other DNA papers, tie into the comparison between fingerprints and DNA, and which one they think is more “reliable”. All in all, a good general discussion for lay people and forensic scientists regarding what is meant by “reliable” in the eyes of jurors and what do these studies tell us about the accuracy of these different forensic techniques.