Comments on: Ape-men and dactyloscopy

By: Joe Smith

Joe Smith — Sun, 22 Apr 2018 02:12:28 +0000

The problem is also with partial prints. If it’s true that no two people have the same fingerprint, that doesn’t mean that two people can’t have the same partial print.

By: Senexada

Senexada — Mon, 16 Apr 2018 18:11:35 +0000

Excellent summary. Mark Twain’s “Pudd’nhead Wilson” (1893–4) uses fingerprints to resolve a switched-at-birth controversy that drives the plot.

I had previously thought it was the first mention of fingerprinting in a major fictional work, but it seems that Doyle beat Twain by a few years. Fascinating stuff.

By: Roger

Roger — Sat, 14 Apr 2018 03:11:02 +0000

To echo the previous comment, the “science” of fingerprints has never been scientifically validated.

By: Kirk

Kirk — Fri, 13 Apr 2018 17:13:07 +0000

Fingerprints may indeed be immutable and unique; where the problem lies is in their interpretations by the various “authorities”. I was shocked to learn that there were huge gray areas surrounding the fingerprint evidence used in many supposed “landmark” cases, and what we’ve been told may not indeed be so. Forensics is far from a rigid or accurate science, and a lot of sheer crap like “bite mark evidence” and “hair follicle evidence” ain’t accurately assessed as “evidence”.

Even DNA is questionable–Laying aside the issues of contamination and laboratory work being flawed, there’s the tiny little problem of chimerism. If you leave DNA behind at a rape, and it’s tested against a buccal swab, who’s to say that the cell lines in your gonads are the same ones in your cheek? Likewise, blood evidence may be questionable, especially when you start looking at things like bone marrow transplants. One wonders if we haven’t released people due to “exonerating evidence” that came from parts of their bodies that didn’t leave traces at the scene.

Knowing what I know just from a careful layman’s reading of the current literature, I don’t know that I’d be able to convict based on some of the evidence presented at many notorious cases, either in favor of or against the malefactor in question…