This is Scientific Americans 60 Second Science. I'm Steve Mursky. Got a minute?

We have increasing doubts about this evidence, but we don't feel yet that we have the scientific

knowledge and basis to exclude it altogether.

Jed Rakoff, United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York.

He spoke about forensic evidence and the need for it to actually be based in science at the

annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in

Boston on February 18th.

In 2009, the National Academy of Sciences issued a report critical of a lot of the forensic evidence in the courtroom.

Most fundamentally, the report said that what was really lacking was testing and research and thus they question whether any of this could be

called science and they also question whether it was really that accurate.

But forensic evidence is still widely admitted even when the science behind it may be lacking.

I think courts continue despite their doubts to admit this evidence.

And that is still the feeling that,

it's still better than nothing.

It's still useful evidence.

It has some degree of objectivity

that's not present in much lay testimony and therefore it is useful.

The problem of course is it comes heralded as science, and that gives it a weight that is probably disproportionate.

I had a case, this was before the National Academy report, but it's sort of illustrative what I'm

talking about United States versus Glenn. In that case the government put on a toolmark expert to testify that the markings on the shell

that have been found at the scene of the crime, matched the markings inside the barrel of the gun

that have been found under the defendant's bed.

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