Katherine Reece Wrote:
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> Da Vinci Fingerprint Reveals Arab Heritage?
>
>
>
> This was interesting ... I didn't know
> fingerprints could tell so much!
>
I would be inclined to take this claim with a grain of salt. Dermatoglyphics is not really scientific. A lot of this forensic stuff is shaky regardless of what CSI may lead you to think. I participate in a continuing education program at UT. Here is the bio of one of our recent speakers:

Jay Koehler is a professor in the McCombs School of Business at UT. He is also the Associate Director of the Business Honors Program, and a member of UT's Academy of Distinguished Teachers. He teaches classes in statistics (undergraduate), behavioral decision theory (Ph.D.), and (until recently) scientific evidence (law school).

He has a B.A. (philosophy) from Pomona College, a Masterís and Ph.D. (behavioral sciences) from the University of Chicago, and had postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford (psychology and law). He has been a full-time faculty member in the business school at the University of Texas since 1990, and has held occasional visiting scholar positions at Harvard and Stanford. He is an editor for the journal Law, Risk, and Probability, and is the faculty editor of UT's Undergraduate Research Journal.

His research interests lie at the intersection of psychology, probability, law, and forensic science. He has received grants from the National Science Foundation to study how jurors reason with statistical evidence in DNA cases. His writings appear primarily in law, psychology, and statistics journals. Most recently, he and Michael Saks (Arizona State University) published an article in Science called "The coming paradigm shift in forensic identification science." This article, on which part of today's talk is based, argues that the scientific status of the traditional forensic sciences (e.g., fingerprinting, ballistics, and other non-DNA subfields of forensic science) is much lower than the public has been led to believe.

He has been a consultant or expert witness in two dozen criminal cases that included DNA evidence, including a stint as a consultant for the defense in the criminal trial of O.J. Simpson. However, he does not believe O. J. was innocent.

Bernard




>
>
> Kat
>
> Owner/Head Moderator
> The Hall of Ma'at
> Amun: Co-Owner/Co-Moderator
> Contributing author to Archaeological Fantasies:
> How pseudoarchaeology misrepresents the past and
> misleads the public
> Kat's Personal Site
>
>
> "It is a capital mistake to theorize in advance of
> the facts."