Fingerprinting

Perusing the National Academy of Sciences report on the state of forensic science, which you can read here, I came across this gem on fingerprinting. The process now used by the FBI and in other elite crime labs to identify fingerprints is called ACE-V. The Academy's scientists have this comment on the method:

We have reviewed available scientific evidence of the reliability of the ACE-V method and found none. . . . Claims that these analyses have zero error rates are not scientifically plausible. (142)

And this is typical of this report. Aside from DNA "fingerprinting" and some chemical analyses, they accept none of the methods commonly used in forensic labs. They are particularly scathing about the analysis of bite marks and other wounds -- you can see them rolling their eyes when they describe the testimony of alleged experts in these fields. How many people do you suppose are jail because of errors by forensic technicians, given that even at their best the techniques they are using don't meet anybody's standards of scientific rigor?