2015/07/24

The Washington Post July 22, 2015: A high-ranking Obama official just called for the “eradication” of bite mark evidence

This week, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is sponsoring a conference in Arlington, Va., called the “International Symposium on Forensic Science Error Management – Detection, Measurement and Mitigation.” NIST is the government agency that’s attempting to carve out some standards and best practices for the use of forensics in the courtroom.

In my series on bite mark evidence last February, I pointed out that while the practice of bite mark matching has been roundly criticized by the scientific community for lacking any of the basic principles of the scientific method, some critics of bite mark evidence were concerned that the subcommittees under NIST that were charged with looking into the field had been stacked with bite mark analysts and their allies.

But this week, the fate of bite mark evidence took a much different turn. In her speech to open the conference, Jo Handelsman, assistant director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy called for the “eradication” of bite mark evidence. I’ve obtained an audio clip of her speech. Here’s a transcript of the relevant portion: more