The response to my last blog expanding  to multi-disciplinary forensic science topics has been encouraging. Trends are evolving rapidly in the external scrutiny of forensics by media and Congressional/governmental entities. There is still a paucity of forensic research to report here. What I generally find are second and third tier “university” institutions (really just colleges) entering the forensic business via miniscule (compared to real science) grants by NIJ/USDOJ funding.

The TOP headline comes from the US Congress (Senator Jay Rockfeller) new Forensic Reform bill has been announced. His Commerce Committee 2012 Bill held numerous hearings covering many of the subjects and concerns contained in the NAS 2009 “Strengthening Forensic Sciences in the US.” For those thinking that things were slowing down with the launch of the Natl Commission on Forensic Science have to rethink this. Now there are two layers of investigating forensic science working in tandem. See here (the new one) and here (the bill from 2012). 

Nature once again comes up with fundamental review of the P factor used by so many in science and pseudo-science. the topic is its inherent unreliability as statistical proof. A very good read for non-academics. Take it to the bank when you come across some mind-numbing journal article. (Thanks to Nora Rudin Ph.D).

More on “cognitive bias” in subjective forensic analysis (topic: non-metric interpretation of gender and age by anthropologists). It is a template for a generalized look at other “pattern evidence”  like footprints, bitemark gurus,  etc.  (Thanks to Mark Godsey at his excellent blog).