2009 NAS Report
Definition
The National Academy of Sciences report Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States, which found that fingerprint individualization claims lacked empirical population-frequency validation, that the categorical zero-error-rate claim was unsupported, and that structural bias management was needed. The primary catalyst for post-2009 statistical reform in fingerprint examination.
Related terms
- Categorical Identification
- The historical fingerprint testimony model in which the examiner declares that the latent print originated from the named person to the exclusion...
- ENFSI Evaluative Reporting Framework
- The ENFSI Guideline for Evaluative Reporting in Forensic Science (2015), which specifies that forensic identification opinions should be expressed as likelihood ratios...
- FRStat
- The fingerprint statistical scoring model developed by the FBI Laboratory and Iowa State University (Professor Alicia Carriquiry). Takes ACE-V comparison documentation as...
- Likelihood Ratio (LR)
- The ratio of two conditional probabilities: the probability of the observed evidence given the prosecution's hypothesis (same source), divided by the probability...
- NIST ELFT-EFS (2012)
- The NIST Evaluation of Latent Fingerprint Technologies: Extended Feature Sets, a large-scale evaluation of both automated AFIS algorithms and human examiner performance....
- Population Frequency Database
- The reference dataset from which the denominator of a fingerprint likelihood ratio is estimated: the frequency with which a given configuration of...
- R V. T (2010)
- UK Court of Appeal decision on footwear evidence likelihood ratios that expressed caution about numerical LR presentation where the underlying database was...
- Ulery Et Al. 2011
- The FBI black-box study that tested 169 fingerprint examiners on 744 latent-exemplar pairs, finding a false-positive rate of 0.1%. The study empirically...
- Verbal Scale
- The ENFSI translation of numerical likelihood ratios into courtroom language: very strong support (LR over 10,000), strong support (LR 1,000-10,000), moderate support...
Explained in
- FRStat, Likelihood Ratios and the Post-2009 NAS DebateThe National Academy of Sciences report Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States, which found that fingerprint individualization claims lacked empir...