Recent Research on the
Foundations of Fingerprint Comparison Decisions
YouTube Live
Event for Q and A
Heidi
Eldridge, PhD
Assistant Professor of Forensic Science and Director
of Graduate Studies in Crime Scene Investigations
The George Washington University
Wednesday, February 12, 7pm
US/Eastern (UTC-05:00)
NCASVideo
YouTube Channel:
Fingerprints have
long been viewed as infallible -- the "gold standard"
when it comes to criminal identification. But recent
critical reports and scrutiny have illuminated the fact
that fingerprint science, though in use for more than
100 years in the courts, never went through the rigorous
process of building a scientific foundation that most
scientific endeavors must complete as part of their
growing pains. This talk will briefly highlight some of
the questions the field is currently grappling with and
review the body of research that has sprung up in
response.
Dr. Heidi Eldridge
received her MS in Biology from
Duke University and her PhD in Forensic Science from
the University of Lausanne (Switzerland). She spent
approximately 11 years working in state, local, and
regional forensic laboratories where she performed
casework in controlled substances, latent prints, and
crime scene analysis and reconstruction including
bloodstain pattern interpretation, shooting
reconstruction, event analysis, biological screening,
and serial number restoration. From 2015 to 2022, she
was a full-time forensic science researcher at RTI
International, where she completed internally- and
externally-funded research on the suitability decision
in latent prints, establishing a baseline discipline
error rate estimate for palmar comparisons,
recognizing warning factors for close non-matches in
latent prints, and human factors in forensic science.
Dr. Eldridge is current Chair of the Friction Ridge
Consensus Body of the American Standards Board (ASB)
and of the Forensic Science Education Programs
Accreditation Commission (FEPAC). She sits on the
Boards of Directors of both the International
Association for Identification (IAI) and the ASB and
is a Fellow of the American Academy of Forensic
Sciences (AAFS) and is chair of the Friction Ridge
Subcommittee of the Organization of Scientific Area
Committees (OSAC) for Forensic Science. Additionally,
Dr. Eldridge sits on the Editorial Board of the
Journal
of Forensic Identification and is a
peer-reviewer for several other forensic science
journals. Dr. Eldridge is a Certified Latent Print
Examiner with the IAI.
https://www.ncas.org/2025/01/how-much-is-enough-how-sure-are-you.html
How
to Watch and Participate in this Online
Discussion Event:
2) Use the link
https://youtu.be/UPGn6Js2kqs
3) The live stream
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12, 2025.
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Along with your question, please post what city
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February Bay Area Skeptics Lecture
The [San Francisco] Bay Area Skeptics will
host their next online event on Thursday, February
13 at 9:30 PM ET.
Dr. Mohamed Noor, a
professor of biology at Duke University, will
discuss his book,
Live Long and Evolve: What Star
Trek
Can Teach Us about Evolution, Genetics,
and Life on Other Worlds (Princeton
University Press, 2018). This will be
livestreamed on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9bI6lFHkDQ
Peter Hotez on Skeptical Inquirer Presents
Torn From Today's Headlines
By Scott Snell
Year-round Standard Time vs Year-Round
Daylight Saving Time vs Clock-Changing
The newly-convened
119th US Congress has introduced the "Sunshine
Protection Act of 2025" in the House of
Representatives (
House
Bill 139, Republican co-sponsors) and Senate (
Senate
Bill 29, bipartisan co-sponsors). The bills
are essentially identical to unsuccessful bills from
each of the previous four US Congresses, to make
daylight saving time the new, permanent standard
time, except for states with areas exempt from
daylight saving time; states may choose the standard
time for those areas. (Many state legislatures have
also taken up the issue of staying on Standard Time
or Daylight Saving Time year-round. See
https://www.ncsl.org/transportation/daylight-saving-time-state-legislation)
Generally, their
message to the public is that the science is clear
on the issue: changing the clocks is harmful to
health, and permanent DST is harmful to health.
They also note that winter DST was attempted in
early 1974 and the US public hated the resulting
dark mornings.
However, they don't
discuss the successful techniques that Alaskans,
Scandanavians, and other residents of long polar
night regions use to awaken in darkness and safely
travel to work and school. Those methods weren't
used in most of the US during the 1974 DST failure.
Nor do they discuss the situation in Spain, which
hasn't been on Standard Time since 1940, and is 2
hours ahead of Standard Time for several months each
year. Spaniards are generally healthy (having the
5th longest life expectancy in the world), despite
living on Daylight Saving Time and DST+1. (Siestas
may be part of Spaniards' success, although this is
uncommon in their modern urban culture.) At the
very least, this raises questions about how
unhealthy a DST lifestyle really is.
Apparently the Coalition is presenting a very
simplified version of where the science stands on this
issue, and omits viable solutions from their
public-facing discussion.
Author's comment:
Perhaps it's better to offer the public options,
such as, "Yes, you can probably succeed with
year-round DST by imitating the successes of
Scandanavians who awaken in darkness and safely travel
to work and school. Even if you choose year-round
Standard Time instead, you can use those techniques to
help people who must still awaken in darkness, such as
public transportation employees." There appears to be
a scientific consensus that awakening before sunrise
is unhealthy. The solution is to use artificial
lights in the home to simulate sunrise.
On the other hand, maybe expending so much effort
just to get some after-work DST sunlight isn't worth
the trouble. That said, year-round Standard Time will
mean summer sunset at about 7:30 PM instead of 8:30
PM. That's not likely to be popular with the public.
My view is that the
public should have all the pros and cons of their
choices available so they can make an informed
decision. I covered many aspects of this in my
November 2023 NCAS talk, which is part of the NCAS
YouTube library:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J6QEYSxMjs
Larry Kusche (1940-2024)
Skeptics will best remember
Kusche for his time (1969-1975) as a research librarian at
Arizona State University, when he authored his first book, The
Bermuda Triangle Mystery — Solved (Harper
& Row, 1975). Considered the defining work on the
subject, he later devoted an entire book to the most famous
Triangle incident, The Disappearance of Flight 19
(Harper & Row, 1980). Perhaps no other alleged
"mysteries" have been so effectively debunked as Kusche did
for the Triangle, which never again approached the cultural
prominence it once had in the early 1970s.
In the back of the very
first issue of The Zetetic (from 1976, soon to be
renamed as Skeptical Inquirer), published by the
newly-formed Committee for the Scientific Investigation of
Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP, forerunner to today's
Committee for Skeptical Inquiry), you'll see Kusche listed
as a CSICOP Fellow. Pick up the latest issue (the one with
Bill Nye on the cover) and you'll still find him in the
list.
Excerpted from Kusche's
LinkedIn page:
...wrote the book "The
Bermuda Triangle Mystery - Solved," (1975) which exposed
the Triangle to be a pseudoscientific/ paranormal fraud
based on distorted information.
In 1980 my book "The Disappearance of Flight 19" was
a heavily researched account of the loss of the five
Avenger torpedo bombers from Fort Lauderdale in 1945.
I am currently developing a website on the Triangle,
as it has risen again as a popular topic. Am analyzing
NTSB reports of accidents in the area that are being
reported as supposedly mysterious.
Interesting that Kusche
perceived that the Bermuda Triangle had made a "comeback."
(I don't know when he wrote this LinkedIn profile.)
Forty years after his first
book, he wrote a retrospective (and, as it turned out,
final) article for Skeptical Inquirer:
Comment by Scott Snell:
Several months ago, I was
at a social occasion with colleagues from Goddard Space
Flight Center. The topic of skepticism came up (probably my
choice) with a friend/coworker of one of the NCAS board
members. We were amused to discover that both of us
followed the same pathway into the subject: as kids (roughly
the same age), we were fascinated by UFOs, Bigfoot, ESP,
etc. And our first introduction to skepticism wasn't Sagan
or Randi or Klass...it was Kusche's The Bermuda Triangle
Mystery — Solved. From then on, both of us
eventually found the other skeptical books and Skeptical
Inquirer.
Today, I emailed him with
the news of Kusche's passing. He thanked me and said he'll
start reading the book again.
I had the pleasure of
meeting Kusche at a CSI conference ("UFOs: The Space-Age
Mythology," October 2009 in Tucson, Arizona). He was one of
the attendees, not a presenter. I'm glad I happened to
glance at his name tag, otherwise I might never have
realized he was there. I let him know how grateful I was
for his book...what an eye-opener (actually mind-opener) it
was for my young self.
He kindly offered to
autograph my copy of his book if I'd ship it to him. And he
included a free signed copy of his Flight 19 book.
(He didn't ship them immediately...it turned out that he
held onto the books a little longer so he could autograph
them on December 5, the anniversary of the Flight 19
incident!)
My last contact with him
was in October 2016, by email:
Dear Mr. Kusche,
I'm Scott Snell of the National Capital Area Skeptics
(ncas.org). I doubt you'll remember meeting me at the
October 2009 CSI UFO workshop in Tucson...in any case I
enjoyed meeting you and appreciated your autographing my
copies of your books, including the Flight 19 book that you
provided as a gift.
I'm writing to you today because I'll be providing the
results of your research on the USS Cyclops case to
tourists [on an NCAS "SkepTour" in Washington, DC] later
this week. If possible, I'd like to include your views on
the following article from Popular Science, June,
1929:
https://books.google.com/books?id=XSgDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA15&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false
Author Reck also believes the storm is responsible for the
loss of Cyclops. But even more interesting is that
he apparently reviewed the log of Amolco, stating
that Cyclops was sighted on the evening of the 9th!
https://books.google.com/books?id=XSgDAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA15&pg=PA137#v=onepage&q&f=false
If true, this is an independent confirmation that Cyclops
was approaching Virginia at the time of the storm.
This 1920 book also provides information about the log
entry:
https://books.google.com/books?id=m_ZopT3od1IC&pg=PA25&lpg=PA25#v=onepage&q&f=false
There are obvious errors: "U. S. S. Amalco" for
one. But these could simply be garbled details of
worthwhile information.
What are your thoughts about this?
Regards,
Scott Snell
The 1929 article was
significant because it was the first to establish that a
severe storm was impacting the Eastern US seaboard. (Kusche
had been unaware of this article when he independently came to
the same conclusion during research for his book.)
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