Gee, that didn't take long, take a look at this comming to a meeting this Oct. The 4.28% of the IAI members that voted on the issues are now being written about in this report ... but it effects all of us. Another knee Jerk action has a reaction. Remember folks you can not take this stuff back or un-write it.
Attached are two presentations breifly discussed today at SWGFAST. Both
presentations are literature reviews of our discipline, and will be
discussed during Interpol's upcoming Fall meeting.
The following is just a very small chunk of the 2 very large review reports.
The latest version that will be presented next October at Interpol (Lyon). The previous report took three years to be published (by CRC), it just came out. So I put the previous one as well in case you never heard of it. The NRC report received a very important press coverage including the most prestigious
scientific journals such as Nature (37, 38) or Science (39). Professional organisations have
reacted to the NRC report. We will retain here for example the statement by SWGFAST
(Scientific Working Group on Friction Ridge Analysis, Study and Technology) (40). The IAI
(International Association for Identification) also published a reaction to the NRC report.
Here, the different recommendations in the report are reviewed from the association's point of
view (41). The IAI furthermore sent a memo to its members, stating its support to many of the
recommendations included in the report, cautioning against asserting “100% infallibility (zero
error rate)” also advising its members not to state “their conclusions in absolute terms when
dealing with population issues” (42). During the 2010 IAI conference in Spokane, the
membership, following the recommandation of the Standardisation II committee, approved to
rescind Resolution 1979-7 and Resolution 1980-5 (that prohibited examiners from providing
less than certain testimony) and adopt a resolution acknowledging the recent progresses in
fingerprint statistics: “The use of mathematically based models to assess the associative value
of the evidence may provide a scientifically sound basis for supporting the examiner’s
opinion.” (43) That finally opens the possibility for fingerprint examiners to report strengths
of evidence spanning over the whole spectrum of support in favour (or not) of an association
that the observed features may bring.