From what I gathered, the NRC that heard testimony from forensic experts only have a brief amount of time for those experts to 'testify' to their discipline. They took that short amount of time and formulated the 13 recommendations set forth in the report. I'm not against any of them and in fact, have lauded its ability to open up funding for much-needed research. But was there a better way?
Our failure is when we don't recognize that things can be done better. That doesn't mean we are doing things wrong, it just means there is always room for improvement. Those that think the courts are filled with 'junk science' fall victim to the notion that forensics is bad because that's the only time when it's reported. Like the first article mentioned, thousands of planes take off and land safely every day but we never hear about that because it's not news. We only hear about the crashes. Congruently, we only hear about the failures of forensics and never about when they were used successfully to render a verdict. Again in the first article, a man was found guilty of a heinous sex crime who proclaimed his innocence. When the evidence was re-tested or underwent subsequent testing, they confirmed the verdict was correct. Or, we all know about the Mayfield error. But little emphasis is placed on the fact that the SNP still used ACE-V to correctly identify the donor of the prints on the bag of detonators. That wasn't called into question.
Many jurisdictions have ruled that the NAS report isn't a learned treatise
2012 Limit use of NAS Report as a Learned Treatise NAS Report DC Court of Appeals.pdf
and is therefore not be admissible. Others have allowed it's mention and criticisms contained therein to be admitted into evidence and we have to 'defend' our discipline.
Is that such a bad thing? Is it okay to acknowledge that while we aren't perfect, we are trying? And by trying, we are open to new research? If that
new research doesn't pan out, are we open to keep looking for a better way? We need to.
That is how we stay unbiased. I'm glad the report was issued, I'm glad that it opened up funding for research, and I'm glad that there are people way smarter than me conducting that research. I saw what the latent print discipline was before, during, and after the report and it has only made me a better examiner.