When the Oregon attorney, Brandon Mayfield, was arrested for the Madrid bombing six years ago, the FBI’s fingerprint examiners claimed they were 100% sure that his fingerprints were on the bag containing detonators and explosives. But they were wrong. And this sensational error has drawn attention ever since, to the widely held, but erroneous belief, that fingerprint identification is infallible.
Cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists have challenged forensic science as a whole to raise its game; and acknowledge that errors in fingerprinting and other forensic disciplines are inevitable because of the architecture of cognition and the way our brains process information. Experts say that it’s not a case of will an error occur, but when.
Claudia Hammond investigates the evidence that forensic examiners are making mistakes simply because they’re human, and asks what safeguards are in place to limit the potentially lifethreatening impact of forensic error.
Producer: Fiona Hill.
Listen to this All in the Mind podcast
