Editorial: Statistics and forensic science

Abstract

Forensic science is usually taken to mean the application of a broad spectrum of scientific tools to answer questions of interest to the legal system. Despite such popular television series as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and its spinoffs-CSI: Miami and CSI: New York-on which the forensic scientists use the latest high-tech scientific tools to identify the perpetrator of a crime and always in under an hour, forensic science is under assault, in the public media, popular magazines Talbot (2007), Toobin (2007) and in the scientific literature Kennedy (2003), Saks and Koehler (2005). Ironically, this growing controversy over forensic science has occurred precisely at the time that DNA evidence has become the ``gold standard'' in the courts, leading to the overturning of hundreds of convictions many of which were based on clearly less credible forensic evidence, including eyewitness testimony Berger (2006).