The White House's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology published a report this week that many forensic techniques used by police and the Justice Department may not be accurate enough to be used in court cases and any subsequent convictions based on their results.
Techniques such as "bite-mark" tests and "shoe-print" analysis were found to have widely varying results depending on which State they were performed in, as there is no set standard for the evidence presented to be measured against.
The report also claims that some of the forensic techniques may have no basis in actual science whatsoever.
The full report can be found here.
It is a follow-up report to a 2009 published account in which they had similarly called into question the validity of many forensic techniques that have sometimes been used in convictions that were later overturned.
Despite these claims, the Justice Department will not be accepting the recommendations in the report.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch told the Wall Street Journal: "While we appreciate their contribution to the field of scientific inquiry, the department will not be adopting the recommendations related to the admissibility of forensic science evidence."
