Literary Analysis of “Repeatability and Reproducibility of Earprint Acquisition”
Literary Analysis of “Repeatability and Reproducibility of Earprint Acquisition”
In court several different sciences can be used to place a person at the scene of a crime. Recently the recoveries of ear prints at a crime scene have become the basis for several convictions without much research having been done on reliability of such prints and many of these charged persons have been found not guilty after appeals or other evidence has proved their innocence. Some “experts” claim that the uniqueness found in each human ear justifies the use of earprints as proper scientific evidence while others argue that earprints should be used only to eliminate suspects or not at all. The publication “Repeatability and Reproducibility of Earprint Acquisition” in the Journal of Forensic Sciences discusses recent research done on the subject and makes conclusions about whether or not earprints should be used in court to identify suspects as guilty of a crime.
In the years between 2002 and 2005 a study was conducted regarding the reliability called Forensic Ear Identification (FearID). The study involved collecting ear prints from 1229 different subjects (3 ear prints each) and then studying the difference in quality of prints collected by different operators at different times. There were five different factors affecting the success of the earprint collection which included country of collection, donor, shape of the donors ear, whether it was the left or right ear, the operator and the round in which the earprint was collected. The study found that there was not much difference shown between the number of matches in each country (small differences were seen between country 2 and countries 1 and 3 but this was accounted for the fact that 9 males and 9 females were used in countries 1 and 3 while 13 males and 5 females were used in country 2). There was a much larger difference in the usefulness of each print by donor and in the usefulness of the print by who collected it. The
In court several different sciences can be used to place a person at the scene of a crime. Recently the recoveries of ear prints at a crime scene have become the basis for several convictions without much research having been done on reliability of such prints and many of these charged persons have been found not guilty after appeals or other evidence has proved their innocence. Some “experts” claim that the uniqueness found in each human ear justifies the use of earprints as proper scientific evidence while others argue that earprints should be used only to eliminate suspects or not at all. The publication “Repeatability and Reproducibility of Earprint Acquisition” in the Journal of Forensic Sciences discusses recent research done on the subject and makes conclusions about whether or not earprints should be used in court to identify suspects as guilty of a crime.
In the years between 2002 and 2005 a study was conducted regarding the reliability called Forensic Ear Identification (FearID). The study involved collecting ear prints from 1229 different subjects (3 ear prints each) and then studying the difference in quality of prints collected by different operators at different times. There were five different factors affecting the success of the earprint collection which included country of collection, donor, shape of the donors ear, whether it was the left or right ear, the operator and the round in which the earprint was collected. The study found that there was not much difference shown between the number of matches in each country (small differences were seen between country 2 and countries 1 and 3 but this was accounted for the fact that 9 males and 9 females were used in countries 1 and 3 while 13 males and 5 females were used in country 2). There was a much larger difference in the usefulness of each print by donor and in the usefulness of the print by who collected it. The
Cited: Abbas, Ali, and Guy N. Rutty. "Ear Piercing Affects Earprints: The Role of Ear Peircing in Human Identification." Journal of Forensic Science 50 (2005): 1-7. Alberink Ph.D., Ivo, and Arnout Ruifrok Ph.D. "Repeatability and Reproducibility of Earprint Acquisition." Journal of Forensic Sciences 53 (2008): 325-30. Mclay, W.D.S. Clinical Forensic Medicine. 2nd ed. London: Greenwich Medical Media, 1996. 247-71. Moenssens, Andre, ed. "Forensic Center Newsletter." Forensic-Evidence. 2008. 29 Oct. 2008 .