How much is enough? How sure are you?

 NCAS Public Lecture Series

Recent Research on the Foundations of Fingerprint Comparison Decisions

 YouTube Live Event for Q and A 

Heidi Eldridge, PhD
Assistant Professor of Forensic Science and Director of Graduate Studies in Crime Scene Investigations
The George Washington University

Wednesday, February 12, 7pm US/Eastern (UTC-05:00)

NCASVideo YouTube Channel:

https://youtu.be/UPGn6Js2kqs

Fingerprints have long been viewed as infallible -- the "gold standard" when it comes to criminal identification. But recent critical reports and scrutiny have illuminated the fact that fingerprint science, though in use for more than 100 years in the courts, never went through the rigorous process of building a scientific foundation that most scientific endeavors must complete as part of their growing pains. This talk will briefly highlight some of the questions the field is currently grappling with and review the body of research that has sprung up in response.

 

 

Dr. Heidi Eldridge received her MS in Biology from Duke University and her PhD in Forensic Science from the University of Lausanne (Switzerland).  She spent approximately 11 years working in state, local, and regional forensic laboratories where she performed casework in controlled substances, latent prints, and crime scene analysis and reconstruction including bloodstain pattern interpretation, shooting reconstruction, event analysis, biological screening, and serial number restoration. From 2015 to 2022, she was a full-time forensic science researcher at RTI International, where she completed internally- and externally-funded research on the suitability decision in latent prints, establishing a baseline discipline error rate estimate for palmar comparisons, recognizing warning factors for close non-matches in latent prints, and human factors in forensic science. Dr. Eldridge is current Chair of the Friction Ridge Consensus Body of the American Standards Board (ASB) and of the Forensic Science Education Programs Accreditation Commission (FEPAC). She sits on the Boards of Directors of both the International Association for Identification (IAI) and the ASB and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS) and is chair of the Friction Ridge Subcommittee of the Organization of Scientific Area Committees (OSAC) for Forensic Science. Additionally, Dr. Eldridge sits on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Forensic Identification and is a peer-reviewer for several other forensic science journals. Dr. Eldridge is a Certified Latent Print Examiner with the IAI.

https://www.ncas.org/2025/01/how-much-is-enough-how-sure-are-you.html

How to Watch and Participate in this Online Discussion Event:

1) Use a supported browser... https://www.youtube.com/supported_browsers

2) Use the link https://youtu.be/UPGn6Js2kqs

3) The live stream begins shortly before 7pm US/Eastern (UTC-05:00) on Wednesday, February 12, 2025.

4) To post questions, you must be signed in to a Google account.

5) Post your questions in the chat window to the right of the video player when the live stream is active.

6) Click into where it says "Say something..." and begin typing (up to 200 characters). Then click the send icon .

Along with your question, please post what city or town you're in.

February Bay Area Skeptics Lecture

The [San Francisco] Bay Area Skeptics will host their next online event on Thursday, February 13 at 9:30 PM ET.  Dr. Mohamed Noor, a professor of biology at Duke University, will discuss his book, Live Long and Evolve: What Star Trek Can Teach Us about Evolution, Genetics, and Life on Other Worlds (Princeton University Press, 2018).  This will be livestreamed on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9bI6lFHkDQ

Peter Hotez on Skeptical Inquirer Presents

Peter Hotez, MD, PhD, Professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology & Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine, will appear on the next Skeptical Inquirer Presents live online event, Thursday, February 20 at 7 PM ET, "Countering the Next Phase of American Anti-Vaccine Activism."  Free registration is required: https://skepticalinquirer.org/video/countering-the-next-phase-of-american-anti-vaccine-activism-peter-hotez/

Torn From Today's Headlines
By Scott Snell
Year-round Standard Time vs Year-Round Daylight Saving Time vs Clock-Changing

The newly-convened 119th US Congress has introduced the "Sunshine Protection Act of 2025" in the House of Representatives (House Bill 139, Republican co-sponsors) and Senate (Senate Bill 29, bipartisan co-sponsors).  The bills are essentially identical to unsuccessful bills from each of the previous four US Congresses, to make daylight saving time the new, permanent standard time, except for states with areas exempt from daylight saving time; states may choose the standard time for those areas.  (Many state legislatures have also taken up the issue of staying on Standard Time or Daylight Saving Time year-round.  See https://www.ncsl.org/transportation/daylight-saving-time-state-legislation)

In response, the "Coalition for Standard Time" (https://ditchdst.com/) comprising "National Sleep Foundation," "Save Standard Time," and other organizations, has redoubled its advocacy efforts to end Daylight Saving Time.  Their social media channels direct readers to their website's resources, for example, https://srbr.org/advocacy/daylight-saving-time-presskit/

Generally, their message to the public is that the science is clear on the issue: changing the clocks is harmful to health, and permanent DST is harmful to health.  They also note that winter DST was attempted in early 1974 and the US public hated the resulting dark mornings.

However, they don't discuss the successful techniques that Alaskans, Scandanavians, and other residents of long polar night regions use to awaken in darkness and safely travel to work and school.  Those methods weren't used in most of the US during the 1974 DST failure.  Nor do they discuss the situation in Spain, which hasn't been on Standard Time since 1940, and is 2 hours ahead of Standard Time for several months each year.  Spaniards are generally healthy (having the 5th longest life expectancy in the world), despite living on Daylight Saving Time and DST+1.  (Siestas may be part of Spaniards' success, although this is uncommon in their modern urban culture.)  At the very least, this raises questions about how unhealthy a DST lifestyle really is.

Apparently the Coalition is presenting a very simplified version of where the science stands on this issue, and omits viable solutions from their public-facing discussion.

In any case, President Trump has stated that he would support abolishing Daylight Saving Time: https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/113647254141876924

Author's comment:

Perhaps it's better to offer the public options, such as, "Yes, you can probably succeed with year-round DST by imitating the successes of Scandanavians who awaken in darkness and safely travel to work and school.  Even if you choose year-round Standard Time instead, you can use those techniques to help people who must still awaken in darkness, such as public transportation employees."  There appears to be a scientific consensus that awakening before sunrise is unhealthy.  The solution is to use artificial lights in the home to simulate sunrise.

On the other hand, maybe expending so much effort just to get some after-work DST sunlight isn't worth the trouble.  That said, year-round Standard Time will mean summer sunset at about 7:30 PM instead of 8:30 PM.  That's not likely to be popular with the public.

My view is that the public should have all the pros and cons of their choices available so they can make an informed decision.  I covered many aspects of this in my November 2023 NCAS talk, which is part of the NCAS YouTube library: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J6QEYSxMjs

Larry Kusche (1940-2024)

Larry David Kusche, CSI Fellow and retired technical document and proposal writer at AlliedSignal/Honeywell Engine Division in Arizona, died on July 22, 2024.  His obituary: https://www.azcentral.com/obituaries/pazs0907396

Skeptics will best remember Kusche for his time (1969-1975) as a research librarian at Arizona State University, when he authored his first book, The Bermuda Triangle Mystery — Solved (Harper & Row, 1975).  Considered the defining work on the subject, he later devoted an entire book to the most famous Triangle incident, The Disappearance of Flight 19 (Harper & Row, 1980).  Perhaps no other alleged "mysteries" have been so effectively debunked as Kusche did for the Triangle, which never again approached the cultural prominence it once had in the early 1970s.

In the back of the very first issue of The Zetetic (from 1976, soon to be renamed as Skeptical Inquirer), published by the newly-formed Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP, forerunner to today's Committee for Skeptical Inquiry), you'll see Kusche listed as a CSICOP Fellow.  Pick up the latest issue (the one with Bill Nye on the cover) and you'll still find him in the list.

Excerpted from Kusche's LinkedIn page:

...wrote the book "The Bermuda Triangle Mystery - Solved," (1975) which exposed the Triangle to be a pseudoscientific/ paranormal fraud based on distorted information.

In 1980 my book "The Disappearance of Flight 19" was a heavily researched account of the loss of the five Avenger torpedo bombers from Fort Lauderdale in 1945.

I am currently developing a website on the Triangle, as it has risen again as a popular topic. Am analyzing NTSB reports of accidents in the area that are being reported as supposedly mysterious.

Interesting that Kusche perceived that the Bermuda Triangle had made a "comeback."  (I don't know when he wrote this LinkedIn profile.)

Forty years after his first book, he wrote a retrospective (and, as it turned out, final) article for Skeptical Inquirer:

https://skepticalinquirer.org/2015/11/the-bermuda-triangle-mystery-delusion/

Comment by Scott Snell:

Several months ago, I was at a social occasion with colleagues from Goddard Space Flight Center.  The topic of skepticism came up (probably my choice) with a friend/coworker of one of the NCAS board members.  We were amused to discover that both of us followed the same pathway into the subject: as kids (roughly the same age), we were fascinated by UFOs, Bigfoot, ESP, etc.  And our first introduction to skepticism wasn't Sagan or Randi or Klass...it was Kusche's The Bermuda Triangle Mystery — Solved.  From then on, both of us eventually found the other skeptical books and Skeptical Inquirer.

Today, I emailed him with the news of Kusche's passing.  He thanked me and said he'll start reading the book again.

I had the pleasure of meeting Kusche at a CSI conference ("UFOs: The Space-Age Mythology," October 2009 in Tucson, Arizona).  He was one of the attendees, not a presenter.  I'm glad I happened to glance at his name tag, otherwise I might never have realized he was there.  I let him know how grateful I was for his book...what an eye-opener (actually mind-opener) it was for my young self.

He kindly offered to autograph my copy of his book if I'd ship it to him.  And he included a free signed copy of his Flight 19 book.  (He didn't ship them immediately...it turned out that he held onto the books a little longer so he could autograph them on December 5, the anniversary of the Flight 19 incident!)

My last contact with him was in October 2016, by email:

Dear Mr. Kusche,

I'm Scott Snell of the National Capital Area Skeptics (ncas.org).  I doubt you'll remember meeting me at the October 2009 CSI UFO workshop in Tucson...in any case I enjoyed meeting you and appreciated your autographing my copies of your books, including the Flight 19 book that you provided as a gift.

I'm writing to you today because I'll be providing the results of your research on the USS Cyclops case to tourists [on an NCAS "SkepTour" in Washington, DC] later this week.  If possible, I'd like to include your views on the following article from Popular Science, June, 1929:

https://books.google.com/books?id=XSgDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA15&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false

Author Reck also believes the storm is responsible for the loss of Cyclops.  But even more interesting is that he apparently reviewed the log of Amolco, stating that Cyclops was sighted on the evening of the 9th!

https://books.google.com/books?id=XSgDAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA15&pg=PA137#v=onepage&q&f=false

If true, this is an independent confirmation that Cyclops was approaching Virginia at the time of the storm.

This 1920 book also provides information about the log entry:

https://books.google.com/books?id=m_ZopT3od1IC&pg=PA25&lpg=PA25#v=onepage&q&f=false

There are obvious errors: "U. S. S. Amalco" for one.  But these could simply be garbled details of worthwhile information.

What are your thoughts about this?

Regards,
Scott Snell

Kusche replied:

Hello Scott,

Thank you for the material on the Cyclops.
I had some info on the storm and the Amolco in the book, but not the source that you sent me.

I’ll get back to you with more info later.

Larry Kusche

I never heard back from him.

The 1929 article was significant because it was the first to establish that a severe storm was impacting the Eastern US seaboard.  (Kusche had been unaware of this article when he independently came to the same conclusion during research for his book.)

However, the article's claim that the Amolco's log indicated that Cyclops was sighted is false.  See U.S.S. Cyclops (Heritage Books, 2010) by Marvin W. Barrash, the October 2018 NCAS speaker.

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