All In The Mind

Forensic Science, Psychology and Human Cognition: When the Oregon attorney, Brandon Mayfield, was arrested for the Madrid bombings 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. Claudia Hammond talks to Dr Itiel Dror, cognitive neuroscientist, whose groundbreaking studies first drew attention to the fact that individual forensic examiners can be swayed by context and affected by bias. Jim Fraser, Professor of Forensic Science from the University of Strathclyde a