The latest issue of National Geographic, here, on efforts to improve forensics.  “It’s been seven years since the National Academy of Sciences report called for a complete overhaul of forensic science. Some of its recommendations—to create a National Institute of Forensic Sciences, for example—are unlikely to come to pass for financial reasons, say government sources. Others, like an increase in research to establish how reliable fingerprints, bite marks, and other patterns really are at identifying individuals, are under way. In the first five years after the NAS report, the National Institute of Justice spent $100 million on projects that have resulted in more than 600 scientific studies and reports. But the going is slow.”