A Massive Mess of Forensics

"The FBI's crime lab was at one point reputed to be one of the most elite, well-run labs in the world. Not so much anymore. For the last year, the agency has been embroiled in a huge and growing scandal in which its crime lab technicians have been found to have vastly overstated the value and conclusiveness of forensic evidence in criminal cases. The breadth and seriousness of the problem have only come to light in the last year or so, although there have been warning signs going back to the 1990s. The number of convictions affected is in the thousands, possibly the tens of thousands."