Fingerprints and paternity testing: a study of genetics and probability in pre-DNA forensic science

Abstract

Abstract This article is a study of forensic science researchers’ attempts to develop paternity tests based on fingerprint patterning, a physical trait that is partially inherited. Pursued in different times and places—ranging from Austria to Japan to China and from the early 20th century to the 1990s—the projects under study represent an ongoing dialogue, carried out through decades of international scientific exchange, about how to extract genetic information from fingerprints and present this data as scientifically-valid evidence in courts of law. Over time, those who engaged in this work increasingly experimented with methods for presenting fingerprint-based evidence of paternity in quantifiable and even probabilistic terms. Fingerprint-based paternity tests remained an obscure area of forensic practice and were eventually overshadowed by advances in serology and DNA profiling. This unfamiliar corner of forensic science, nonetheless, can provide additional perspective on the history of statistical expertise and probabilistic reasoning in modern forensic science, including the application of Bayesian approaches. The larger body of 20th-century ‘dermatoglyphics’ knowledge out of which these tests emerged also continues to influence the foundation of scientific knowledge on which latent print examination is based today.