Old habits die hard: Precedent, psychology, and the admissibility of forensic evidence†.

The article focuses on the challenges surrounding the admissibility of forensic evidence in U.S. courts, highlighting how many widely used forensic techniques—such as bite mark analysis, latent fingerprint analysis, microscopic hair comparison, and ballistics matching—lack sufficient scientific validation yet continue to be admitted largely due to judicial reliance on precedent. Despite legal standards under Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals and Rule 702 of the Federal Rules of Evidence requiring judges to act as gatekeepers ensuring scientific reliability, courts often defer to longstanding case law and fail to rigorously scrutinize forensic methods. The article argues that cognitive biases—including information cascades, status quo bias, and omission bias—play a significant role in judges' decisions to admit unreliable forensic evidence, sometimes masking as deference to precedent. To address these issues, it recommends reforms such as increasing diversity on the bench, enhancing judicial education on scientific standards and cognitive biases, and implementing debiasing strategies to improve the evaluation of forensic evidence and reduce wrongful convictions.