  Forensic science is usually taken to mean the application of a broad spectrum
of scientific tools to answer questions of interest to the legal system.
Despite such popular television series as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and
its spinoffs--CSI: Miami and CSI: New York--on which the forensic scientists
use the latest high-tech scientific tools to identify the perpetrator of a
crime and always in under an hour, forensic science is under assault, in the
public media, popular magazines [Talbot (2007), Toobin (2007)] and in the
scientific literature [Kennedy (2003), Saks and Koehler (2005)]. Ironically,
this growing controversy over forensic science has occurred precisely at the
time that DNA evidence has become the ``gold standard'' in the courts, leading
to the overturning of hundreds of convictions many of which were based on
clearly less credible forensic evidence, including eyewitness testimony [Berger
(2006)].
