Episode 284 - Black Box '22 - Part 2 (with Brendan Max)

About this episode

The episode features a discussion on the 2025 FBI/Noblis black box study for latent fingerprints with guest Brendan Max.

In this episode, Eric stumps Glenn with a geography based Mandela Effect question. Then the guys welcome their guest commentator, Brendan Max, Public Defender and Chief of the Forensic Science Division in Chicago, Illinois. Eric, Glenn, and Brendan take a second look at the 2025 FBI/Noblis follow-up black box study for latent fingerprints. The guys had previously done a cursory review of the paper in Episode 282, and now wanted to dig in a bit into the appendices and take another look at some trends. Brendan offers his insights and shows that he’s pretty proficient with a spreadsheet too! The guys go back and forth discussing the strengths and limitations of the study and where the methodology and practice has likely improved since the original Black Box study (conducted in 2009). Article is available for free at: doi.org/10.1016/j.forsciint.2025.112457

People in this episode

Hosts: Glenn Langenburg, Eric Ray

Guest: Brendan Max

Topics covered

• forensic science
• latent fingerprints
• Mandela Effect
• FBI studies
• methodology improvement

Keywords

• forensic science
• latent fingerprints
• Black Box study
• FBI
• Noblis
• Brendan Max
• methodology

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: FBI, Noblis

Books & works: doi.org/10.1016/j.forsciint.2025.112457

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