CSI may have spawned innumerable spinoffs, but it turns out you can’t trust TV — or sniffer dogs: new research is questioning the scientific basis for the dogs’ use by police, as well as aspects of bloodstain pattern analysis and ballistics evidence routinely used in courts. 

One published paper in The Alberta Law Review and two forthcoming articles in The Canadian Bar Review and The Dalhousie Law Journal examine how courts treat these forms of evidence and argue that greater scrutiny is needed. 

“Just because a technique has been used in court for decades doesn’t mean we should take its reliability for granted, especially when someone’s liberty is at stake in a criminal trial,” said author Sara Gordon, associate professor at Peter A. Allard School of Law at UBC. “My hope is that this research will help judges and lawyers better understand the limitations of these techniques and ensure that forensic evidence is presented in a way that accurately reflects what the science can — and can’t — tell us.”