Forensic Scientists To Create Standards

NIST is calling for scientists to join a new organization to unify and standardize the scientific basis for forensic science. The Organization of Scientific Area Committees (OSAC) will include 23 committees aimed at creating scientific standards for specific forensic disciplines, including a half-dozen chemistry-related fields. OSAC was created earlier this year through an agreement between NIST and the Department of Justice in an attempt to address concerns raised in a 2009 National Academy of Sciences report that many forensic disciplines have little or no scientific underpinning. OSAC is taking over the duties of many ad hoc scientific working groups that studied specific areas of forensic science and made recommendations on best practices. The NAS report said these groups were uneven in their quality.