The false promise of firearms examination validation studies: Lay controls, simplistic comparisons, and the failure to soundly measure misidentification rates.

Several studies have recently attempted to estimate practitioner accuracy when comparing fired ammunition. But whether this research has included sufficiently challenging comparisons dependent upon expertise for accurate conclusions regarding source remains largely unexplored in the literature. Control groups of lay people comprise one means of vetting this question, of assessing whether comparison samples were at least challenging enough to distinguish between experts and novices.