ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on an ongoing study of the historical and epistemic relationships between DNA profiling and fingerprinting. It addresses an inversion of credibility that began in the late 1990s and is continuing today. This inversion had to do with the relation between recently developed techniques of DNA profiling and established methods of fingerprinting. The chapter argues that this inversion is part of a more general shift away from 'experiential' grounds of expertise toward institutionalized 'objective' expertise. The expression 'DNA fingerprinting' was frequently used by the media and also, with greater qualification, by forensic specialists. Doubts were raised about the methods and quality control standards practiced by the private and public forensic labs that conducted DNA profile analysis. By the end of the 1990s DNA profiling had become so well accepted that it began to be used as a basis for calling all other forms of evidence into question.
