Strength of fingerprint evidence in doubt - 100 years after use of this "foolproof" detection tool began

If you click the DNA button in the cloud on the right, you'll see that there's a lot of debate over DNA on this site (and in my columns elsewhere). I wonder if in 80 or 90 years' time, it will emerge that doubts over DNA detection will emerge to have been correct?
Worth thinking about today, as a senior judge raises concerns over fingerprint evidence used in criminal trials, warning that it rests on “assumptions” that have never been scientifically proven:

Lord Justice Leveson, an appeal judge and chairman of the Sentencing Council, called into question the “century old” identification process, which he said was often considered “virtually unassailable” in tying a person to a crime.The judge said that there have been “numerous” recent cases of innocent people being wrongly singled out by fingerprint evidence.In a speech to the Forensic Science Society in London, he said the analysis of fingerprints by experts was “fundamentally subjective” and that it was therefore “inherently capable of misidentifications”.

Lord Justice Leveson called for new research to be carried out to ensure fingerprinting is “robust” and reliable.“There is growing unease among fingerprint examiners and researchers that the century old fingerprint identification process rests on assumptions that have never been tested empirically,” he said.Speaking about the use of expert evidence in court cases, the senior judge said it was vital to have a “methodology and a hypothesis that are capable of withstanding robust testing”.“Arguably, as it currently stands, the science of fingerprint identification does not,” he added.

If (only now, after countless thousands of convictions based on it) we are told that we should doubt the century-old "proven" fingerprint technique, what problems might lie with DNA (or ANPR, or facial recognition technology...), discovered in the future, but resulting in wrongful convictions today..?
By Alex Deane

Source: BBW