From "Law and Order" to "CSI," not to mention real life, investigators have used fingerprints as the gold standard for linking criminals to a crime. But if a perpetrator leaves prints from different fingers in two different crime scenes, these scenes are very difficult to link, and the trace can go cold.
They copy pasted the Columbia University press release word for word. Which is unfortunately way too common on science journalism. The article just repeats the researchers claims which may or may not hold water. Their main claim that they proved that inter fingerprints aren’t unique is just semantic manipulation. That’s probably what irked reviewers. Their research doesn’t support their claims. At best, they’re proposing a mediocre application of AI to detect markers that were already known about.
That makes a lot of sense. It’s way too easy to spread BS the way that science journalism works.