Slashdot Mirror
Ears Might Be Better Than Fingerprints For ID
An anonymous reader writes "A new study says that outer ear could be better unique identification mark in human beings than finger prints. 'When you're born your ear is fully formed. The lobe descends a little, but overall it stays the same. It's a great way to identify people,' said Mark Nixon, a computer scientist at the University of Southampton and leader of the research. Nixon and his team presented a paper at the IEEE Fourth International Conference on Biometrics and using an algorithm identified people with 99.6 per cent accuracy."
An anonymous reader adds a link to Wired's story on the same conference presentation, which adds this skeptical note: "'I have seen no scientific proof that the ear doesn’t change significantly over time. People tend to believe notions like these, and they are repeated over time,' said Anil Jain, a computer scientist at Michigan State University who was not involved in the study. 'Fingerprinting has a history of 100 years showing that it works, unless you destroy your fingerprints or work in an industry that gives you calluses.'"
Have you ever seen people with jewelry that stretches their ears in a significant ways? What about wrestlers? Some of these peoples ears bare little resemblance to what they did when born. Now granted people can burn their finger tips and do all kinds of other crap as well, but this kind of mutilation is usually intentional as compared to the examples above (yes... I know people can lose fingers to a saw too...)
> unless you destroy your fingerprints
Having inadvertantly taken my fingerprints off one hand at one point (yes, it was VERY painful, thank you), and found (as many others have) that they grow back... can you actually damage them so bad/repeatedly they don't grow back, and still have things like, erm, fingertips?