This is hardly surprising. I don't know of anyone previously setting out to make "fake DNA evidence", but the synthesis of arbitrary DNA strands has been possib

This is hardly surprising. I don't know of anyone previously setting out to make "fake DNA evidence", but the synthesis of arbitrary DNA strands has been possible for a while, and is a common technique in molecular biology labs. The application to making fake forensic evidence is obvious, if unethical. This makes DNA evidence comparable to other forms of forensics: generally dependable, but subject to tampering given enough motivation and resources. It's inconvenient to lose the "silver bullet", but it never was: law enforcement has had to deal with cases where people have placed blood, hairs, etc. on crime scenes before. The trick now will be to get juries to treat DNA evidence with the proper amounts of weight and skepticism. Especially since I bet this will show up on CSI within the year...