A Scottish trial discovered that the police had applied pressure to forensic scientists in the preparation of the scientific report.  The matter was reviewed by the UK Forensic Science Regulator.

A Scottish newspaper story on the response to the report has quoted a legal source as saying it's a 'whitewash'.

The report appears to conclude that since, after the entire process of analysis, reporting, precognition and eventual disclosure of the flawed process, that it all worked out OK and therefore the expectations of an expert witness were met. This ignores the fact that the expert is expected to be, “the independent product of the expert uninfluenced as to form or content by the exigencies of litigation”. In this case, it clearly and admittedly was not.
Despite the admission of both scientists that pressure was applied by the police, the review (by a former policeman) concludes, “No pressure was applied to influence the evidence produced by the scientists other than the natural modification which was required as a result of the additional comparison.” Two scientists departed from standard procedure and provided a report which, by their own admission, they would not normally have done.
The report bizarrely suggests that the scientists are not in a position to make contemporaneous notes, yet then mentions the contemporaneous notes taken by the prosecution and defence at such precognitions. Because of the restrictions on access to laboratory casefiles in Scotland, such precognitions are the only means by which defence experts can view, and take notes of, the work done by the SPA.
If SPA scientists, as they do, take notes of all correspondence, including telephone calls and work performed, allowed the defence copies of the casefiles, as is done in every other jurisdiction that we have worked in (including England, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland, USA, and New Zealand) then all of this would have been disclosed well before the trial. It should not have to wait for what was clearly an accidental exposure by the prosecution.
Ms Colley is to be congratulated for her open-ness and honesty in disclosing the process, but she and Ms Wilcock, and the SPA have to accept responsibility for a culture in which this could happen and remain undiscovered until the court.
The Regulator’s report is neither sufficiently focussed on, nor sufficiently critical of the factors that allowed this flawed process to occur.  Once again, there appears to be a disconnect between the facts contained within a Regulator's report and the conclusion.

(Our Dr Bader was engaged as a DNA expert for the defence in the case of Mr Monaghan)