The point is that the particular techniques used in court cases are often not verified by any scientific testing. The last sentence of the PNAS paper abstract is: "Examiners frequently differed on whether fingerprints were suitable for reaching a conclusion."
"Examiners frequently differed on whether fingerprints were suitable for reaching a conclusion."
is one of those weasel phrases which - while an accurate statement - means absolutely nothing because first "differing" in an opinion means almost nothing and the word "conclusion" is not defined.
Many people assert the Earth is flat and have detailed explanations on why that is the case, yet they "differ" in opinion too.
If fingerprints stood alone as a single point of evidence for guilty/innocent, I might agree. But it's used primarily as a "we have person A who matches close enough, let's go talk to him" that's useful. Or alternatively, if a fingerprint is one (of many) pieces of evidence that goes into making the case, that's useful. Only the worst cop shows say "the computer matched this guy! It must be him!"
* I was with the FBI on fingerprint analysis and saw the data, processes, etc and how a fingerprint is only a data point (aka clue) within the larger case.. and sometimes it's not enough depending on how many points you match.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3093498/
https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2004/07/nist-study-sho...
https://www.pnas.org/content/108/19/7733.short