Forensic Fraud

I'm a big fan of those procedural forensic shows, the ones where the coroner or CSI or detective finds a bruising pattern or a cut or a bite mark that proves that the next-door neighbor really did kill the rude anthropologist, after all. I know that most of the science and technology in them is exaggerated, if not outright impossible, but it is nice to imagine that we could have the tools to almost always correctly identify the lawbreaker. That's why I was particularly drawn to this story wherein a man was convicted of arson, rape, and murder mostly based on the testimony of dentist Michael West, who claimed that teeth marks on the body matched those of a (mass-manufactured denture wearing) suspect. As the article explains,

West, who once claimed he could trace the tooth marks in a half-eaten bologna sandwich at a crime scene to a defendant while excluding everyone else on the planet, has had to resign from two professional forensics organizations due to his habit of giving testimony unsupported by science.

West appears to be more or less a fraud, a man who dubiously matches teeth marks to the mouths of people who are already suspects and takes credit for closing difficult cases. I assume that acclaim drives him to do what he does, but his fraud has both put potentially innocent people on death row and could significantly undermine future use of forensic evidence in criminal trials. Does the dentist operate based on some thwarted sense of justice? Does he just "know" that suspects are guilty, and therefore fudges the evidence to put them in prison? Or does he disregard the suspects' plights altogether, wishing simply for congratulations for having solved a crime? Perhaps he's just trying to add some glamor to dentistry. I am no expert on this subject, of course, but neither do I claim to be.