Babylonian Biometrics and Widespread Methodological Shortcomings

This note looks at the common claim tracing the history of biometric security back to ancient Babylon. This claim is commonly accepted in the security community and repeated widely (including in prestigious venues). However, the various papers making this claim generally do so in the introduction, without providing any reference for it. We offer an analysis of the soundness of this claim, of how it evolved and how far it spread. Finally, we take this example as an opportunity to look at what seems to be a larger methodological issue—the handling of out-of-field citations—in publishing practices in both computer science and other fields.