Thank you to baltwo and etresoft, both of you well-respected members of this community. This is where I find that the discussion gets interesting, if not outright confusing. Another respected community member, Kappy, previously stated exactly the opposite of both of you, that the Finder does perform verification (although he did not specify the type or completeness of verification). Here is the link to that February of 2009 discussion:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1895741
As I've tried to get a definitive answer on this, here's more of what I have found:
Peter Krogh, author of "The DAM Book" and arguably an expert on data integrity, states in his book that a post-copy verification process is vital and indicates that a Finder copy does not provide this. (See pages 225-226 of the current edition.) He recommends using a backup utility, not the Finder, to make drive-to-drive copies as, "This ensures everything that I intended to copy has copied and it checks to make sure that each copy is exactly like the original." He goes on to recommend ChronoSync or SuperDuper! However, note that following the publication of book, in his own forum, Krogh corrected himself when it was discovered that SuperDuper! does not do verification, thus leaving ChronoSync by default as his sole Mac recommendation. Forum link: http://thedambook.com/smf/index.php?topic=4478.0
And SuperDuper!'s lack of verification was confirmed to me by developer Dave Nanian of Shirt Pocket Software. In a response to my 2010 inquiry regarding whether his SuperDuper! application performed a bit-for-bit verification, he wrote:
"No, we don't verify. Modern disk controllers check both read and write operations, so verification is generally redundant."
Honestly, the phrase "generally redundant" leaves me deeply concerned as that sounds to me like exceptions to verification, meaning unseen and/or unannounced errors, can actually happen. Otherwise, please omit the word "generally" and say something else. No, I want bullet-proof verification.
Now, I'm no shill for ChronoSync; frankly, if all I want is a verified copy of a folder full of files (I'm a photographer, copying thousands of images across multiple drives on a regular basis), ChronoSync is gigantic overkill and, honestly, quite confusing and cumbersome for this simple task. What I want is a simple GUI way to copy my files across drives and KNOW that they have arrived intact. The Finder would have been/could have been/should have been that method, but as of this discussion, apparently does not seem to have that absolute capability.
By the way, etresoft, thank you for pointing out the possibility of doing a manual "cksum" and using a script to automate the process, but, honestly that is WAY over my head, as it would be for most consumers.
