Perceived strength of forensic scientists' reporting statements about source conclusions
- 1 June 2018
- journal article
- conference paper
- Published by Oxford University Press (OUP) in Law, Probability and Risk
- Vol. 17 (2), 133-155
- https://doi.org/10.1093/lpr/mgy012
Abstract
Three studies investigated lay people's perceptions of the relative strength of various conclusions that a forensic scientist might present about whether two items ( fingerprints, biological samples) have a common source. Lay participants made a series of judgments about which of two conclusions seemed stronger for proving the items had a common source. The data were fitted to Thurstone-Mosteller paired comparison models to obtain rank-ordered lists of the various statements and an indication of the perceived differences among them. The results reveal the perceived strength of several types of statements, relative to one another, including verbal statements regarding strength of support (e.g. 'extremely strong support for same source'), source probability statements (e.g. 'highly probable same source'), randommatch probabilities (e.g. RMP = 1 in 100 000), likelihood ratios, and categorical statements (e.g. 'identification'). These comparisons in turn provide insight into whether particular statements about the strength of forensic evidence convey the intended meaning and will be interpreted in a manner that is justifiable and appropriate.Keywords
Funding Information
- Center for Statistical Applications in Forensic Evidence
- CSAFE
- National Institute of Standards and Technology
- NIST (# 70NANB15H176)
- Carnegie Mellon University
- University of California Irvine
- University of Virginia
This publication has 33 references indexed in Scilit:
- The role of prior probability in forensic assessmentsFrontiers in Genetics, 2013
- Accuracy and reliability of forensic latent fingerprint decisionsProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2011
- Amazon's Mechanical TurkPerspectives on Psychological Science, 2011
- Towards a uniform framework for reporting opinions in forensic science caseworkScience & Justice, 1998
- Bayes FactorsJournal of the American Statistical Association, 1995
- Thurstone and sensory scaling: Then and now.Psychological Review, 1994
- A continuum of paired comparisons modelsBiometrika, 1990
- Interpretation of statistical evidence in criminal trials: The prosecutor's fallacy and the defense attorney's fallacy.Law and Human Behavior, 1987
- Rank Analysis of Incomplete Block Designs: I. The Method of Paired ComparisonsBiometrika, 1952
- A law of comparative judgment.Psychological Review, 1927