Related papers: Commentary on Guyll et al. (2023): Misuse of Stati…

Reviews conducted by the National Academy of Sciences (2009) and the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (2016) concluded that the field of forensic firearm comparisons has not been demonstrated to be scientifically…

For several decades, legal and scientific scholars have argued that conclusions from forensic examinations should be supported by statistical data and reported within a probabilistic framework. Multiple models have been proposed to quantify…

The persistent issue of wrongful convictions in the United States emphasizes the need for scrutiny and improvement of the criminal justice system. While statistical methods for the evaluation of forensic evidence, including glass,…

Forensic firearms identification, the determination by a trained firearms examiner as to whether or not bullets or cartridges came from a common weapon, has long been a mainstay in the criminal courts. Reliability of forensic firearms…

For several decades, legal and scientific scholars have argued that conclusions from forensic examinations should be supported by statistical data and reported within a probabilistic framework. Multiple models have been proposed to quantify…

Researchers at the Ames Laboratory-USDOE and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) conducted a study to assess the performance of forensic examiners in firearm investigations. The study involved three different types of firearms and 173…

Forensic science is usually taken to mean the application of a broad spectrum of scientific tools to answer questions of interest to the legal system. Despite such popular television series as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and its…

A press release from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)could potentially impede progress toward improving the analysis of forensic evidence and the presentation of forensic analysis results in courts in the United…

Forensic science plays a critical role in the United States criminal justice system. For decades, many feature-based fields of forensic science, such as firearm and toolmark identification, developed outside the scientific community's…

This article examines the overlooked risk of false negative errors arising from eliminations in forensic firearm comparisons. While recent reforms in forensic science have focused on reducing false positives, eliminations--often based on…

We investigate how the use of bullet comparison algorithms and demonstrative evidence may affect juror perceptions of reliability, credibility, and understanding of expert witnesses and presented evidence. The use of statistical methods in…

Lennard (2013) [Fingerprint identification: how far have we come? Aus J Forensic Sci. doi:10.1080/00450618.2012.752037] proposes that the numeric output of statistical models should not be presented in court (except "if necessary" / "if…

Although researchers have found evidence contextual bias in forensic science, the discussion of contextual bias is currently qualitative. We formalize years of empirical research and extend this research by showing quantitatively how biases…

Increasing integration and availability of data on large groups of persons has been accompanied by proliferation of statistical and other algorithmic prediction tools in banking, insurance, marketiNg, medicine, and other FIelds (see e.g.,…

Statistics is sometimes described as the science of reasoning under uncertainty. Statistical models provide one view of this uncertainty, but what is frequently neglected is the 'invisible' portion of uncertainty: that assumed not to exist…

In this article we provide a rebuttal against the possible perception that a single number, such as the Likelihood Ratio, can provide an objective, authoritative or definitive weight of evidence. We also illustrate the extent to which…

Over the past decade, the field of forensic science has received recommendations from the National Research Council of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the U.S. President's…

Statistical methods are indispensable to scientific inference. However, there exists a longstanding tension across a wide range of scientific disciplines about the role that ``context'' should play in the application of statistical methods…

Big data and algorithmic risk prediction tools promise to improve criminal justice systems by reducing human biases and inconsistencies in decision making. Yet different, equally-justifiable choices when developing, testing, and deploying…

A binary decision task, like yes-no questions or answer verification, reflects a significant real-world scenario such as where users look for confirmation about the correctness of their decisions on specific issues. In this work, we observe…