NEWS – “without comment”

The Bias hunter

Itiel Dror is determined to reveal the role of bias in forensics, even if it sparks outrage

12 May 2022 – By: Douglas Starr

….biases that can put innocent people in jail.

In February 2021, cognitive psychologist Itiel Dror set off a firestorm in the forensics community. In a paper, he suggested forensic pathologists were more likely to pronounce a child’s death a murder versus an accident if the victim was Black and brought to the hospital by the mother’s boyfriend than if they were white and brought in by the grandmother. It was the latest of Dror’s many experiments suggesting forensic scientists are subconsciously influenced by cognitive biases—biases that can put innocent people in jail.

Dror, a researcher at University College London (UCL), has spent decades using real-world cases and data to show how experts in fields as diverse as hospital care and aviation can reverse themselves when presented with the same evidence in different contexts. But his most public work has involved forensic science, a field reckoning with a history of unscientific methods. In 2009, the National Research Council published a groundbreaking report that most forensic sciences—including the analysis of bullets, hair, bite marks, and even fingerprints—are based more on tradition than on quantifiable science.

Since then, hundreds of studies and legal cases have revealed flaws in forensic sciences

Full article: https://www.science.org/content/article/forensic-experts-biased-scientists-claims-spark-outrage

Reposted by kind consent of Bill Elliott, CCDI, CLI®, CII, CFI-FTER

Board Certified Criminal Defense Investigator

ELLIOTT & ASSOCIATES, Ltd. New Mexico USA