Vacuous standards – Subversion of the OSAC standards-development process

Abstract

In the context of development of standards for forensic science, particularly standards initially developed by the U.S. Organization of Scientific Area Committees for Forensic Science (OSAC), this perspective paper raises concern about the publication of vacuous standards. Vacuous standards generally state few requirements; the requirements they do state are often vague; compliance with their stated requirements can be achieved with little effort – the bar is set very low; and compliance with their stated requirements would not be sufficient to lead to scientifically valid results. This perspective paper proposes a number of requirements that we believe would be essential in order for a standard on validation of forensic-science methods to be fit for purpose.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fsisyn.2020.06.005
Divisions: College of Engineering & Physical Sciences > School of Engineering and Technology > Mechanical, Biomedical & Design
College of Engineering & Physical Sciences > Aston Institute of Urban Technology and the Environment (ASTUTE)
Additional Information: ©2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Uncontrolled Keywords: Forensic science,Method validation,OSAC,Standard,Validation,Pathology and Forensic Medicine,Law
Last Modified: 26 Mar 2024 08:14
Date Deposited: 13 Jul 2020 08:00
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL)
https://www.sci ... 0462?via%3Dihub (Publisher URL)
PURE Output Type: Editorial
Published Date: 2020-06-30
Accepted Date: 2020-06-29
Authors: Morrison, Geoffrey Stewart (ORCID Profile 0000-0001-8608-8207)
Neumann, Cedric
Geoghegan, Patrick Henry (ORCID Profile 0000-0003-1224-0477)

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