Morrison, Geoffrey Stewart, Kaye, David H., Balding, David J., Taylor, Duncan, Dawid, Philip, Aitken, Colin G.G., Gittelson, Simone, Zadora, Grzegorz, Robertson, Bernard, Willis, Sheila, Pope, Susan, Neil, Martin, Martire, Kristy A., Hepler, Amanda, Gill, Richard D., Jamieson, Allan, de Zoete, Jacob, Ostrum, R. Brent and Caliebe, Amke (2017). A comment on the PCAST report:skip the “match”/“non-match” stage. Forensic Science International, 272 , e7-e9.
Abstract
This letter comments on the report “Forensic science in criminal courts: Ensuring scientific validity of feature-comparison methods” recently released by the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). The report advocates a procedure for evaluation of forensic evidence that is a two-stage procedure in which the first stage is “match”/“non-match” and the second stage is empirical assessment of sensitivity (correct acceptance) and false alarm (false acceptance) rates. Almost always, quantitative data from feature-comparison methods are continuously-valued and have within-source variability. We explain why a two-stage procedure is not appropriate for this type of data, and recommend use of statistical procedures which are appropriate.
Publication DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.forsciint.2016.10.018 |
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Divisions: | College of Business and Social Sciences > Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities Aston University (General) |
Additional Information: | © 2016, Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ |
Uncontrolled Keywords: | false alarm,forensic statistics,likelihood ratio,match/non-match,PCAST report,sensitivity to pressure and temperature,Pathology and Forensic Medicine |
Publication ISSN: | 0379-0738 |
Last Modified: | 05 Dec 2024 08:10 |
Date Deposited: | 10 Aug 2017 09:40 |
Full Text Link: | |
Related URLs: |
http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK
(Scopus URL) |
PURE Output Type: | Letter |
Published Date: | 2017-03-01 |
Published Online Date: | 2016-10-26 |
Accepted Date: | 2016-10-01 |
Authors: |
Morrison, Geoffrey Stewart
(
0000-0001-8608-8207)
Kaye, David H. Balding, David J. Taylor, Duncan Dawid, Philip Aitken, Colin G.G. Gittelson, Simone Zadora, Grzegorz Robertson, Bernard Willis, Sheila Pope, Susan Neil, Martin Martire, Kristy A. Hepler, Amanda Gill, Richard D. Jamieson, Allan de Zoete, Jacob Ostrum, R. Brent Caliebe, Amke |
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