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Scientific guidelines for evaluating the validity of forensic feature-comparison methods

When it comes to questions of fact in a legal context—particularly questions about measurement, association, and causality—courts should employ ordinary standards of applied science. Applied sciences generally develop along a path that proceeds from a basic scientific discovery about some natural pr...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Scurich, Nicholas, Faigman, David L., Albright, Thomas D.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: National Academy of Sciences 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10576079/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37782809
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2301843120
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author Scurich, Nicholas
Faigman, David L.
Albright, Thomas D.
author_facet Scurich, Nicholas
Faigman, David L.
Albright, Thomas D.
author_sort Scurich, Nicholas
collection PubMed
description When it comes to questions of fact in a legal context—particularly questions about measurement, association, and causality—courts should employ ordinary standards of applied science. Applied sciences generally develop along a path that proceeds from a basic scientific discovery about some natural process to the formation of a theory of how the process works and what causes it to fail, to the development of an invention intended to assess, repair, or improve the process, to the specification of predictions of the instrument’s actions and, finally, empirical validation to determine that the instrument achieves the intended effect. These elements are salient and deeply embedded in the cultures of the applied sciences of medicine and engineering, both of which primarily grew from basic sciences. However, the inventions that underlie most forensic science disciplines have few roots in basic science, and they do not have sound theories to justify their predicted actions or results of empirical tests to prove that they work as advertised. Inspired by the “Bradford Hill Guidelines”—the dominant framework for causal inference in epidemiology—we set forth four guidelines that can be used to establish the validity of forensic comparison methods generally. This framework is not intended as a checklist establishing a threshold of minimum validity, as no magic formula determines when particular disciplines or hypotheses have passed a necessary threshold. We illustrate how these guidelines can be applied by considering the discipline of firearm and tool mark examination.
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spelling pubmed-105760792023-10-15 Scientific guidelines for evaluating the validity of forensic feature-comparison methods Scurich, Nicholas Faigman, David L. Albright, Thomas D. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A Perspective When it comes to questions of fact in a legal context—particularly questions about measurement, association, and causality—courts should employ ordinary standards of applied science. Applied sciences generally develop along a path that proceeds from a basic scientific discovery about some natural process to the formation of a theory of how the process works and what causes it to fail, to the development of an invention intended to assess, repair, or improve the process, to the specification of predictions of the instrument’s actions and, finally, empirical validation to determine that the instrument achieves the intended effect. These elements are salient and deeply embedded in the cultures of the applied sciences of medicine and engineering, both of which primarily grew from basic sciences. However, the inventions that underlie most forensic science disciplines have few roots in basic science, and they do not have sound theories to justify their predicted actions or results of empirical tests to prove that they work as advertised. Inspired by the “Bradford Hill Guidelines”—the dominant framework for causal inference in epidemiology—we set forth four guidelines that can be used to establish the validity of forensic comparison methods generally. This framework is not intended as a checklist establishing a threshold of minimum validity, as no magic formula determines when particular disciplines or hypotheses have passed a necessary threshold. We illustrate how these guidelines can be applied by considering the discipline of firearm and tool mark examination. National Academy of Sciences 2023-10-02 2023-10-10 /pmc/articles/PMC10576079/ /pubmed/37782809 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2301843120 Text en Copyright © 2023 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Perspective
Scurich, Nicholas
Faigman, David L.
Albright, Thomas D.
Scientific guidelines for evaluating the validity of forensic feature-comparison methods
title Scientific guidelines for evaluating the validity of forensic feature-comparison methods
title_full Scientific guidelines for evaluating the validity of forensic feature-comparison methods
title_fullStr Scientific guidelines for evaluating the validity of forensic feature-comparison methods
title_full_unstemmed Scientific guidelines for evaluating the validity of forensic feature-comparison methods
title_short Scientific guidelines for evaluating the validity of forensic feature-comparison methods
title_sort scientific guidelines for evaluating the validity of forensic feature-comparison methods
topic Perspective
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10576079/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37782809
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2301843120
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