Neuroimaging Studies of Psychopathy

Deming, Philip; Koenigs, Michael

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-57231-0_27

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

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“…Since structural studies are not distinguished by task characteristics, direct structural replications are more likely than functional ones. Third, we excluded youth psychopathy measures, including the PCL youth version (PCL:YV; Forth et al, 2003) because neurobiological findings in adolescents are generally not thought to be stable (e.g., Deming & Koenigs, 2021). However, it is possible that findings on youth are more reproducible than those on adults.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since courts tend to view psychopathy as a category (i.e., they are more likely to accept evidence on the differences between psychopaths and non-psychopaths than on the degrees of psychopathy) it is unclear how such findings, even if directly replicated, would be forensically relevant (see Walsh & Walsh, 2006). While it is theoretically possible that between-group and dimensional designs are interchangeable, some argue that they are not (see e.g., Deming & Koenigs, 2021). The argument for interchangeability should therefore be debated in academic literature rather than in court.…”

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How to keep unreproducible neuroimaging evidence out of court: A case study in fMRI and psychopathy.

Jalava¹,

Griffiths²,

Larsen³

2023

Psychology, Public Policy, and Law

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The amount of neuroimaging evidence introduced in courts continues to increase. Meanwhile, neuroimaging research is in the midst of a reproducibility crisis, as many published findings appear to be false positives. The problem is mostly due to small sample sizes, lack of direct replications, and questionable research practices. There are concerns that a significant proportion of neuroimaging evidence introduced in court may therefore be unreliable. Guidelines governing the admissibility of scientific evidence-Frye and Daubert -are not designed to weed out such data. We propose supplementing Frye and Daubert with minimal reproducibility criteria that allow judges to make informed admissibility decisions about neuroimaging research. To demonstrate how this could work, we subjected functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) findings on psychopathy-evidence that has been admitted in court-to a minimal reproducibility test. A systematic PRISMA search found 64 relevant studies but no sufficiently powered, directly replicated evidence of a psychopathy-related neurobiological profile. This illustrates two things: (a) the probability of false positives in this data set is likely to be unacceptably high and (b) the reproducibility of similar neuroimaging evidence can be evaluated in a straightforward way. Our findings suggest an urgent need to modify admissibility guidelines to exclude low-quality neuroimaging data.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%