Testing the accuracy and reliability of palmar friction ridge comparisons – A black box study

Eldridge, Heidi; Donno, Marco De; Champod, Christophe

doi:10.1016/j.forsciint.2020.110457

Cited by 25 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Repeatability of conclusions (the ability to obtain the same result when the same specimens are presented later in “blind” fashion to the same examiner) and reproducibility (where the same specimens are presented at a later date to another examiner) have seldom been tested in any of the forensic disciplines. Three studies of latent fingerprint examiner performance are exceptions [ 18 , 93 , 94 ]. Although proficiency tests provide periodic evaluation of inter-laboratory reproducibility, they are limited in scope and typically do not assess individual competency or repeatability [ 95 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Planning, design and logistics of a decision analysis study: The FBI/Ames study involving forensic firearms examiners

Monson¹,

Smith²,

Bajic

2022

Forensic Science International: Synergy

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Planning, design and logistics of a decision analysis study: The FBI/Ames study involving forensic firearms examiners

Monson¹,

Smith²,

Bajic

2022

Forensic Science International: Synergy

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“…The deviation around the mean achieved by the nonexaminer group was much greater, with a 95% confidence level of 11 ± 6.136. This means, within that 95% confidence interval, the lowest an examiner would be expected to score would be 93.75%, whereas the highest a nonexaminer would be expected to achieve would be a 71% [7].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Observer determination of the make, model, and year of questioned vehicles

Bruehs

Tucker

Meline³

2021

Journal of Forensic Sciences

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Often, criminal acts involving a vehicle are caught on digital video surveillance systems. While potentially useful for an investigation, the recording conditions are typically less than optimal for the extraction of key information for the identification of the perpetrator, such as a license plate. Providing the make, model and year of a questioned vehicle is a common request for examiners, to narrow the field of potential suspect vehicles. This study seeks to compare the performance of a nonpeer-reviewed make, model, and year determination between two separate groups, specifically, trained forensic image examiners and nontrained individuals. Results show that even with varied image capture conditions and quality, the trained forensic image examiners more correctly and completely identified the test group of questioned vehicles make, model, and year.

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“…Many disciplines have a categorical outcome for this stage. For example, latent print examiners often use three categories: value for individualization, value for exclusion only, or no value (Ulery et al, 2011;Eldridge et al, 2021). If the item is deemed suitable for comparison, the examiner then arrives at another categorical conclusion about the origin of the unknown.…”

Section: Black-box Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The inferential goal of current black-box studies is to make a statement about either the discipline-wide error rate or the average examiner's error rate in a specific discipline (see e.g., Chumbley et al, 2021;Smith, 2021;Eldridge et al, 2021;Monson et al, 2022). In other words, these studies wish to take observations made on a sample of examiners and arrive at a conclusion about the broader population of examiners to which they belong.…”

Section: Unrepresentative Samples Of Examinersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…No black-box study attempts to address this information gap. Instead, to our knowledge, every black-box study to date has used self-selected samples of examiners (see e.g., Eldridge et al, 2021;Baldwin et al, 2014;Chumbley et al, 2021;Hicklin et al, 2021;Smith et al, 2016;Smith, 2021;Ulery et al, 2011;Richetelli et al, 2020;Guttman et al, 2022;Hicklin et al, 2022). These self-selected participants are typically solicited through email listservs for one or more professional organizations.…”

Section: Sample Selection In Black-box Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Shining a Light on Forensic Black-Box Studies

Khan¹,

Carriquiry²

2022

Preprint

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Forensic science plays a critical role in the American criminal justice system. For decades, many feature-based fields of forensic science, such as firearm and toolmark identification, developed outside of the purview of the scientific community. Currently, black-box studies are used to assess the scientific validity of feature-based methods. The results of these studies are widely relied on by judges across the country. However, this reliance is misplaced. Black-box studies to date suffer from inappropriate sampling methods and high rates of missingness. Current black-box studies ignore both problems in arriving at the error rate estimates presented to courts. We explore the impact of each type of limitation using available data from black-box studies and court materials. We show that black-box studies rely on non-representative samples of examiners. Using a case study of a popular ballistics study, we find evidence that these nonrepresentative samples may commit fewer errors than the wider population from which they came. We also find evidence that the missingness in black-box studies is non-ignorable. Using data from a recent latent print study, we show that ignoring this missingness likely results in systematic underestimates of error rates. Finally, we offer concrete steps to overcome these limitations.

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Testing the accuracy and reliability of palmar friction ridge comparisons – A black box study

Cited by 25 publications

References 9 publications

Planning, design and logistics of a decision analysis study: The FBI/Ames study involving forensic firearms examiners

Planning, design and logistics of a decision analysis study: The FBI/Ames study involving forensic firearms examiners

Observer determination of the make, model, and year of questioned vehicles

Shining a Light on Forensic Black-Box Studies

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