Statisticians and Forensic Science: A Perfect Match
Steve Pierson and Karen Kafadar News stories about the release of wrongly imprisoned people after years of incarceration have helped shine a spotlight on the need to strengthen the scientific foundation of many forensic science disciplines. Statisticians also have helped to illuminate the problem and are seen as a vital part of the solution. This […]
Articles
An Exploration of Statistical Issues in Forensic Science Related to Document Examination
Mark J. Lancaster Donald Doud was a forensic document examiner (FDE) who gained fame through exposing fraud and forgery as an expert witness in courtroom trials. The opening chapter of his memoir Witness to Forgery (2009) discusses the case of the Womble will and claims of forgery, and it has all the elements of a […]
Presenting Quantitative and Qualitative Information on Forensic Science Evidence in the Courtroom
Cedric Neumann, David Kaye, Graham Jackson, Valerie Reyna, and Anjali Ranadive An abundant scientific and legal literature, as well as several reports from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, demands that forensic findings be supported by data and that conclusions be logically derived from the information available to the scientists. Another critical, yet understudied, aspect […]
Letter to the Editor—Vol. 29, No. 1
Dear Editor, We would like to thank Dr. Lackritz for his kind comments on our paper. In addition, we’d like to report some additional calculations we’ve done based on his suggestions. However, before doing so, we’d like to make a couple of points.
A Bayesian Look at the Baby Annie Case
Edward K. Cheng The problem of how to help juries handle forensic statistics and other types of statistical evidence has long bedeviled the legal system. One longstanding proposal is to use Bayes’ Theorem, which provides a rigorous framework that jurors can use to update their beliefs as various pieces of statistical evidence are admitted at […]
Forensic Examination of Fingerprints: Past, Present, and Future
Cedric Neumann and Hal Stern Fingerprints have been a valuable method of personal identification for more than 100 years, due to the considerable variability in fingerprint patterns among individuals. Fingerprints were initially used as a means to reliably authenticate an individual’s identity through the comparison of a complete set of that individual’s 10 fingerprints with […]
