Error and bias in forensic behavioral science
A crisis is brewing in scientific psychology and forensic science. This concerns the overall reliability of all psychological science (more on this later) and the quality of expert evidence and testimony in courts of law, regardless of the expert’s discipline (yes, even including the supposedly hard stuff, like DNA analysis). The consensus: alarmingly poor. This […]
Bias, cognitive heuristics, and forensic decision-making
The cumulative weight of 30 years of research originating in Tversky and Kaheman’s seminal 1974 description of the mental shortcuts humans use when confronting cognitive ambiguity complexity, and Kahneman’s recent masterpiece Thinking Fast, and Slow (2011, cf. Gilovich, Griffin, & Kahneman, 2002) has created a mature cognitive science of forensic decision-making. The findings are not […]
Forensic Psychology is Forensic Science.
There has been a growing awareness, some would say crisis, concerning the mediocre quality of expert forensic testimony submitted to the courts in the United States. This appears to be a function of weak methods, and a low threshold for judicial gatekeeping, despite clear mandates in Rule 702 and Daubert and progeny on the foundations […]
The new Specialty Guidelines for Forensic Psychology (APA, 2011)
The new SGFP have been finalized by APLS (Div. 41 of APA). The Guidelines are available at the following link http://goo.gl/usU0 The SGFP provide guidance and standards of practice for forensic psychologists. They are worth careful study for the practitioner wishing to do sound and ethical, i.e., high quality, forensic work. The SGFP define the scope […]