Hello, my name is R. Brent Ostrum.
I am a professional forensic document examiner (FDE) presently working for the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) of the government of Canada. I have been working in this profession full-time since 1985, first with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), then the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), and now with the CBSA.
I have been professionally certified by the American Board of Forensic Document Examiners (ABFDE) and have done case examinations resulting in testimony in several Canadian jurisdictions including British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario.
Some of my professional activities include serving as the chairman of the Document Section in the Canadian Society of Forensic Science (CSFS), volunteering on the Executive Committee of Skill-Task Training Assessment and Research, Inc (ST2AR), working on the (now defunct) E30-02 ASTM sub-committee, serving as a member of the Scientific Working Group for Forensic Document Examination (SWGDOC) as well as being a guest attendee/member on the NIST OSAC Subcommittee on Questioned Documents. Another NIST activity I was involved in for a few years was the Expert Working Group on Human Factors in Handwriting Examination.
I have many research interests including the assessment of examiner competency, method validation issues as well as the application of image and data processing to FDE problems. In particular, I consider myself to be a student of logic, statistical inference, and evidence evaluation. To further my understanding of these topics I completed an advanced course on the subject from the Université de Lausanne (click here for info about UNIL’s “Statistics and Evaluation of Forensic Evidence” course). As a side note, I highly recommend that course to anyone wishing to learn about these things. You will not find a better course, or better instructors, anywhere.
I have given several tutorials/workshops relating to the logical approach to evidence evaluation with a focus on FDE work; for example, one entitled “Logical Inference and Evidence Evaluation for QDE” given to SWGDOC members, a variation at the 2013 ASQDE meeting and at a couple of similar sessions at CSFS conferences (most recently, two full-day workshops at the 2018 conference held in Gatineau, QC). I have also presented my views on this topic during various panel discussions. I also had the pleasure of writing textbook chapters that relate to this topic — one in Dr. Linton Mohammed’s text Forensic Examination of Signatures (see Chapter 12: Conclusions, Reporting and Testimony), and one in Forensic Document Examination in the 21st Century (eds. Jan Seaman Kelly and Miriam Angel, see Chapter 3: The Logical Approach to Evidence Evaluation).
Other related presentations and articles include “Conclusion Scales and Logical Inference”, “Proficiency Testing and Competency”, “Admissibility of FDE Evidence under R. v. Mohan”, “Forensic Handwriting Identification: A Canadian Perspective on the Admissibility of (Expert) Handwriting Evidence”, “A Canadian Perspective on Forensic Science versus Pseudoscience” and “Error, Confidence and (Un)certainty – Deconstructing Authorship Opinions Using a Forced-Call Testing Protocol”.
I am NOT a graphologist, as the term is used in North America to indicate someone who studies handwriting to assess aspects of personality, and I am not at all interested in that topic. [For more about graphology, click here or here]
This site provides information about the discipline of FDE, in general, and services I can provide on a contract basis (in select situations). It includes a blog which serves as a forum for my own thoughts on various forensic science and FDE-related topics. The site context and blog are updated as time and my fancy dictates. If you have questions about my posts, or have an alternative point-of-view, I would love to hear from you.
One final note: unless otherwise indicated, my posts do NOT reflect the official position, policies, standards or beliefs of my employer (presently the CBSA), the Government of Canada, the Canadian Society of Forensic Science, or any other agency, body, organization, or institution with which I have affiliation (A full site disclaimer can be found here).
Other information:
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9214-1940