Posted on by RB Ostrum

ICFIS 2023

The 11th International Conference on Forensic Inference and Statistics, or ICFIS 2023, is set for June 12-15 of this year. It will be held at the Faculty of Law (Juridicum) of Lund University, Lund, Sweden. While I am saddened that I cannot attend this particular meeting, several years ago I had the pleasure of going to the 2014 International Conference on Forensic Inference and Statistics, or ICFIS which was the 9th iteration of the conference. I wrote a blog post about that meeting some time ago.

I can say, based on past experience alone, that this meeting is well worth attending. That’s particularly true if you are interested in the logical approach to evidence evaluation, but it would benefit any forensic scientist. You will not find a better collection of brilliant people all focused on forensic inference, in the broadest sense.

Forensic scientists, lawyers, academics—they will all be there.

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But doesn’t that mean it is ‘more likely than not’?

When an examiner expresses an opinion along the lines of ‘the findings support one proposition over another proposition’, a question often follows. Specifically, does that opinion mean ‘it is more likely than not that the favoured proposition actually happened’?1 The short answer is “no, it does not mean that.” At least, not necessarily.

In order to reach such a conclusion one must consider information that goes beyond the FDE evidence. As a rule, any opinion I provide will be constrained to the probability of the findings/observations in terms of one of at least two possible explanations.2 Ultimately, equating the two statements is inappropriate because they are not equivalent.3Read more

Posted on by RB Ostrum

Science, experimentation & forensic examination

People sometimes question whether forensic work is scientific in nature. Given that the overall discipline is called ‘forensic science’ this is an interesting, if rather meaningless, question. I say ‘meaningless’ because, practically speaking, it is a non-issue.

Why? Simply because a court may choose to admit anyone as an expert, whether their expertise is scientific, purely experiential, or something else entirely. Nonetheless, it is interesting to consider the issue, if only because forensic document examination is one of those disciplines where this is a common challenge — does it involve any “science” at all?

As a result, this topic is worth some discussion.

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CSFS Position paper on the Logical Approach

I recently published an editorial in the Journal of the Canadian Society of Forensic Science.  Two versions were published almost simultaneously (the original written in English and a translation in French) entitled, respectively, “CSFS Document Section Position on the Logical Approach to Evidence Evaluation and Corresponding Wording of Conclusions” and “La position de la Section des documents de la SCSJ sur l’approche logique de l’évaluation de la preuve et le libellé des conclusions”.

I wrote these in my capacity as the sitting chairman of the Documents section of the CSFS, on behalf of the members of that section.  The impetus for writing them was to introduce the “logical approach” and related topics to the Canadian forensic community in a ‘formal’ way (hopefully resulting in ongoing discussion) and to provide the public and the courts with the perspective of forensic practitioners who have reviewed the literature and studied this issue in depth. To that end, the document references many initiatives relating to the topic. I will note that it’s not a perfect document but it covers the main points reasonably well.

Please note that this position paper was first written a few years ago.  There was considerable delay in publication relating to the production of an acceptable French-language translation of the document. I must thank Julie Binette who was invaluable in that process. The delay, however, means the references provided in the paper are not fully up-to-date with the very latest developments in this area.

Nonetheless, that shortcoming doesn’t detract from the position expressed.  Today there is even more support and justification than is outlined in the paper. 

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Propositions — key to the evaluation process

One of the key elements in the logical approach to evidence evaluation are the propositions used for the evaluation. They are, in a certain sense, the most important part of the whole process. At the same time, they are also one of the least understood.

Today’s post explores the concept of propositions. I will attempt to describe what they are, how they are used, why we don’t change them once set and why they matter so much, among other things… all from the perspective of forensic document examination (though also applicable to other forensic disciplines).

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When is a ‘Bayesian’ not a ‘Bayesian’?

Several of the posts on this blog relate to the logical approach to evidence evaluation; aka, the coherent logical approach, or the likelihood-ratio (LR) approach. In my opinion, it is the best way to evaluate evidence for forensic purposes no matter what type of evidence is being discussed. I say “best” because it is simple, logically sound, and relatively straight-forward to apply in forensic work.  It helps to promote transparency through the application of a thorough and complete evaluation process (all points I have explained in other posts).

The reality is, however, that this approach is still not well understood by forensic practitioners, nor by members of the legal profession.

I hope that in time, and with education, that will change. Several workshops I have presented have been aimed at helping examiners understand what it really means, how it works, the philosophical basis behind the approach as well as the need for and benefit of doing things that particular way. It really does work to the benefit of both the examiner and their ultimate client, the court.

One recurring issue at these workshops relates to the very basic and fundamental concept of what the term “Bayesian” means. For various reasons, but mainly just misunderstanding, many people in the forensic document examination community hold the term “Bayesian” in negative regard. When the word ‘Bayes’, or any of its many derivations, come up in the conversation eyes glaze over while heads sag ever so slightly. And those are the positive people in the crowd.

I find such reactions understandable, but unfortunate.  The fact is that an understanding of the term is beneficial for anyone interested in how it might be applied in a forensic evidence context, whether or not one chooses to do so.  Indeed, for myself the answer to the question posed above — when is a Bayesian not a Bayesian? — lies in knowing how the overall Bayesian philosophy and theorem (or rule) differs from the more constrained and limited logical approach to evidence evaluation. These two are not the same or even close to equivalent.

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