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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Posted on by RB Ostrum

FDE Linked 2023

The inaugural Forensic Document Examiners Live INternational Knowledge Exchange on Documents (i.e., FDE Linked) event occurred on March 31-April 1, 2023. It was a virtual event for qualified Forensic Document Examiners and available free of charge. The organizing committee consisted of: Nikolaos (Niko) Kalantzis (from the Chartoularios Institute, https://www.chartoularios.gr/en/), Carolyne Bird (Australasian Society of Forensic Document Examiners, Inc., https://asfdeinc.org), and Samiah Ibrahim (American Society of Questioned Document Examiners, https://www.asqde.org).

The event ran through a full 24-hour period. There were three live panel discussions, as well as five pre-recorded scientific session blocks. The program was designed to accommodate attendees regardless of their location around the world. The working language of this conference was English.

Chartoularios logo
ASFDE, Inc.
ASQDE logo
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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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Science vs Pseudoscience

Years ago, in 2013 to be precise, I was invited to speak at the ICA conference held in Montréal, Québec.  The conference had a special session on “distinguishing between science and pseudoscience in forensic acoustics”. Now, I am definitely not an expert in forensic acoustics.  In fact, I know almost nothing about the field other than what I’ve read from time to time. So I wasn’t there to tell the audience anything about forensic acoustics, per se.

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Posted on by RB Ostrum

Is Absolute Uniqueness Necessary?

Many years ago I came across an interesting, if limited, discussion in a blog post entitled “Expert testimony in pattern evidence cases – is absolute uniqueness necessary?”1,2 That post is dated Sept 4, 2009, shortly after the publication of National Academy of Science’s report “Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: a Path Forward”.3 But the basic question posed in it is still relevant today. I would say that most forensic practitioners today would answer the question about the necessity of ‘absolute uniqueness’ in the negative. However, their individual reason(s) for their answer will still vary.

For many people, ‘absolute uniqueness’ is mainly a ‘forbidden’ concept because of some policy they must follow, or because of a more personal recognition of an (often vague) issue relating to the ‘limits of science’. For other people the matter is a well-defined issue in science and logic dictated by the nature and limits of information (knowledge), what information can really tell us about the world, and how information can and should be used to update beliefs about the world. For the latter group (which is steadily increasing in size as awareness and understanding improves), the concept of ‘absolute uniqueness’ is neither required, nor even beneficial in forensic work.

There has been a LOT of discussion about this in recent years, but I found the blog post interesting at the time even though it focused mainly on latent print examination. I feel that not much has changed since then so, even now, it deserves recognition and consideration.  Since the blog itself is no longer active, I have reposted the complete series of messages here (pulling them from archive.org).

The topic started with a post from the moderator (Barry Fisher) who wrote:

Expert testimony in pattern evidence cases – is absolute uniqueness necessary?
What information is needed to form a conclusion about an identification? Do conclusions require statistical data, as in DNA cases, to offer an opinion? Is it possible to state that two items of evidence come from a sole source? What may an expert opine when no statistical data is readily available and only experience suggests a conclusion? The National Academy report raises some profound questions and some intriguing research possibilities. But in the interim, while we wait for academics to study the multitude of pattern evidence forensic scientists encounter in their day to day work, who may report cases and testify in court? Readers are invited to speak to these issues.

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Posted on by RB Ostrum

R.C.M.P. Seminars 4 and 5 — Attendee information

Many years ago, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Crime Detection Laboratories1 sponsored a series of Seminars relating to forensic science and two of those events, RCMP Seminars 4 and 5, focused on forensic document examination; a.k.a., questioned document examination.

The first seminar, #4, was entitled “The Examination of Questioned Documents” and it was held May 10-11, 1956 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada at R.C.M.P. Headquarters.  In 1958, again in Ottawa and at the same location, seminar #5 was held Oct 27 through Nov 1. The second seminar was entitled “Questioned Documents in Crime Detection”.  Both seminars were attended by several R.C.M.P. examiners and many invited guests from various laboratories around the world as well as several well-known private examiners. The event produced several interesting papers and each of the resulting books of proceedings included a photograph of attendees together with their names and affiliations. Each of the proceedings was published by the Federal Queen’s Printer, Ottawa, Canada.

A number of document examiners have asked about the photograph and attendees because often the photograph has been distributed without the accompanying attendee information.

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Posted on by RB Ostrum

Impinging on the Court’s authority

One of the strangest things I have heard raised in argument against the logical approach is that use of the approach means the expert’s testimony will end up impinging upon the authority of the Court.1 I have heard this a few times recently. I find this particularly troubling because it has come from lawyers. Unfortunately, this has always happened in circumstances where I could not actually discuss the matter with them.

As an objection to the logical approach, this is the most unexpected thing I have ever heard, without a doubt. In reality, proper application of the logical approach is one of the few ways to ensure that this issue will not happen.

To clarify, it is important to first understand the concept of “usurping the role of the Court” which means, in essence, to improperly influence the court’s procedures and decision-making, often by speaking inappropriately to or about the ultimate issue. Or, in other words, to impinge on the Court’s authority to make decisions about the ultimate issue, or ‘what happened’. To be sure, there is a legitimate concern that this could be a problem, particularly when the court is listening to an expert. As a result, the concept has been discussed literally for years and it is not a new concern.

In fact, it can be found in various codes and directives regarding expert evidence. Indeed, Justice Sopinka noted this precise issue in the 1994 R. v. Mohan ruling when he stated, in part, “There is also a concern inherent in the application of this criterion that experts not be permitted to usurp the functions of the trier of fact.” 

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