Overview
Various members of the justice system encounter uncertainty as an inevitable complication in inference and decision-making. Inference relates to the use of incomplete information (typically given by results of scientific examinations) in order to reason about propositions of interest (e.g., whether or not a given individual is the source of an evidential trace). In turn, judges are required to make practical decisions which represent a core aspect of their professional activity (e.g., deciding whether or not a given suspect is to be considered as the source of a given crime-related trace). Both aspects, inference and decision-making, require a logical assistance because unaided human reasoning is known to be liable to bias. From a methodological point of view, these challenges should be approached within a general framework that includes probability and (Bayesian) decision theory.
Introduction
Since the early 1960s, the forensic science community started to take a more...
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Taroni, F., Biedermann, A. (2014). Probability and Inference in Forensic Science. In: Bruinsma, G., Weisburd, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5690-2_146
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