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Is forensic science in crisis?

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Abstract

The results of forensic science are believed to be reliable, and are widely used in support of verdicts around the world. However, due to the lack of suitable empirical studies, we actually know very little about the reliability of such results. In this paper, I argue that phenomena analogous to the main culprits for the replication crisis in psychology (questionable research practices, publication bias, or funding bias) are also present in forensic science. Therefore forensic results are significantly less reliable than is commonly believed. I conclude that in order to obtain reliable estimates for the reliability of forensic results, we need to conduct studies analogous to the large-scale replication projects in psychology. Additionally, I point to some ways for improving the reliability of forensic science, inspired by the reforms proposed in response to the replicability crisis.

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Notes

  1. This distinction was introduced in (Ashbaugh, 1999).

  2. This strategy of testing reliability is not common in meta-science. Scientific procedures are complicated and time-consuming and therefore it is hard to set up a suitable testing situation. One study utilizing a similar approach is ( Dongen et al., 2019).

  3. Objectivity is understood as following in the report: “By objective feature-comparison methods, we mean methods consisting of procedures that are each defined with enough standardized and quantifiable detail that they can be performed by either an automated system or human examiners exercising little or no judgment.” (PCAST, 2016, p. 47).

  4. This problem was also discussed in Butler (2015, pp. 458–459).

  5. It is unknown how often such misconduct takes place. Moreover, given how forensic research is organized, is not obvious if it can be ever reliably established.

  6. Similarly, it is not clear to what extent similar relations between different biases are present in academic science. As far as know, there is only anecdotal evidence present in the literature. For example, Stapel (2012) claims that some of his results based on fabricated data were later replicated by independent researchers.

  7. It should be clear that I do not propose here to replicate the results of type two studies. Such an approach would suffer from difficulties described above.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Rafał Urbaniak, Mattia Androleti, Jan Sprenger, Gustavo Cevolani, Davide Coraci, Weronika Majek, Patryk Dziurosz-Serafinowicz, Pavel Janda, Paweł Pawłowski, Robert Różański and the anonymous referees for their useful comments.

Funding

This research has been funded by the Polish National Science Centre [grant number 2016/22/E/HS1/00304].

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  1. Warsaw University of Technology, Warsaw, Poland

    Michał Sikorski

  2. Gdańsk University, Gdańsk, Poland

    Michał Sikorski

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Sikorski, M. Is forensic science in crisis?. Synthese 200, 188 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03685-z

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