Jurors' Evaluations of Forensic Science

SES 0617672法医学在司法系统中发挥着越来越重要的作用，但它对非专业陪审员提出了特殊的挑战。为了评估法医证据，陪审员通常必须考虑数学或统计数据，如随机匹配概率、假阳性率和似然比。为了更多地了解陪审员理解和使用此类数据的能力，将在县法院进行一系列四个陪审团模拟实验。当陪审员从陪审团职责中解脱出来时，他们将被邀请留在陪审团会议室阅读和评估假想案件的证据摘要。法医证据的性质和呈现方式将在实验中有所不同，以检验陪审员使用(和可能滥用)法医统计数据的一系列假设。这项研究的目的是找出潜在的误解和推理错误，并找到纠正它们的方法，以及学习哪种表达方法最能促进清晰的理解。拟议的研究在几个维度上比以前在这一领域的研究更复杂。首先，它们涉及在向陪审团提交法医证据时经常出现的现实和重要的问题。其次，他们使用了比以前研究中使用的更复杂的规范模型作为比较标准，以此来评估陪审员的实际判断。第三，他们检查了来自实际陪审团池(而不是本科生)的具有代表性的公民样本的判断。最后，虽然这些研究主要是为了回答对法律制度具有重要意义的实际问题，但它们也受到(并旨在解决)人类判断和决策心理学中更广泛的理论问题的启发。他们将扩展和测试现有概率判断理论的局限性，特别是将探索人们在处理定量数据时对几种形式的谬误推理的敏感性。更广泛的影响：1996年，国家研究委员会建议进行行为研究，“以确定任何可能导致事实调查者曲解DNA图谱证据的条件，并评估提出关于DNA的专家证词的各种方式在多大程度上能够减少任何此类误解”(NRC，1996，建议6.1)。自那时以来，发表的此类行为研究相对较少，可能会误解DNA证据和其他类型的法医证据，这仍然是一个重要的担忧。这里提出的研究朝着解决这一担忧迈出了重要的一步。他们研究了一系列以前从未讨论过的新问题，如果我们想知道陪审员如何(以及有多好)理解法医证据，就必须回答这些问题。这些研究将有助于确定陪审员在哪些情况下可能曲解法医证据，赋予其超过(或低于)应有的权重。这一知识将有助于法院评估有争议的法医证据的可采性。它还将在以有效和公平的方式提出法医证据方面提供亟需的指导。这项研究的广泛理论框架使其与法医鉴定科学中的广泛证据相关。

Abstract SES 0617672 Forensic science is playing an increasingly important role in the justice system but it poses special challenges for lay jurors. To evaluate forensic evidence, jurors often must consider mathematical or statistical data, such as random match probabilities, false positive rates, and likelihood ratios. In order to learn more about jurors' ability to understand and use such data, a series of four jury-simulation experiments will be conducted at a county courthouse. As they are released from jury duty, jurors will be invited to remain in the jury assembly room to read and evaluate summaries of evidence in hypothetical cases. The nature of the forensic evidence, and the way it is presented, will be varied experimentally in order to test a series of hypotheses about jurors' use (and possible misuse) of forensic statistics. The goal of the research is to identify potential misunderstandings and inferential errors and find ways to correct them as well as learning which methods of presentation best promote clear understanding. The proposed studies are more sophisticated than previous research in this area on several dimensions. First, they address realistic and important issues that frequently arise when forensic evidence is presented to juries. Second, they employ more sophisticated normative models than those used in previous studies as standards of comparison against which jurors' actual judgments can be evaluated. Third, they examine the judgments of a representative sample of citizens from an actual jury pool (rather than undergraduates). Finally, although these studies are primarily designed to answer practical questions of importance to the legal system, they are also informed by (and designed to address) broader theoretical issues in the psychology of human judgment and decision-making. They will extend and test the limits of existing theories of probabilistic judgment and, in particular, will explore people's susceptibility to several forms of fallacious reasoning when dealing with quantitative data. Broader Impacts: In 1996, the National Research Council recommended that behavioral research be carried out "to identify any conditions that might cause a trier-of-fact to misinterpret evidence on DNA profiling and to assess how well various ways of presenting expert testimony on DNA can reduce any such misunderstandings" (NRC, 1996, Recommendation 6.1). Since that time, relatively few such behavioral studies have been published and the potential for misunderstanding DNA evidence, and other types of forensic evidence, remains an important concern. The studies proposed here take an important step toward addressing that concern. They examine a series of novel questions, never before addressed, that must be answered if we wish to know how (and how well) jurors understand forensic evidence. These studies will help identify circumstances in which jurors are likely to misinterpret forensic evidence, giving it more (or less) weight than it deserves. This knowledge will be helpful to courts in evaluating the admissibility of contested forensic evidence. It will also provide much needed guidance on presenting forensic evidence in a manner that is effective and fair. The broad theoretical framework of the research makes it relevant to a wide range of evidence in the forensic identification sciences.