Tigers, black swans, and unicorns: The need for feedback and oversight

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Abstract

Humans have a decision-making system which is biased to avoid costly false negatives while the criminal justice system is designed to be biased in the opposite way, avoiding costly false positives. But systems fail, people do not; a badly out of kilter system can lead even the most expert to bad outcomes. Perverse incentives, driven by the fetishizing of DNA, put pressure on an already-stressed forensic system. Every system needs feedback, both positive and negative, to correct itself and stay stable, forensic science is only one of those in a criminal justice system. Recognizing false positives, false negatives, and how they happen is critical to stabilizing and calibrating a criminal justice system. Oversight, review, and addressing wrongful convictions is a necessary form of feedback to forensic science and any balanced and fair criminal justice system.

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Most cited references 6

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Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments.

J. Krüger, D Dunning (1999)

People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities.