The standards for expressions of evaluative opinions in the forensic sciences are increasingly being challenged and refined. Where once categorical statements regarding the origin of a trace were standard practice, criminalists are now being encouraged to represent the uncertainty associated with their inferential process by using numerical or verbal likelihood ratios. Although there are valid reasons to support this shift, the approach is not without limitations. Decades of psychological research investigating the interpretation and integration of probabilistic expressions, and the equivalence of verbal and numerical formulations for uncertainty, reveals a disconnect between what is intended by experts and what is understood by decision-makers. In this paper we present an indicative review of the psychological evidence to foster communication and collaboration between forensic scientists and psychologists and reduce instances of miscommunication in our criminal justice system.
Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 28 citations exist upstream.