Dismissal of the illusion of uncertainty in the assessment of a likelihood ratio

Details

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State: Public
Version: author
Serval ID
serval:BIB_51D9ADA4C98D
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
Dismissal of the illusion of uncertainty in the assessment of a likelihood ratio
Journal
Law, Probability and Risk
Author(s)
Taroni Franco, Bozza Silvia, Biedermann Alex, Aitken Colin
ISSN
1470-8396
1470-840X
ISSN-L
1470-8396
Publication state
Published
Issued date
03/2016
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
15
Number
1
Pages
1-16
Language
english
Abstract
The use of the Bayes factor (BF) or likelihood ratio as a metric to assess the probative value of forensic traces is largely supported by operational standards and recommendations in different forensic disciplines. However, the progress towards more widespread consensus about foundational principles is still fragile as it raises new problems about which views differ. It is not uncommon e.g. to encounter scientists who feel the need to compute the probability distribution of a given expression of evidential value (i.e. a BF), or to place intervals or significance probabilities on such a quantity. The article here presents arguments to show that such views involve a misconception of principles and abuse of language. The conclusion of the discussion is that, in a given case at hand, forensic scientists ought to offer to a court of justice a given single value for the BF, rather than an expression based on a distribution over a range of values.
Keywords
Bayes factor, likelihood ratio, probability estimation, uncertainty variability, Philosophy, Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty, Law
Web of science
Open Access
Yes
Create date
03/03/2016 10:20
Last modification date
20/08/2019 15:07
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