In one of the most memorable quotes from Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes he lays out the pitfall for many investigators:
"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." - Arthur Conan Doyle from 'A Scandal in Bohemia'
This is certainly not the only quote that is worth mentioning - here's another for kicks:
He smiled gently. "It is of the first importance," he cried, "not to allow your judgment to be biased by personal qualities. A client is to me a mere unit, a factor in a problem. The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning." - Arthur Conan Doyle from 'The sign of Four'
Arthur Conan Doyle wrote these stories over 120 years ago and yet Holmes' words resonate and warn forensic scientists of the dangers of stereotypical vision even now.
In what way, can we ask, are sterotypes influencing and disrupting the course of jurisprudence and of forensic scientific endeavour?
A summary of an article in APA (October 19 2016) answers this very question.
It reports of an Oregon lawyer being arrested in 2004 for suspected terrorist activities when a series of bombs were detonated in Madrid.
Evidence
The evidence against Mayfield was poor - shocckingly so. Fingerprints found on a blue plastic bag containing detonators seemed to match Mayfield. Though in reality the matches included not only Mayfield but potentially 15 others from the FBI fingerprint computer. The prints were then matched by FBI examiners to Mayfield (I would be interested to determine whether the examiners knew anything about Mayfield - hardly double-blind standards).
To the FBI's credit they did bring in an independent expert to verify their findings (verify their findings - a troubling directive) but the final report did not include the expert's warnings. The independent expert had stated that the print sent from Spain was poor and of low quality and worse, the print may have an included an overlay of another print.
Profiling at its worst
So what then was really wrong with Mayfield? It so happened that Mayfield had recently converted to Islam and was married to an Egyptian immigrant, and "had once been an attorney for a convicted terrorist". Hardly reasonable grounds unless one suspects every attorney of being as culpable for the crimes of their clients as the individuals themselves.
Mix this trivia of Mayfield with dodgy fingerprints and you have all the makings of "twisting facts to suit theories".
Research and stereotype
In a paper (Smalarz et al, 2016, as cited in APA, 2016) investigated whether stereotypes and attitudes really had the potential to bias forensic science. Participants were given a mock police report either of a child molestation case or a theft. Theft in this case is not linked to strong stereotypes. The participants were then told that a fingerprint had been found and submitted to a database which returned a given list of possible suspects.
The participants were shown from the database two possible suspects a white male 'Steve Johnson' and a middle-aged Asian woman 'Mei Lee'. The given suspects had almost no difference in being suspected when the crime was one of theft, but in the case of child molestation the participants were almost twice as likely to judge the fingerprints a match to the white male.
In this case it wasn't innate bias as this would have shown up in the case of theft too, rather this judgment only appeared when the crime matched the stereotype. The authors also note:
"Moreover, the fingerprints used in the experiment did not actually match; hence, all match judgments were erroneous."
The APA article goes on to describe potential remedies.
Stereotypes
Stereotypes are not evil in of themselves and help us navigate the world and form fast judgments. However, when it comes to decisions of criminality stereotyping behaviour may skew the most scientific form of inquiry. To know that seemingly bulletproof forensic science techniques can be influenced by personal beliefs and preconceived notions of people from various background is deeply unsettling.
Final words: Truth, Holmes, and Socrates
I remember the film '12 Angry Men' in which a jury has to decide the fate of one young man. And there is one dissenting voice among the twelve who questions relentlessly the notions and the evidence of the crime. In so doing one of the jurors reveals his own prior bias and potential motive for judging the guilt of the young man. This persistent questioning brings to mind the maieutic method of Socrates.
Here 'maieutic' goes back to a Greek word meaning midwifery. In a sense it is bringing forth new ideas by way of reasoning and dialogue. For Socrates this meant persistently questioning those beliefs which are most precious to us. But what are we playing midwife to? It is nothing short then of truth itself, at least in the context of forensic science but also of forensic psychology.
To truly understand the course of events in a crime - we need ever to return to the methodology of fictional characters such as that of Holmes but also we need to heed the wisdom of philosophers who set down eons ago - the path of questioning.
Without this process of questioning, we run the risk of finding nothing but confirmations of our sterotypes as Popper points out in his work 'Conjectures and refutations'. Without seeking first to falsify our theories we reduce the validity of our forensic work not only in a scientifc sense but also in a moral and ethical way.
A final Holmesian quote:
"There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact." - Arthur Conan Doyle from 'The Boscombe Valley Mystery'.
Links for further info:
The case of Brandon Mayfield:
https://www.apa.org/pubs/highlights/spotlight/issue-82
Socratic questioning and meiutics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_questioning
Philosophy of Popper:
Popper, K. (1963) 'Science: Conjectures and Refutations' in Conjectures and Refutations. Routledge
The paper (citing another article) I posted in the main article, seemed to suggest employing a 'forensic filler'. The forensic filler in the case of fingerprints would provide to the examiner a lineup of fingerprints to test whether any match the original set.
I remember in the excellent TV series 'Numbers', Charlie Epps the mathematician describes the shortcomings of providing a witness with a folder of mugshots to look at. The assumption made on the part of the witness is that the suspect has to be one of the photos they are given.
So any intervention would have to take into account the psychological pitfalls of reasoning we are all prey to.
isnt there also some big debate between Aristotle and Socrates?
I agree bias and stereotyping should always be questioned and truth held above all else. Thank you for sharing. what are the methods for assessing bias and stereotyping ?
Fantastic post Daniel. You've made some excellent points. Stereotypes and biases are part of our nature, yet, we need to do everything in our power not to let them cloud our judgement. Especially, in a forensic setting, where people's lives might depend on it.
Also, nicely drawn parallel on the truth, Holmes and Socrates. We can learn and reflect on so much from the old texts and thinkers. It's a shame we seem to often forget this in our race towards the modern.