Sixth International Conference on Forensic Statistics

Arizona State University, Scottsdale AZ

Investigators

Abstract

The International Conference on Forensic Statistics is the only conference that brings statisticians, forensic scientists, social scientists, legal scholars, judges, prosecutors, lawyers, and other experts together for formal presentations, discussion, and debate on the varied uses of probability and statistics in legislative, administrative and judicial proceedings. The sixth conference in this series, sponsored by the Arizona State University Center for the Study of Law, Science and Technology, and the Institute for Mathematical Statistics, will be held in Tempe, Arizona, from March 17 to 19, 2005. Sessions will center on analytical methods and interpretation in forensic science, statistical studies of discrimination and fairness, and experimentation on jury understanding of scientific and statistical evidence. Researchers will describe current work on statistical issues and models in the analysis of fibers, glass fragments, bullet lead, drugs, writing style, and fingerprints; on Bayesian and other methods for interpreting DNA profiles in complex and problematic cases; on social and statistical issues in searching convicted offender DNA databases; and on many other applications of statistical and logical inference in legal studies and litigation. The conference is intended to spur the development of suitable statistical and related methods that will improve law enforcement and civil justice. The logical issues involved in forensic statistics are subtle and entail cross-disciplinary work with experts in diverse fields. DNA evidence, for example, has introduced daunting problems of statistical analysis, with complications such as samples comprising mixtures of DNA from more than one person and the identification of possible offenders through extensive searches of DNA databases. The highly publicized false fingerprint identification in the March 11 Madrid train bombing case and the weaknesses of the statistical aspects of existing bullet lead identification procedures identified in a recent National Academy of Science report commissioned by the FBI underscore the importance of improvements in the analysis and presentation of forensic evidence. These are but a sampling of the issues that will be illuminated by the many presentations from researchers in the fields of computer science, probability and statistics, biology, chemistry, linguistics, psychology, sociology, and law.