Child Abuse Evidence: New Perspectives from Law, Medicine, Psychology & Statistics: Question and Answer Session
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Kimberly Thomas 0 1 2 3 4
Keith B. Maddox 0 1 2 3 4
Richard Leo 0 1 2 3 4
Samuel R. Sommers
0 This Symposium Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform at University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform by an authorized editor of University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. For more information , please contact , USA
1 Evidence: New Perspectives from Law, Medicine, Psychology & Statistics: Question and Answer Session
2 University of Michigan Law School , USA
3 Kimberly Thomas, Keith B. Maddox, Samuel R. Sommers, Patrick Barnes & Richard Leo , Child Abuse
4 Part of the Evidence Commons, Juvenile Law Commons , Law and Race Commons, Law Enforcement
Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjlr and Corrections Commons, and the Medical Jurisprudence Commons Recommended Citation 50 U. MICH. J. L. REFORM 737 (2017). Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjlr/vol50/iss3/9
Moderated by Professor Kimberly Thomas
KT1:
AM2:
This is the portion where we’re going to have all of our
panelists from this morning, Patrick Barnes, Richard Leo, Keith
Maddox, and Sam Sommers, available for questions. We’ve
heard a number of thoughtful and provocative ideas and
received a lot of information and so we’re really inviting you
to ask questions.
My question is for Professors Maddox and Sommers. Do you
have all your studies controlled for laterality [meaning
dominance of one side of the brain in controlling the person’s
response]?
KM3: In the studies that we do in the laboratory, using this
particular task, then, yes. We control for whether the response for
the black or the white or the positive or negative is on the
left or right side, if that’s what you’re getting at. That’s
counterbalance, meaning that it’s varied across conditions.
So that what you’ll do is you average. So if there is an effect
of laterality, it’s possible it’s there. But when you average
across everyone who does it, you can mitigate that effect and
see what the remaining effect is based on the stimulative
and manipulative.
SS4:
What you notice is that when we do this with groups, no one
ever has trouble the first time white and black switch sides.
What’s troubling for people, what’s difficult for people, is
the precise combination of
black-pleasant/white-unpleasant. It feels like it’s order and it feels like it’s the
background colors, and it feels like it’s the side that it’s on. But if
you go online, I think Keith showed the website, I think 80
million people have taken the test that we just did in this
room today. They vary the sides, they counterbalance that; it
turns out it’s a negligible effect, if anything. Even though
when I take the test, I still feel like it’s the order.
1. KT: Kimberly Thomas, Moderator and Clinical Professor of Law, University of
Michigan Law School
2. AM: Audience Member
3. KM: Keith Maddox, Associate Professor, Tufts University
4. SS: Sam Sommers, Associate Professor, Tufts University
Very often the police will attend an autopsy. My question
has to do with introducing bias in a person who’s just about
to do a scientific investigation. Should that be prevented?
How much an effect might that have?
In terms of the policemen being there during the autopsy,
the assumption is that that person is going to have
conversation or make comments or remarks that might imply their
ideas about what may have happened to the forensic
pathologist and then that might bias the person doing the
autopsy to kind of look through it with a confirmatory lens
as opposed to a more objective lens.
I would agree that, yeah, that would clearly be a source of
bias. The idea would be to try to mitigate that. So if the
police officer needs to observe, maybe observing from
another room without the opportunity to have contact with
the person doing the autopsy. Anything to mitigate the
kinds of assumptions that that person is making in
transferring them to another person would be extremely helpful.
I’ll defer to Professor Leo who can speak more specifically
to questions of interrogation and so forth. But police
investigations are not scientific endeavors. They’re not
experiments, they’re not research based. They’re not always purely
hypothesis-testing either. Once an idea is in mind, then,
often the mentality is “Let’s find evidence that will
corroborate that.” We teach our students early on in research
methods that you’re supposed to be falsifying hypotheses as well
as validating them. And the best investigators would do that.
But there are aspects of the legal investigative process
that clearly would benefit from greater attention to
preventing these kinds of confirmatory biases. In the eyewitness
world, for example, it’s very clear that the person who’s
administering (...truncated)