Child Abuse Evidence: New Perspectives from Law, Medicine, Psychology & Statistics: Question and Answer Session

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, Apr 2017

A transcript of the Question and Answer session during the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Symposium, Child Abuse Evidence: New Perspectives from Law, Medicine, Psychology & Statistics.

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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)


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Kimberly Thomas, Keith B. Maddox, Samuel R. Sommers, Patrick Barnes, Richard Leo. Child Abuse Evidence: New Perspectives from Law, Medicine, Psychology & Statistics: Question and Answer Session, University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, 2017, pp. 737-748, Volume 50, Issue 3,