The scientific reinvention of forensic science.

Forensic science is undergoing an evolution in which a long-standing "trust the examiner" focus is being replaced by a "trust the scientific method" focus. This shift, which is in progress and still partial, is critical to ensure that the legal system uses forensic information in an accurate and valid way. In this Perspective, we discuss the ways in which the move to a more empirically grounded scientific culture for the forensic sciences impacts testing, error rate analyses, procedural safeguards, and the reporting of forensic results. However, we caution that the ultimate success of this scientific reinvention likely depends on whether the courts begin to engage with forensic science claims in a more rigorous way.

Improving Consumer Understanding of Short-Term Health Insurance: An Experiment.

Short-term health insurance policies-made available with longer durations during the Trump Administration-offer substantially fewer consumer protections than do Affordable Care Act ("ACA")-compliant policies. Federal regulations require short-term policies' sellers to disclose possible ACA noncompliance to prospective buyers. This controlled experiment finds, however, that the federally required disclosure does not substantially improve consumer understanding of these policies' coverage limitations. The experiment also finds that an enhanced disclosure greatly improves this understanding. Importantly, consumers' preferences for ACA-compliant policies also increased with their comprehension of the coverage differences. Thus, the study demonstrates not only that easily implemented changes in the federally required disclosure would improve consumer understanding of the coverage differences but also that the improved understanding matters to consumers. However, even the enhanced disclosure left many respondents mistaken about some key limitations of short-term policies, suggesting that policymakers should consider other strategies to protect buyers of short-term health insurance.

Psychological Assessments in Legal Contexts: Are Courts Keeping "Junk Science" Out of the Courtroom?

In this article, we report the results of a two-part investigation of psychological assessments by psychologists in legal contexts. The first part involves a systematic review of the 364 psychological assessment tools psychologists report having used in legal cases across 22 surveys of experienced forensic mental health practitioners, focusing on legal standards and scientific and psychometric theory. The second part is a legal analysis of admissibility challenges with regard to psychological assessments. Results from the first part reveal that, consistent with their roots in psychological science, nearly all of the assessment tools used by psychologists and offered as expert evidence in legal settings have been subjected to empirical testing (90%). However, we were able to clearly identify only about 67% as generally accepted in the field and only about 40% have generally favorable reviews of their psychometric and technical properties in authorities such as the Mental Measurements Yearbook. Furthermore, there is a weak relationship between general acceptance and favorability of tools' psychometric properties. Results from the second part show that legal challenges to the admission of this evidence are infrequent: Legal challenges to the assessment evidence for any reason occurred in only 5.1% of cases in the sample (a little more than half of these involved challenges to validity). When challenges were raised, they succeeded only about a third of the time. Challenges to the most scientifically suspect tools are almost nonexistent. Attorneys rarely challenge psychological expert assessment evidence, and when they do, judges often fail to exercise the scrutiny required by law.

GRANULAR PATIENT CONTROL OF PERSONAL HEALTH INFORMATION: FEDERAL AND STATE LAW CONSIDERATIONS.

The advent of electronic medical records and health information exchanges has facilitated the possibility of patients exercising increasingly granular control over sensitive health information. In principle, patients should be able to control which of their health information is made accessible to which of their healthcare providers. To meet this goal, the architects of any system of granular control of patients' health information face a variety of challenges. In addition to technical, ethical, and prudential considerations, the architects of any effective system must also ensure compliance with applicable legal requirements. The extent of a patient's permissible control depends upon whether governing law prohibits providers from disclosing health information to other providers without a patient's authorization, permits providers to disclose to other providers at the provider's discretion, or requires such disclosure. To inform efforts to design a viable system, this article analyzes U.S. federal and state (Arizona) law in regard to the sharing of the following types of sensitive health information: substance abuse, mental health, genetic, communicable diseases, and sexual and reproductive health.

Forensic bitemark identification: weak foundations, exaggerated claims.

Several forensic sciences, especially of the pattern-matching kind, are increasingly seen to lack the scientific foundation needed to justify continuing admission as trial evidence. Indeed, several have been abolished in the recent past. A likely next candidate for elimination is bitemark identification. A number of DNA exonerations have occurred in recent years for individuals convicted based on erroneous bitemark identifications. Intense scientific and legal scrutiny has resulted. An important National Academies review found little scientific support for the field. The Texas Forensic Science Commission recently recommended a moratorium on the admission of bitemark expert testimony. The California Supreme Court has a case before it that could start a national dismantling of forensic odontology. This article describes the (legal) basis for the rise of bitemark identification and the (scientific) basis for its impending fall. The article explains the general logic of forensic identification, the claims of bitemark identification, and reviews relevant empirical research on bitemark identification-highlighting both the lack of research and the lack of support provided by what research does exist. The rise and possible fall of bitemark identification evidence has broader implications-highlighting the weak scientific culture of forensic science and the law's difficulty in evaluating and responding to unreliable and unscientific evidence.

Regulatory and reimbursement innovation.

Coverage with evidence development and parallel review for molecular diagnostics aid regulation and reimbursement.

Neuroimages in court: less biasing than feared.

Neuroscience is increasingly poised to play a role in legal proceedings. One persistent concern, however, is the intuition that brain images may bias, mislead, or confuse jurors. Initially, empirical research seemed to support this intuition. New findings contradict those expectations, prompting a rethinking of the 'threat' of neuroscience in the courtroom.

Neuroimage evidence and the insanity defense.

The introduction of neuroscientific evidence in criminal trials has given rise to fears that neuroimagery presented by an expert witness might inordinately influence jurors' evaluations of the defendant. In this experiment, a diverse sample of 1,170 community members from throughout the U.S. evaluated a written mock trial in which psychological, neuropsychological, neuroscientific, and neuroimage-based expert evidence was presented in support of a not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI) defense. No evidence of an independent influence of neuroimagery was found. Overall, neuroscience-based evidence was found to be more persuasive than psychological and anecdotal family history evidence. These effects were consistent across different insanity standards. Despite the non-influence of neuroimagery, however, jurors who were not provided with a neuroimage indicated that they believed neuroimagery would have been the most helpful kind of evidence in their evaluations of the defendant.

Forensic identification: From a faith-based "Science" to a scientific science.

This article reviews the fundamental assumptions of forensic identification ("individualization") science and notes the lack of empirical evidence or theory supporting its typical strong claims. The article then discusses three general research strategies for placing these fields on firmer scientific ground. It concludes by suggesting what forensic identification science experts can do while awaiting that scientific foundation.

The testimony of forensic identification science: what expert witnesses say and what factfinders hear.

This research examined how variations in the presentation of forensic science information affect factfinders' judgments in a trial. Participants read a summary of a murder case, the critical testimony being the results of a microscopic hair comparison given by a forensic expert. Across two experiments we manipulated how the expert expressed his results, whether he gave an explicit conclusion concerning identity of the hair, and whether the limitations of forensic science were expressed during trial. Qualitative testimony was more damaging to the defense than quantitative testimony, conclusion testimony increased the defendant's culpability ratings when findings were presented quantitatively, and expressing limitations of forensic science had no appreciable effect. Results are discussed in terms of factfinders' interpretation of forensic identification evidence.

The coming paradigm shift in forensic identification science.

Converging legal and scientific forces are pushing the traditional forensic identification sciences toward fundamental change. The assumption of discernible uniqueness that resides at the core of these fields is weakened by evidence of errors in proficiency testing and in actual cases. Changes in the law pertaining to the admissibility of expert evidence in court, together with the emergence of DNA typing as a model for a scientifically defensible approach to questions of shared identity, are driving the older forensic sciences toward a new scientific paradigm.

On the "general acceptance" of handwriting identification principles.

Informed by the admissibility requirements of the broad and narrow Frye tests as well as Daubert's general acceptance factor, the present study elicited the views of a homogeneous group of forensic document examiners and a heterogeneous group of handwriting scientists regarding the degree to which a set of principles relating to the nature of handwriting and its identification were generally accepted within the respondents' fields. Among forensic document examiners, the greatest agreement was found concerning the process of examination, and somewhat less agreement on other matters. Forensic document examiners and handwriting scientists appear not to agree on the acceptability of most of the propositions.