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New Insights Series Gives Forensic Science Community the Key Takeaways from CSAFE Research

Designed for practitioners and legal professionals, the Insights series offers quick, actionable overviews of cutting-edge research.

The Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence (CSAFE) launched its Insights series aimed at providing research results relevant to the forensic science community. The publications feature high-level highlights of selected areas of CSAFE research.

“Our goal was to create a series of publications that expanded the way we communicate CSAFE research with the forensic and legal communities,” said Alicia Carriquiry, director of CSAFE and Distinguished Professor and President’s Chair in Statistics at Iowa State University.

Insights are designed for forensic professionals to stay up to date and have actionable steps or informed knowledge about each study’s impact. Examiners, lawyers, judges or crime lab directors can read an Insight and immediately facilitate meaningful conversation about pressing forensic science issues. All relevant algorithms, databases and other resources are linked in the text for further exploration.

Each two-page Insight and companion webpage features:

  • An overview of the research project
  • The goals or hypothesis tested
  • Approach and methodology used by the research team
  • Key takeaways for practitioners
  • Future work

Fourteen Insights were recently published by CSAFE and are available at forensicstats.org/insights:

CSAFE will add more Insights to the series as researchers continue to publish their research results. To learn when new Insights are available, follow CSAFE on Twitter at @csafe_coe or visit forensicstats.org/insights.

Insight: Error Rates, Likelihood Ratios, and Jury Evaluation of Forensic Evidence
An example of a CSAFE Insight: Error Rates, Likelihood Ratios, and Jury Evaluation of Forensic Evidence. Click on image to enlarge.

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