PDF(Pubmed)
Abstract：
When it comes to questions of fact in a legal context-particularly questions about measurement, association, and causality-courts should employ ordinary standards of applied science. Applied sciences generally develop along a path that proceeds from a basic scientific discovery about some natural process to the formation of a theory of how the process works and what causes it to fail, to the development of an invention intended to assess, repair, or improve the process, to the specification of predictions of the instrument\'s actions and, finally, empirical validation to determine that the instrument achieves the intended effect. These elements are salient and deeply embedded in the cultures of the applied sciences of medicine and engineering, both of which primarily grew from basic sciences. However, the inventions that underlie most forensic science disciplines have few roots in basic science, and they do not have sound theories to justify their predicted actions or results of empirical tests to prove that they work as advertised. Inspired by the \"Bradford Hill Guidelines\"-the dominant framework for causal inference in epidemiology-we set forth four guidelines that can be used to establish the validity of forensic comparison methods generally. This framework is not intended as a checklist establishing a threshold of minimum validity, as no magic formula determines when particular disciplines or hypotheses have passed a necessary threshold. We illustrate how these guidelines can be applied by considering the discipline of firearm and tool mark examination.
摘要：
当涉及到法律背景下的事实问题时，特别是关于衡量的问题，协会,因果关系-法院应采用应用科学的普通标准。应用科学通常沿着一条道路发展，该道路从有关某些自然过程的基础科学发现发展到形成该过程如何工作以及导致其失败的理论，对一项旨在评估的发明的开发，修复,或改进过程，对仪器动作的预测规范，以及，最后,经验验证，以确定该工具达到预期效果。这些元素在医学和工程应用科学的文化中非常突出和深入地嵌入其中，两者都主要来自基础科学。然而,作为大多数法医学学科基础的发明几乎没有基础科学的根源，他们没有健全的理论来证明他们预测的行为或实证检验的结果来证明他们的工作是宣传的。受流行病学因果推断的主要框架“BradfordHill指南”的启发，我们提出了四个可用于确定法医比较方法有效性的指南。此框架不旨在作为建立最低有效性阈值的清单，因为没有魔法公式决定特定学科或假设何时超过必要的阈值。我们通过考虑枪支和工具标记检查的纪律来说明如何应用这些准则。
