Defender's Fallacy
Definition
Dismissing match evidence by citing the large absolute number of people who share the characteristic, ignoring all other evidence that narrows the suspect population.
Related terms
- Activity-Level Proposition
- A proposition about what happened. Example: 'The suspect handled the knife' versus 'The suspect never handled the knife.' Activity-level propositions require the...
- Daubert Standard
- The US federal evidentiary standard (Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, 1993) requiring that expert testimony be based on scientifically valid methods with...
- Frye Standard
- The US legal test for admissibility of scientific evidence, originating from Frye v. United States (1923), which required that a technique be...
- Prosecutor's Fallacy
- The error of treating the RMP (or its reciprocal) as the probability that the defendant is innocent, or as the probability that...
- Source Attribution
- The inferential step of linking a trace to its donor. Serology identifies blood as human and potentially as a specific genetic type;...
Explained in
- Serology Evidence in Court: Interpretation and TestimonyDismissing match evidence by citing the large absolute number of people who share the characteristic, ignoring all other evidence that narrows the suspect popu...