Elimination (SWGDOC)
Definition
The most definitive negative conclusion on the SWGDOC scale, meaning fundamental differences in writing habits that cannot be attributed to disguise, natural variation, or changed conditions conclusively exclude common authorship.
- Scale position
- Most definitive negative conclusion
- Framework
- SWGDOC conclusion scale
- Basis
- Fundamental, unexplainable writing differences
- Effect
- Excludes common authorship
Common questions
What separates an elimination conclusion from a weaker negative opinion on the SWGDOC scale?+
Elimination requires the examiner to be confident the differences cannot be explained by disguise, natural variation, or changed writing conditions, whereas a weaker negative conclusion allows for some uncertainty about whether an innocent explanation for the differences might exist.
Can an elimination conclusion be revisited if more comparison material becomes available?+
In principle any forensic conclusion can be reconsidered if significant new comparison material or context emerges, but because elimination represents the examiner's highest level of confidence in exclusion, revisiting it in practice is uncommon and would require a compelling reason.
Related terms
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- ENFSI Evaluative Standard
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- Foundational Validity as Applied
- PCAST's standard requiring that a forensic discipline be validated through black-box studies measuring real-examiner error rates under realistic conditions, not just laboratory...
- Identification (SWGDOC)
- The most positive conclusion on the SWGDOC scale, meaning the examiner has found individualising agreement in all significant habitual writing characteristics, with...
- Likelihood Ratio (LR)
- The ratio of two conditional probabilities: the probability of the observed evidence given the prosecution's hypothesis (same source), divided by the probability...
- No Conclusion (SWGDOC Position 5)
- The midpoint of the SWGDOC scale, indicating that the evidence is equally consistent with a common source or different sources. It is...
- PCAST 2016 Report
- The President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology 2016 report 'Forensic Science in Criminal Courts: Ensuring Scientific Validity of Feature-Comparison Methods,'...
- Population-Frequency Anchoring
- The practice of grounding a conclusion about feature rarity in empirically measured frequency data for those features in the relevant writing population,...
- SWGDOC Nine-Point Scale
- The conclusion scale developed by the Scientific Working Group for Forensic Document Examination, running from 'identification' (most positive) through 'no conclusion' (midpoint)...