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PCAST

Definition

The President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, a US federal advisory body. Its 2016 report 'Forensic Science in Criminal Courts: Ensuring Scientific Validity of Feature-Comparison Methods' applied stricter validity criteria to several pattern-matching disciplines than the 2009 NAS report had.

Related terms

Black-Box Study
A study in which qualified examiners are given realistic test cases with known ground truth and asked to make decisions under conditions...
Confirmation Bias
The cognitive tendency to search for, interpret, favour, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or...
Contextual Bias
The influence of case-relevant background information (suspect financial difficulties, police intelligence) on the direction of an examiner's technical analysis. Demonstrated experimentally for...
Foundational Validity
The requirement, articulated in the 2009 US National Academy of Sciences report and taken up by courts and reform bodies, that a...
Linear Sequential Unmasking (LSU)
A protocol in which an analyst processes evidence in a fixed order and receives case context only at the stage where it...

Explained in

  • Cognitive Bias and the 2009 NAS ReportThe President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, a US federal advisory body. Its 2016 report 'Forensic Science in Criminal Courts: Ensuring Scien...

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