Perseverance Bias
Definition
The tendency to maintain a committed conclusion in the face of contradictory evidence. Implicated in the SCRO examiners' insistence on the McKie attribution after it was challenged.
- Category
- Cognitive bias affecting expert judgment
- Field
- Behavioural and forensic decision science
- Documented case
- SCRO examiners' continued McKie attribution after challenge
- Related bias
- Confirmation bias
Common questions
How does perseverance bias differ from confirmation bias?+
Confirmation bias shapes how new evidence is interpreted or sought out, while perseverance bias is the refusal to revise a conclusion already reached even after that evidence directly contradicts it.
What procedural safeguard reduces perseverance bias in fingerprint units?+
Blind verification by an examiner uninformed of the first examiner's conclusion, combined with a documented process for reopening a comparison when a credible independent challenge is raised.
Related terms
- ACE-V
- Analysis, Comparison, Evaluation, Verification: the four-stage method for latent print examination used by accredited forensic fingerprint laboratories. Analysis examines the latent in...
- Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam 2023 (BSA)
- India's current evidence statute, which replaced the Indian Evidence Act 1872. Section 63 of the BSA governs electronic records and requires a...
- Blind Verification
- The procedure in which a second fingerprint examiner independently performs the Analysis and Comparison stages without knowledge of the first examiner's conclusion....
- CFSL
- Central Forensic Science Laboratory: a central government lab operating under DFSS. India has CFSLs at New Delhi, Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Kolkata, Pune, Guwahati,...
- 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...
- IAFIS
- Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System; the US FBI's national fingerprint database. Generates candidate lists ranked by similarity score; the final identification decision...
- OIG Report
- The US Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General report (March 2006) that analysed the Mayfield misidentification, identifying three procedural failures:...
- PCAST Report (2016)
- The President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology 2016 report on forensic science that found firearms mark analysis had not yet...
- Sequential Unmasking
- An information-sequencing protocol in which the examiner receives the questioned material first, completes and documents the analysis before receiving the known standards,...