Public Beliefs About the Accuracy and Importance of Forensic Evidence in the United States

Juror appraisals of forensic evidence: Effects of blind proficiency and cross-examination

“…This finding echoes previous studies in which laypeople believed both fingerprint and forensic dental identification to be somewhat subjective [22] and highly accurate ( [21], see also Ref. [37]). This finding is quite concerning, given that latent fingerprint identification has an undeniably stronger scientific foundation than bitemark identification.…”

Beyond CSI: Calibrating public beliefs about the reliability of forensic science through openness and transparency

“…However, studies attempting to measure this relationship have found inconsistent results, with some finding no relationship and others finding a weak one [14,[16][17][18][19] (see footnotes for a brief summary). 1 This may be due to the fact that many people report that they do not think CSI is an accurate depiction of real life [20], as well as other factors, such as pre-existing beliefs about forensic science outside of CSI shows.…”

Ambient lighting, use of outdoor spaces and perceptions of public safety: evidence from a survey experiment

“…7 Mechanical Turk has become a mainstay of research in psychology, political science and experimental economics. While MTurk, to date, has been not been as popular in criminological research (Ozkan 2019), recent research has used Mechanical Turk to identify demographic heterogeneity in deterrence effects (Fine and Van Rooij 2017) knowledge about "elite deviance" (Michel et al 2015), and opinions on forensic evidence (Kaplan et al 2020). We restrict respondents to those who live in the United States.…”

“…Likewise, survey experiments are particularly useful when key outcomes are attitudinal or are poorly measured using administrative data. Given their usefulness in many different contexts, survey experiments have a rich tradition in experimental economics (Chaudhuri 2011;Cruces et al 2013;Kuziemko et al 2015) in public opinion research in political science (Harbridge and Malhotra 2011;Samuels and Zucco Jr 2014) and have a limited but growing presence in experimental criminology (Herzog 2003;Groff et al 2005;Berryessa et al 2016;Buckley et al 2016;Liao et al 2016;Berryessa 2017Berryessa 2018Dunbar and Kubrin 2018;Headley et al 2020;Block et al 2020;Dunbar 2020;Kaplan et al 2020;Shi 2020).…”