Episode 290 - Review of a Bias Research Paper

Episode 290 - Review of a Bias Research Paper

From Double Loop Podcast by Glenn Langenburg and Eric Ray

April 5, 2026 · 1h 19m

About this episode

The episode reviews a research paper on cognitive bias in forensic evidence analysis and discusses its implications.

In this episode, the guys start off with some Michigan Regional Quirkisms. They then review a 2024 paper titled "The effects of cognitive bias, examiner expertise, and stimulus material on forensic evidence analysis" by Michelle Pena, Stephanie Stoiloff, Maria Sparacino, and Nadja Schreiber Compo, from the Journal of Forensic Sciences (2024; 69:1740-1757). The research paper provided lay participants (students) and fingerprint expert participants with images of ground truth, matching and non-matching fingerprint pairs. The researchers controlled the exposure of the participant to contextual case information. Lay participants made a number of errors and seemed to be more impacted by case information compared to experts in these trials. Glenn and Eric discuss why that might be and discuss and compare other studies that might be relevant on this topic. Article: Pena MM, Stoiloff S, Sparacino M, Schreiber Compo N. The effects of cognitive bias, examiner expertise, and stimulus material on forensic evidence analysis. J Forensic Sci. 2024 Sep;69(5):1740-1757. doi: 10.1111/1556-4029.15565. Other Articles Discussed: Tangen, J. M., Thompson, M. B., & McCarthy, D. J. (2011). Identifying…

People in this episode

Hosts: Glenn Langenburg, Eric Ray

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Journal of Forensic Sciences

Books & works: The effects of cognitive bias, examiner expertise, and stimulus material on forensic evidence analysis, Identifying fingerprint expertise, A Report of Statistics from Latent Print Casework

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