Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Peter de Knijff, scientific director of the Forensic Genomics Consortium Netherlands, was one of the members of the Scientific Organising Committee of a Lorentz Center Workshop on forensic statistics which took place on 26-29 April in Leiden.
The workshop focussed on the conflicts which occur when probability, statistics, genetics, and so on meet the law. The participants explored and discussed fundamental differences in the way that uncertain information is handled, and in the concept of proof. These differences in scientific approach are further confounded by issues of communication, hidden assumptions, and the very different ways in which uncertainty and variation is thought about and coped with in different fields. Determining the truth has become harder than ever in the face of growing complexity of forensic expertise. The aim of this workshop was to improve interdisciplinary communication in order to identify and solve these problems.
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