Hana Eddib 4/19/18
Forensics current event 22
Springer. “Can Estimates From Forensic Handwriting Experts Be Trusted in Court?” Forensic Magazine, 18 Apr. 2018, www.forensicmag.com/news/2018/04/can-estimates-forensic-handwriting-experts-be-trusted-court.
In the article, “Can Estimates From Forensic Handwriting Experts Be Trusted in Court?” Springer discusses the amount of trust we should put into handwriting experts. These experts are brought into court to reveal the origins of a few lines of writing, or to determine whether a specific person has written a sentence. They also discuss the probability of a specific person writing a specific sentence or word. However new research led by Kristy Martire of the University of New South Wales in Australia reveals that maybe we shouldn’t be so trusting with experts. In this study Martire brought in eighteen court-practicing handwriting specialists (eight practicing in the US), and 77 people (36 from the US) with no previous training or experience in analyzing handwriting. All participants were given samples of handwriting and asked to examine them. According to Springer, “The researchers found that experts are marginally better than novices at estimating how often specific handwriting features occur in the writing of the general population, but they are not able to do so with complete accuracy. However, the estimations given by handwriting experts do reflect a level of knowledge and skill.” It was also reported that US experts performed at a higher rate than the other experts. However according to Mature one thing was clear, “The overall error rate even for experts is large enough as to raise questions about whether their estimates can be sufficiently trustworthy for presentation in courts."
I found this article to be very interesting and of complete relevance to our forensics class. Handwriting analysis is a large part of forensics and the analysis of it. The fact that we might not be able to trust these experts could call many cases’ verdicts into question. I also was interested in a personal level however because it made me wonder how I would test in relation to these experts.
Overall I thought this was a really article. Even though it was short, the author did a good job of explaining the situation and the research that led to this new idea. I do wish they would have presented some solutions to better equip /inform these experts so that we can continue to put our trust in them. I also wish they could’ve gone into further details in terms of what exactly the subjects were examining within the study.
4 comments:
Scott McGrath
4/19/18
Forensics Current Event 22
Springer. “Can Estimates From Forensic Handwriting Experts Be Trusted in Court?” Forensic Magazine, 18 Apr. 2018, www.forensicmag.com/news/2018/04/can-estimates-forensic-handwriting-experts-be-trusted-court.
Hanna Edib reviewed an article titled “Can Estimates From Forensic Handwriting Experts Be Trusted in Court?” written by Springer and did a very good job. The article is about how handwriting analysts can be trusted in a court of law. The act of comparing handwriting can be very objective and is not always easy to trust.
I really liked how much detail she added into the article because it made it easy to understand without reading the article. I also liked how she paced it, making it interesting the whole way through. She also utilized quotes which makes it easier to understand from the author's point of view.
Something she could stand to better would be the length. It would be nicer to have more to read. Another thing she could do is add more data.
I am intrigued by the fact that the credibility of handwriting analysts is not as strong as I imagined. Overall, it was a very good review.
Springer. “Can Estimates From Forensic Handwriting Experts Be Trusted in Court?” Forensic Magazine, 18 Apr. 2018, www.forensicmag.com/news/2018/04/can-estimates-forensic-handwriting-experts-be-trusted-court.
I thought that Hana’s review of the article, “Can Estimates From Forensic Handwriting Experts Be Trusted in Court?” was very well written. I thought that she did a good job providing the context of the article helping to better understand it. I thought that she did a good job incorporating the statistics of how experts from the U.S are better at “estimating how often specific handwriting features occur in the writing of the general population” from the article as well. I also thought that she did a good job explaining the importance of handwriting analysis in forensics.
Although Hana’s review was overall well done, I thought that there were a few aspects in which her review would be changed. I thought that despite the statistics she provided, it would have been helpful if she had further explained the importance of handwriting analysis in forensics. I also wished she had discussed the forensics side of handwriting analysis as well, such as how it is used, and how it is analyzed.
Overall, I thought that Hana’s review of the article, “Can Estimates From Forensic Handwriting Experts Be Trusted in Court?” was equally informative as it was interesting. Given that we will be studying handwriting analysis in class, reading this review was helpful in providing a background to handwriting analysis.
Springer. “Can Estimates From Forensic Handwriting Experts Be Trusted in Court?” Forensic
Magazine, 18 Apr. 2018, www.forensicmag.com/news/2018/04/can-estimates-forensic-handwriting-experts-be-trusted-court.
Hana wrote an excellent current event report in response to the article “Can Estimates From Handwriting Experts Be Trusted in Court?” by Springer. Hana began with a succinct and informative summary that provided the reader with all of the necessary information regarding the handwriting analysis research and the credibility of handwriting evidence. I like how she included a quote that describes the conclusion of the study because it made that part of her report more understandable. I think that she did a great job connecting the article to both forensic science and herself.
Although Hana wrote a thorough and well-written current event report, there are two areas where she could improve. I think that she could have included more information on the importance of handwriting analysis because that would have made her response more interesting. I also believe that more details concerning the protocol of the study would have made her piece more clear.
Through reading Springer’s article and Hana’s current event response, I now have a new skepticism and curiosity about handwriting analysis and its reliability. If even experts are not always able to accurately examine handwriting samples, then I don’t understand why that evidence is still presented at trial. I hope that studies like this will improve the accuracy of our justice system by revealing the flaws in some of the forensics.
I think Hana did a really good job with this review, particularly when she tied it to our own lives. She chose a topic that was very relevant to what we’re studying in class, since we’ve just begun the document analysis unit, and I thought she posed an interesting question when she asked how well she would do compared to an expert analyst. I also thought that she gave a very clear and succinct summary of the article and the study that was done, and her use of quotes enhanced the review quite well.
I think one area where Hana could have gone into more detail is the importance of handwriting analysis and why it matters when compared with other common forensic techniques such as DNA or fingerprint analysis. The usefulness of handwriting analysis is often overlooked, especially in the digital age where people don’t really handwrite entire pages anymore, so it would have been good to mention what kind of thing this type of science is used for.
I wasn’t particularly surprised by anything in this article, since after doing the first part of the questionable documents lab I was able to see that a novice can easily pick up the basics of handwriting examination, and that because people are not machines and don’t write exactly the same way all the time, there’s a lot of room for error in this field.
Post a Comment