Practical Solutions to Forensic Contextual Bias

In 2009, the National Research Council (NRC) globally criticized forensic science and, in particular, the potential for contextual bias to increase errors in forensic examination. Nevertheless, very few research-based solutions have been proposed and, of the current recommendations, none are consistently used in practice. Two experiments are presented here. Experiment 1 replicates and extends the Quigley-McBride and Wells (2018) study in which fingerprint lineups (the Filler-Control Procedure) were shown to neutralize the effect of contextual information on novice fingerprint evaluations. Experiment 2 demonstrates that restricting the use of evidence lineups to verification decisions would also be effective for reducing incorrect match decisions without straining resources. In both experiments, the filler-control procedure consistently reduced the effect of suggestive contextual information and protected innocent suspect prints from being mistakenly matched to crime samples. Interdisciplinary approaches are discussed as a way to help close the gap between research and forensic science practice.