Biedermann A, Bozza S, Taroni F
University of Lausanne, Faculty of Law, Criminal Justice and Public Administration, School of Criminal Justice, 1015 Lausanne-Dorigny, Switzerland.
University of Lausanne, Faculty of Law, Criminal Justice and Public Administration, School of Criminal Justice, 1015 Lausanne-Dorigny, Switzerland; Università Ca'Foscari Venezia, Department of Economics, 30121 Venice, Italy.
Forensic Sci Int. 2016 Sep;266:29-38. doi: 10.1016/j.forsciint.2016.04.029. Epub 2016 Apr 30.
Throughout forensic science and adjacent branches, academic researchers and practitioners continue to diverge in their perception and understanding of the notion of 'individualization', that is the claim to reduce a pool of potential donors of a forensic trace to a single source. In particular, recent shifts to refer to the practice of individualization as a decision have been revealed as being a mere change of label [1], leaving fundamental changes in thought and understanding still pending. What is more, professional associations and practitioners shy away from embracing the notion of decision in terms of the formal theory of decision in which individualization may be framed, mainly because of difficulties to deal with the measurement of desirability or undesirability of the consequences of decisions (e.g., using utility functions). Building on existing research in the area, this paper presents and discusses fundamental concepts of utilities and losses with particular reference to their application to forensic individualization. The paper emphasizes that a proper appreciation of decision tools not only reduces the number of individual assignments that the application of decision theory requires, but also shows how such assignments can be meaningfully related to constituting features of the real-world decision problem to which the theory is applied. It is argued that the decisonalization of individualization requires such fundamental insight to initiate changes in the fields' underlying understandings, not merely in their label.
在整个法医学及其相邻学科中，学术研究人员和从业者在对“个体化”概念的认知和理解上仍存在分歧，“个体化”即指将法医痕迹的潜在来源范围缩小至单一源头的主张。特别是，最近将个体化实践称为一种决策的转变已被揭示仅仅是标签的改变[1]，思想和理解上的根本变化仍未实现。此外，专业协会和从业者回避从个体化可能被纳入的正式决策理论角度接受决策概念，主要是因为难以处理决策后果的可取性或不可取性的衡量问题（例如，使用效用函数）。基于该领域现有的研究，本文提出并讨论了效用和损失的基本概念，特别提及它们在法医个体化中的应用。本文强调，正确理解决策工具不仅能减少决策理论应用所需的个体赋值数量，还能展示这些赋值如何与该理论所应用的现实世界决策问题的构成特征有意义地关联起来。有人认为，个体化的决策化需要这种基本洞见来引发该领域基础理解的变化，而不仅仅是标签的改变。
