Dr. Kaplan-Damary’s research interests include: Forensic Science, especially the strengthening of its scientific foundations; Forensic Evidence and the effect of its presentation on officers of the court; the influence of Cognitive Bias on forensic investigation, and Wrongful Convictions.
Scientific foundations of forensics
Although forensic evidence has a great impact on court rulings, there has been considerable criticism that many forensic disciplines lack a sufficient scientific foundation, for example the US National Academy of Science report (2009) and the report of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (2016). Dr. Kaplan-Damary’s research has focused on ways in which to strengthen the scientific foundations of forensic shoe print examination.
Her work in this area has endeavored to build an objective scientific model for assessing the similarity between a crime scene impression and the print of a suspect’s shoe as opposed to the more subjective and impressionistic system currently employed in crime scene labs. She has examined the Randomly Acquired Characteristics or RACs (for example scratches or holes) on shoe soles to determine the probability of a RAC appearing at a particular location. This has to be continued by looking at the shape and orientation of the RACs. The ultimate goal is to define the rarity of the shoe as the match of a rare shoe with a crime scene impression would be considered stronger evidence than that of a common shoe sole. Ultimately, she hopes to be able to quantify the evidential value of shoe soles in much the same way as experts determine the probability of a coincidental match in DNA cases (i.e., the probability that a random DNA sample could match the evidence at the crime scene).
She is currently working on a major research project with the Israel National Police in cooperation with CSAFE (Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence): “Estimating the Probability of RAC Location on a Shoe Sole.”
Reporting of scientific evidence in court
It is critically important for jurors to be able to understand forensic evidence, and just as important to understand how jurors perceive scientific reports. Different populations tend to be influenced more by certain kinds of expert testimony (numerical, categorical, etc.). Dr. Kaplan-Damary has devised a novel approach, using statistical mixture models, to identify subpopulations that appear to respond differently to presentations of forensic evidence, even when it is not clear what demographic or psychological factors actually characterize them. This is significant for defense attorneys, prosecutors, judges and in fact the entire justice system: it would be unjust if cases were decided on the basis of the way in which evidence is presented rather than the evidence itself.
Cognitive bias
Due to human patterns of thought, people are often influenced by irrelevant information in making observations and decisions. Expert investigators examining fingerprints, DNA, blood spatter patterns, etc. are not immune to such biases and their decisions may be swayed by extraneous information such as knowledge about the suspect, the victim, the crime scene, etc. that do not pertain to the evidence that they are examining. Dr. Kaplan-Damary is studying procedures of forensic examination in various fields in order to discover at which stages this risk is most prevalent, and what measures must be taken in order to avoid such bias or prevent it from influencing decisions of forensic examiners.