Jason Chin

• BA, MA, PhD, JD
• Senior Lecturer at Australian National University

This paper distils seven key lessons about ‘error’ from a collaborative webinar series between practitioners at Victoria Police Forensic Services Department and academics. It aims to provide the common understanding of error necessary to foster interdisciplinary dialogue, collaboration and research. The lessons underscore the inevitability, complex...

Background Scientists are increasingly concerned with making their work easy to verify and build upon. Associated practices include sharing data, materials, and analytic scripts, and preregistering protocols. This shift towards increased transparency and rigor has been referred to as a “credibility revolution.” The credibility of empirical legal re...

Forensic scientific practitioners and researchers must navigate a rapidly growing body of research. This makes it increasingly challenging to inform courts, lawyers, and other decision makers about the state of the field, thus heightening the chances of wrongful convictions and acquittals. When similar challenges have arisen in other fields, they h...

This article questions our criminal justice system's heavy reliance on judicial directions and warnings. Reviewing a recent case and the directions provided by the trial judge-in a trial where a police officer purported to identify defendants on the basis of listening to intercepted telephone calls-this article explains why orthodox judicial instru...

In this commentary, we argue that besides focusing on generalization, sufficient attention must be invested in the practical relevance of psychological and applied memory research. That is, memory research is frequently used to address real-life questions. In the area of psychology and law, memory scientists are sometimes asked by court to provide...

In this commentary, we argue that besides focusing on generalization, sufficient attention must be invested in the practical relevance of psychological and applied memory research. That is, memory research is frequently used to address real life questions. In the area of psychology and law, memory scientists are sometimes asked by court to provide...

Background : Scientists are increasingly concerned with making their work easy to verify and build upon. Associated practices include sharing data, materials, and analytic scripts, and preregistering protocols. This shift towards increased transparency and rigor has been referred to as a “credibility revolution.” The credibility of empirical legal...

This comment examines a threat to the development of law and psychology as a “public science” (i.e., one that goes beyond theory to address important issues in society), a failure to think critically about effect sizes. Effect sizes estimate the strength or magnitude of the relationship between variables and therefore can help decision makers under...

Here, we respond to Otgaar, Howe, and Dodier’s (2022, “OHD”) article laying out a framework for how psychologists can reliably give opinion evidence about memory. Specifically, they say that memory experts providing evidence to courts should draw on research that is replicable, generalizable, and practically relevant (Otgaar et al, 2022, p. 3). We...

Law reform bodies frequently express a commitment to evidence-based law and policy recommendations. They also endorse the importance of the transparency and democratisation of their processes. They do not, however, connect these two goals of evidence-based policy and transparency. This stands in contrast to the ongoing revolution in several fields...

Research assessing the validity and reliability of many forensic science disciplines has been published; however, the quality of this research varies depending on the methodologies employed. This was a major point of contention with the United States' President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, who recognized the existing literature...

This comment examines a threat to the development of law and psychology as a “public science” (i.e., one that helps address important issues in society), a failure to think critically about effect sizes. As an applied field, law and psychology’s remit goes beyond exploring the theoretical relations between psychological constructs and behavior, to...

A large number of systematic replication attempts in the social sciences have failed to support the claims in the original studies. These surprising results have inspired a body of metascientific research aimed at understanding these failures to replicate and ensuring future research is credible. In this article, we relate these new insights from m...

Systematic reviews are indispensable tools for both reliably informing decision-makers about the state of the field and for identifying areas that need further study. Their value, however, depends on their transparency and reproducibility. Readers should be able to determine what was searched for and when, where the authors searched, and whether th...

Systematic reviews are indispensable tools for both reliably informing decision-makers about the state of the field and for identifying areas that need further study. Their value, however, depends on their transparency and reproducibility. Readers should be able to determine what was searched for and when, where the authors searched, and whether th...

Forensic science plays an important role in the criminal justice system, however research and miscarriages of justice have demonstrated that laypeople can easily misunderstand the results of forensic tests. Given the importance of these test results, interdisciplinary oversight groups have called for clearer expression of forensic tests’ correspond...

Forensic science plays an important role in the criminal justice system; however, research and miscarriages of justice have demonstrated that laypeople can easily misunderstand the results of forensic tests. Given the importance of these test results, interdisciplinary oversight groups have called for a clearer expression of forensic tests’ corresp...

Exclusion of evidence when its probative value is exceeded by its risk of creating unfair prejudice has long been a fundamental safeguard against unfair trials and wrongful convictions. In 2016, IMM v The Queen curtailed that safeguard by holding that trial judges should assess probative value on the assumption that the evidence is reliable and cre...

What drives public beliefs about the credibility of a scientific field? This question is increasingly important, with recent discussion of a “reproducibility crisis” affecting many fields. Such discussions are vital in forensic science, a discipline that has experienced severe scrutiny from both the media and large oversight bodies. In this paper,...

The rules and procedures regulating the admission of potentially unreliable expert evidence have been substantially weakened over the past several years. We respond to this trend by focusing on one aspect of the rules that has not been explicitly curtailed: unfair prejudice. Unfair prejudice is an important component of trial judges’ authority to e...

What drives public beliefs about the credibility of a scientific field? This question is increasingly important, with recent discussion of a “reproducibility crisis” affecting many fields. Such discussions are vital in forensic science, a discipline that has experienced severe scrutiny from both the media and large oversight bodies. In this paper,...

Scientists are increasingly concerned with making their work easy to verify and build upon. Associated practices include sharing data, materials, and analytic scripts, and preregistering protocols. This has been referred to as a “credibility revolution”. The credibility of empirical legal research has been questioned in the past due to its distinct...

In this article, we provide a toolbox of recommendations and resources for those aspiring to promote the uptake of open scientific practices. Open Science encompasses a range of behaviours that aim to improve the transparency of scientific research. This paper is divided into seven sections, each devoted to different groups or institutions in the r...

In comparison to white students, the study of Black student attitudes toward crime reporting on college campuses is deficient, especially in historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Using approximately 100 completed student questionnaires, statistical results suggest that the majority of students express a willingness to report a campu...

As part of a broader methodological reform movement, scientists are increasingly interested in improving the replicability of their research. Replicability allows others to perform replications to explore potential errors and statistical issues that might call the original results into question. Little attention, however, has been paid to the state...

Law reform bodies frequently express a commitment to evidence-based law and policy recommendations. They also readily endorse the importance of the transparency and democratization of their processes. They do not, however, connect these two goals of evidence-based policy and transparency. This stands in contrast to the ongoing revolution in several...

Objectives Questionable research practices (QRPs) lead to incorrect research results and contribute to irreproducibility in science. Researchers and institutions have proposed open science practices (OSPs) to improve the detectability of QRPs and the credibility of science. We examine the prevalence of QRPs and OSPs in criminology, and researchers’...

Fields closely related to empirical legal research (ELR) are enhancing their methods to improve the credibility of their findings. This includes making data, analysis codes and other materials openly available on digital repositories and preregistering studies. There are numerous benefits to these practices, such as research being easier to find an...

In this article, we provide a toolbox of resources and nudges for those who are interested in advancing open scientific practice. Open Science encompasses a range of behaviours that aim to include the transparency of scientific research and how widely it is communicated. The paper is divided into seven sections, each dealing with a different stakeh...

Objectives. Questionable research practices (QRPs) lead to incorrect research results and contribute to irreproducibility in science. Researchers and institutions have proposed open science practices (OSPs) to improve the detectability of QRPs and the credibility of science. We examine the prevalence of QRPs and OSPs in criminology, and researchers...

As part of a broader methodological reform movement, scientists are increasingly interested in improving the replicability of their research. Replicability allows others to perform replications to explore potential errors and statistical issues that might call the original results into question. Little attention, however, has been paid to the state...

As part of a broader methodological reform movement, scientists are increasingly interested in improving the replicability of their research. Replicability allows others to perform replications to explore potential errors and statistical issues that might call the original results into question. Little attention, however, has been paid to the state...

Reproducibility and open access are central to the research process, enabling researchers to verify and build upon each other’s work, and allowing the public to rely on that work. These ideals are perhaps even more important in legal and criminological research, fields that actively seek to inform law and policy. This article has two goals. First,...

This article makes a case for pre-recorded, modularized expert evidence as a way to improve access to justice in some intimate partner violence (IPV) cases. Knowledge about the effects and dynamics of IPV regularly plays an important role in criminal trials. This knowledge is often beyond the ken of the factfinder and thus can provide important con...

This article makes a case for pre-recorded, modularized expert evidence as a way to improve access to justice in some intimate partner violence (IPV) cases. Knowledge about the effects and dynamics of IPV regularly plays an important role in criminal trials. This knowledge is often beyond the ken of the factfinder, and thus can provide important co...

Fields closely related to empirical legal research are enhancing their methods to improve the credibility of their findings. This includes making data, analysis code, and other materials openly available, and preregistering studies. Empirical legal research appears to be lagging behind other fields. This may be due, in part, to a lack of meta-resea...

In response to many miscarriages of justice attributed to forensic science, stakeholders in the justice system have proposed several reforms. One such reform is the broader use of expert witness codes of conduct to control the way in which forensic scientific evidence is reported in legal proceedings. In this article, the authors attempt to continu...

Can procedural reforms effectively regulate expert witnesses? Expert procedures, like codes of conduct and court appointed experts, remain controversial among academics and courts. Much of this discussion, however, has been divorced from the science of the reforms. In this article, the authors draw from emerging work in behavioural ethics and metas...

We are very pleased to introduce this special issue of The University of Queensland Law Journal on expert evidence. As many readers will be aware, expert evidence remains a contentious issue both in Australia and abroad. Questions have been raised, for instance, about the reliability of many traditional fields of expert evidence, biases experts may...

Legal commentators widely agree that forensic examiners should articulate the reasons for their opinions. However, findings from cognitive science strongly suggest that people have little insight into the information they rely on to make decisions. And as individuals gain expertise, they rely more on cognitive shortcuts that are not directly access...

The registered report (RR) format is rapidly being adopted by scientific researchers and journals. RRs flip the peer review process, with reviewers evaluating proposed methods, rather than the data and findings. Editors then accept or reject articles largely based on the pre-data collection review. Accordingly, RRs reduce the incentive for research...

The registered report (RR) format is rapidly being adopted by researchers and journals in several scientific fields. RRs flip the peer review process, with reviewers evaluating proposed methods, rather than the data and findings. Editors then accept or reject articles based on the pre-data collection review. Accordingly, RRs reduce the incentive fo...

Recent research has detailed the use of neuroscience in several jurisdictions, but Australia remains a notable omission. To fill this substantial void we performed a systematic review of neuroscience in Australian criminal cases. The first section of this article reports the results of our review by detailing the purposes for which neuroscience is...

Biased expert witnesses pose a distinct challenge to the legal system. In the criminal sphere, they have contributed to several wrongful convictions, and in civil cases, they can protract disputes and reduce faith in the legal system. This has inspired a great deal of legal-psychological research studying expert biases and how to mitigate them. In...

Biased expert witnesses pose a distinct challenge to the legal system. In the criminal sphere, they have contributed to several wrongful convictions, and in civil cases, they can protract disputes and reduce faith in the legal system. This has inspired a great deal of legal-psychological research studying expert biases and how to mitigate them. In...

The mainstream sciences are experiencing a revolution of methodology. This revolution was inspired, in part, by the realization that a surprising number of findings in the bioscientific literature could not be replicated or reproduced by independent laboratories. In response, scientific norms and practices are rapidly moving towards openness. These...

The mainstream sciences are experiencing a revolution of methodology. This revolution was inspired, in part, by the realization that a surprising number of findings in the bioscientific literature could not be replicated or reproduced by independent laboratories and were likely false discoveries. In response – as reflected in a 2018 report of the N...

Recent reviews by peak scientific bodies have concluded that forensic bitemark identification is not a demonstrably valid science. In the United States, the practice of forensic bitemark identification has been linked to at least 14 wrongful convictions and has been the subject of considerable academic study. Much less is known about the use of for...

Canadian courts draw a tenuous distinction between expert scientific evidence and what they characterize as specialized knowledge gained through the expert witness’s experience, training, and research. This characterization is based on unclear criteria and has significant consequences. Notably, specialized knowledge regularly receives considerably...

Recent research has detailed the use of neuroscience in several jurisdictions, but Australia remains a notable omission. To fill this substantial void we performed a systematic review of neuroscience in Australian criminal cases. The first section of this article reports the results of our review by detailing the purposes for which neuroscience is...

Both science and expert evidence law are undergoing significant changes. In this article, the authors compare these two movements – the open science movement and the evidence-based evidence movement. The open science movement is the recent discovery of many irreproducible findings in science and the subsequent move towards more transparent methods....

Proprietary estoppel provides one of equity’s most powerful remedies. Estoppel is an equitable doctrine which arises when one party acts on the reliance of the promise of another. The promise and corresponding reliance creates a quasi-contract with reliance acting as an alternative to the consideration usually required in contracts. Proprietary est...

Canadian courts are loathe to admit expert evidence from psychological scientists when that evidence does not concern a disposition, typically a psychological disorder. As a result, psychological evidence concerning the unconscious processes and situational forces that underlie mistaken eyewitness identifications and wrongful confessions are regula...

In R v Bingley, the Supreme Court considered a controversial subjective methodology used by police officers trained as drug recognition experts (DREs) pursuant to the Criminal Code. At issue was the admissibility of these experts’ evidence. A 5-2 majority held that Parliament conclusively established the reliability the DRE program’s methodology an...

Scientific evidence is easily misunderstood. One of the most insidious instances of misunderstanding arises when scientific experts and those receiving their evidence assign different meanings to the same words. We expect scientific evidence to be difficult to understand. What is unexpected, and often far more difficult to detect, is the incorrect...

Scientific evidence is easily misunderstood. One of the most insidious instances of misunderstanding arises when scientific experts and those receiving their evidence assign different meanings to the same words. We expect scientific evidence to be difficult to understand. What is unexpected, and often far more difficult to detect, is the incorrect...

In R v Bingley, the Supreme Court considered a controversial subjective methodology used by police officers trained as drug recognition experts (DREs) pursuant to the Criminal Code. At issue was the admissibility of these experts’ evidence. A 5-2 majority held that Parliament conclusively established the reliability the DRE program’s methodology an...

This article examines the vanishingly thin line between lay and expert opinion evidence in Canada. In Parts I and II, we set the stakes. Canadian trial courts have been warned by peak scientific bodies and public commissions like the Goudge Inquiry about the dangers of attorning to persuasive expert witnesses. Thus, expert evidence faces new hurdle...

Canadian courts regularly affirm their commitment to gatekeeping scientific evidence, saying it is fundamentally important to determine the admissibility of such evidence before it can impact the ultimate decision. The significance of gatekeeping is underscored by the fact that unreliable science has been at the heart of many high-profile wrongful...

When opening an RRSP or RRIF, investors typically designate a beneficiary. We expect that, when making this choice, most investors intend that their designated beneficiary will indeed benefit from the investment on their death. And further, if there is a dispute between the designated beneficiary and the investor’s estate, we expect investors inten...

In response to what has been termed the “replicability crisis,” great changes are currently under way in how science is conducted and disseminated. A question therefore arises over how such change impacts law’s treatment of scientific evidence. The present standard for the admissibility of scientific evidence in federal courts in the U.S. asks judg...

The CSI Effect posits that exposure to television programs that portray forensic science (e.g., CSI: Crime Scene Investigation) can change the way jurors evaluate forensic evidence. The most commonly researched hypothesis under the CSI Effect suggests that shows like CSI depict an unrealistically high standard of forensic science and thus unreasona...

In 2015 Brian Nosek and several collaborators performed perhaps the most important scientific study of the year, and they did it by attempting to copy the work of others. That is not as contradictory as it sounds, or at least it shouldn’t be.While the conventional wisdom is that most scientific findings have been vetted and reproduced many times be...

Litigators seeking to improve their interviewing skills may have noticed a recent addition to the market, a book titled Unlocking Memories: Cognitive Interviewing for Lawyers. Written by former English police officer Geoff Coughlin, it’s marketed as a way to “elicit up to 40% more information from your witness interviews” in a manner that is both a...

This article examines the vanishingly thin line between lay and expert opinion evidence in Canada. In Parts I and II, we set the stakes. Canadian trial courts have been warned by peak scientific bodies and public commissions like the Goudge Inquiry about the dangers of attorning to persuasive expert witnesses. Thus, expert evidence faces new hurdle...

This article examines the vanishingly thin line between lay and expert opinion evidence in Canada. In Parts I and II, we set the stakes — the dangers involved in expanding the scope of admissible opinion evidence. Canadian trial courts have been warned by peak scientific bodies and public commissions like the Goudge Inquiry about the dangers of att...

When opening an RRSP or RRIF, investors typically designate a beneficiary. We expect that, when making this choice, most investors intend that their designated beneficiary will indeed benefit from the investment on their death. And further, if there is a dispute between the designated beneficiary and the investor’s estate, we expect investors inten...

When opening an RRSP or RRIF, investors typically designate a beneficiary. We expect that when making this choice, most investors intend that their designated beneficiary will indeed benefit from the investment on their death. If there is a dispute between the designated beneficiary and the investor’s estate, we further expect investors intend that...

Litigators seeking to improve their interviewing skills may have noticed a recent addition to the market, a book titled Unlocking Memories: Cognitive Interviewing for Lawyers.1 Written by former English police officer Geoff Coughlin, it’s marketed as a way to “elicit up to 40% more information from your witness interviews”2 in a manner that is both...

The CSI Effect posits that exposure to television programs that portray forensic science (e.g., CSI: Crime Scene Investigation) can change the way jurors evaluate forensic evidence. The most commonly researched hypothesis under the CSI Effect suggests that shows like CSI depict an unrealistically high standard of forensic science and thus unreasona...

In 2015 Brian Nosek and several collaborators performed perhaps the most important scientific study of the year, and they did it by attempting to copy the work of others. That is not as contradictory as it sounds, or at least it shouldn’t be. While the conventional wisdom is that most scientific findings have been vetted and reproduced many times...

Canadian courts regularly affirm their commitment to gatekeeping scientific evidence, saying it is fundamentally important to determine the admissibility of such evidence before it can impact the ultimate decision. The significance of gatekeeping is underscored by the fact that unreliable science has been at the heart of many high-profile wrongful...

In response to what has been termed the "replicability crisis," great changes are currently under way in how science is conducted and disseminated. A question therefore arises over how such change impacts law's treatment of scientific evidence. The present standard for the admissibility of scientific evidence in federal courts in the U.S. asks judg...

Tests of working memory capacity (WMC) and fluid intelligence (gF) are thought to capture variability in a crucial cognitive capacity that is broadly predictive of success, yet pinpointing the exact nature of this capacity is an area of ongoing controversy. We propose that mind-wandering is associated with performance on tests of WMC and gF, thereb...

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that the threat of a negative stereotype increases the frequency of mind-wandering (i.e., task-unrelated thought), thereby leading to performance impairments. Study 1 demonstrated that participants anticipating a stereotype-laden test mind-wandered more during the Sustained Attention to Response Task. Study 2 a...

Meta-awareness is a state of deliberate attention toward the contents of conscious thought, serving as an appraisal of experiential consciousness. Meta-awareness is necessary for such uniquely human tasks as monitoring and controlling conscious thought, while lapses in meta-awareness make room for such phenomena as mind wandering and unwanted thoug...

Verbal overshadowing describes the phenomenon in which verbalisation negatively affects performance on a task related to the verbalised material. Within the verbal overshadowing literature, three accounts exist which attempt to explain this phenomenon: content, processing, and criterion accounts. The content account refers to the notion that the sp...

Feeling duped is an aversive emotional response to the perception of having been taken advantage of in a interpersonal transaction (primarily those involving economic exchange), partly as a result of one's own decisions. The actual likelihood of being duped, as well as the heightened vigilance for it, should increase as a function of opportunity (e...