The September/October JFI will include an article written by Ross entitled “Applying Hill’s Criteria to Determine the Validity of Cause and Effect Associations in Crime Scene Analysis”.

The article discusses Sir Arthur Bradford Hill’s causation evaluation criteria, used in medicine, and applies them to crime scene reconstruction. These criteria provide the crime scene analyst with a more robust method of evaluating causation and help to eliminate cognitive bias and specifically contextual bias.

Abstract: Crime scene reconstruction involves evaluating casual connections between various actions that occur during a given incident. Analysts use critical thinking, logic and a variety of technique to accomplish this evaluation. And underlying concern in the process is contextual bias, which must be controlled to ensure that only valid casual connections are included in the analysis. In 1965, Sir Austin Bradford Hill introduced a series of evaluative factors to use when evaluating cause connection in medicine. This paper describes Hill’s criteria as they apply to crime scene reconstruction.

The article will appear in the upcoming Journal and can be found on page 801-811.