Feb 19, 2020 04:15 AM
https://www.newscientist.com/article/223...us-courts/
EXCERPT: A third of the psychological tests used in US court proceedings aren’t generally accepted by experts in the field, a study has found. “A clinician has the freedom to use whatever tool they want and it’s the wild west out there,” says Tess Neal at Arizona State University.
Neal’s team looked at the validity of 364 psychological assessments commonly used in US courts. Assessments were used in a range of circumstances, from parental custody cases to the determination of a person’s sanity or their suitability for a death sentence.
[...] The researchers found that 60 per cent of the tests used in US courts hadn’t received generally favourable reviews of their scientific validity in widely accepted textbooks such as the Mental Measurements Yearbook. And 33 per cent weren’t broadly accepted by psychology experts, according to nine previously published reviews of the field. The most problematic tests are usually those that are too subjective...
[...] No such wide-ranging and systematic review has been done in the UK. But Robert Forde, who has written a book called Bad Psychology: How forensic psychology left science behind, says there are concerns in the UK too, particularly over decisions by parole boards, in which prisoners are assessed on their risk of reoffending before they can be released... (MORE - details)
EXCERPT: A third of the psychological tests used in US court proceedings aren’t generally accepted by experts in the field, a study has found. “A clinician has the freedom to use whatever tool they want and it’s the wild west out there,” says Tess Neal at Arizona State University.
Neal’s team looked at the validity of 364 psychological assessments commonly used in US courts. Assessments were used in a range of circumstances, from parental custody cases to the determination of a person’s sanity or their suitability for a death sentence.
[...] The researchers found that 60 per cent of the tests used in US courts hadn’t received generally favourable reviews of their scientific validity in widely accepted textbooks such as the Mental Measurements Yearbook. And 33 per cent weren’t broadly accepted by psychology experts, according to nine previously published reviews of the field. The most problematic tests are usually those that are too subjective...
[...] No such wide-ranging and systematic review has been done in the UK. But Robert Forde, who has written a book called Bad Psychology: How forensic psychology left science behind, says there are concerns in the UK too, particularly over decisions by parole boards, in which prisoners are assessed on their risk of reoffending before they can be released... (MORE - details)