Cognitive Bias in Forensic Pathology Decisions was published today by Journal of Forensic Sciences

From the abstract “We examined all death certificates issued during a 10-year period in the State of Nevada in the United States for children under the age of six.” /2

We also conducted an experiment with 133 forensic pathologists in which we tested whether knowledge of irrelevant non-medical information that should have no bearing on fo- rensic pathologists’ decisions influenced their manner of death determinations. /3

The dataset of death certificates indicated that forensic pathologists were more likely to rule "homicide" rather than "accident" for deaths of Black children relative to White children. /4

“Participants read a vignette describing a not straightforward or simple case in which a 3.5-year-old child was presented to an ED with diminished vital signs and who died shortly after arrival. /5