Cognitive bias in forensic pathology decisions

Abstract

Forensic pathologists' decisions are critical in police investigations and court proceedings as they determine whether an unnatural death of a young child was an or homicide. Does cognitive bias affect forensic pathologists' decision-making? To address this question, 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. 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 forensic pathologists' decisions influenced their manner of death determinations. 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. This may arise because the base-rate expectation creates an a priori cognitive bias to rule that Black children died as a result of homicide, which then perpetuates itself. Corroborating this explanation, the experimental data with the 133 forensic pathologists exhibited biased decisions when given identical medical information but different irrelevant non-medical information about the race of the child and who was the caregiver who brought them to the hospital. These findings together demonstrate how extraneous information can result in cognitive bias in forensic pathology decision-making.