Bias? - Thanks, I’ll pass! I am an expert.

By Anna Sagana

In the popular tv show “The Good Place”, Judge Shawn, a higher being tasked to determine the fate of the main character, develops a protective cocoon each time an emotional, rather than factual, argument is raised by the parties. For he is a perfect creature, he is impartial and all just. He cares only for hard, cold facts, and has developed the perfect mechanism to battle bias. Like fictional Judge Shawn, many earthling judges and expert witnesses in courts see themselves as impartial. But unlike him,  earthlings are not perfect creatures (spoiler alert: Shawn is not what he seems either) and cannot hide within a sheath when confronted with biased thinking. Yet the idea of a bias free professional, be it a judge or an expert witness in court, is highly appealing both to the experts themselves and the general public.  

In his most recent publication, Dr. Itiel Dror who is known for his pioneering work in the field of forensic bias, explains the appeal and the reasons for the perpetuating popularity of a bias-free expert in the form of six fallacies. First, he notes, people explain away instances of biased decision making by thinking it only applies to people who are unethical and corrupt. This is termed the ethical issues fallacy. Related to this is the bad apples fallacy, according to which bias is nothing more than a question of competency. People tend to think that bias is the result of one person’s incompetence rather than something systemic. The third fallacy according to Dror is expert immunity. That is the belief that competent experts are impartial because by the mere virtue of being an expert. The fourth fallacy comes from the illusion that technology, artificial intelligence, and automation has the miraculous power to save the day and make us bias-free. The last two fallacies that Dror describes are possibly the trickiest ones. In these one understands that biased thinking is widespread but at the same time believes that this is the case only for others and not for one’s self (bias blind spot), and that awareness of one’s own bias is sufficient to control or prevent it (illusion of control). 

If you find yourself committing any of these fallacies you are not the only one. Some of these are highly prevalent among forensic experts and law professionals. But as the term fallacy entails, reasoning in such a way may sound appealing, but it is actually faulty. Conceptualizing bias just as an ethical issue, character flaw, matter of competency, or training is a gross oversimplification that leads to a reckless disregard of the universal character of cognitive bias. Although upon hearing about bias most think about intentional and discriminatory racial prejudice or sexism, cognitive bias goes far beyond this. Cognitive biases are mental shortcuts which are often the result of innate, hard-wired information-processing rules that are not always under conscious awareness or control. Experience can exacerbate these mental shortcuts, leading to more reliance and confident, but yet not more accurate decisions. Likewise, blind trust in technology discounts the fact that these instruments are often based on already skewed data (face recognition software is a prime example) and are interpreted by humans. Needless to say, instruments are as bad as their operators! Unfortunately, no one is immune to bias and we are far from developing a cocoon that will automatically protect us.

So, where does this leave us? Combating biased and heuristic thinking is a painstaking job that starts with understanding the nature and the origins of cognitive bias (see Figure 1), but it does not end there. The knowledge should be accompanied by hands on solutions. Many of the existing practical solutions fit broadly under Thaler and Sunstein idea of choice architecture and the use of nudges to create alternative courses of actions that promote good long-term decision making. For example, the use of blinding and masking techniques, or evidence lineups when analyzing forensic samples can be seen as nudges aimed to encourage bias free decision making. Likewise, there is some preliminary evidence that procedural rules can act as debiasing techniques in court proceedings. We might never reach Judge Shawn’s super human engineering skills, but appreciating our earthling qualities, the limitations of our cognitive apparatus and our critical thinking, can get us far enough. 

Figure 1

The eight sources of bias that may cognitively contaminate sampling, observations, testing strategies, analysis and conclusions, even by experts. They are organized in a taxonomy within three categories: starting off at the top with sources relating to the specific case and analysis (Category A), moving down to sources that relate to the specific person doing the analysis (Category B), and at the very bottom sources that relate to human nature (Category C).

Taken with authors permission from Dror (2020).