Post by woofytreats on May 30, 2015 18:05:51 GMT
I think it's important that people understand that profiling is not a "holy grail" of investigation and it's thought of as such by WAAAYYY too many people. The examples of this "subjective art" involving Richard Jewell, John Muhammed, and others as listed above are numerous. I think the UK Home Office is much more honest than the U.S. authorities concerning the effectiveness of profiling when they stated that a random group of 184 cases they examined where profiles were used had a low correlation to the actual reality.
IMO, a certification doesn't mean much if the methodology involves assigning elements in different ways that doesn't correspond to empirical scientific methods. Certain assumptions are weighted differently or not used based on ( for example ) a static view of stable relationship factors between social psychology and the particular offender. Relationships that may or may not exist in tandem with certain markers from one person to the next. To me, it's roughly analogous to a Questioned Document Examiner. They can use their "expert" and "certified" opinion to match handwriting samples for example, but it's often inconclusive and sometimes wrong.
You don't have to look much further than the questioned document examiners associated with the Zodiac case. My understanding is that there are four QDEs who have "matched" the handwriting of four different suspects to the Zodiac's handwriting. In the most recent example, it appears that Mike Wakshull, a QDE with several years of expert witness testimony experience, matched what was thought to be suspect Earl Van Best Jr.'s handwriting from his marriage certificate to the Zodiac. Someone using a phone and half a day's effort was able to verify that this signature was almost certainly from the Reverend who married Best and his child bride. It's just this kind of inane quality that I sometimes attribute to profiling as well.
I can accept that it's subjective and based on "experience" and "interpretations" etc., but if the product that's generated is largely an extended Barnum statement with continually low correlations with what's discovered upon arrest, then I question how much value they are in how many cases. Personally, I don't have many issues with the D'Ambrosia profile versus some that I've seen but I can't escape the idea of how much this certified social psychology interpretation and derivations from case facts will relate to reality when he's discovered. Profiling is a romantic concept to people who are "into" the true crime genre but to many it's more akin to variations of "bullshit is bullshit" just going by different names.
IMO, a certification doesn't mean much if the methodology involves assigning elements in different ways that doesn't correspond to empirical scientific methods. Certain assumptions are weighted differently or not used based on ( for example ) a static view of stable relationship factors between social psychology and the particular offender. Relationships that may or may not exist in tandem with certain markers from one person to the next. To me, it's roughly analogous to a Questioned Document Examiner. They can use their "expert" and "certified" opinion to match handwriting samples for example, but it's often inconclusive and sometimes wrong.
You don't have to look much further than the questioned document examiners associated with the Zodiac case. My understanding is that there are four QDEs who have "matched" the handwriting of four different suspects to the Zodiac's handwriting. In the most recent example, it appears that Mike Wakshull, a QDE with several years of expert witness testimony experience, matched what was thought to be suspect Earl Van Best Jr.'s handwriting from his marriage certificate to the Zodiac. Someone using a phone and half a day's effort was able to verify that this signature was almost certainly from the Reverend who married Best and his child bride. It's just this kind of inane quality that I sometimes attribute to profiling as well.
I can accept that it's subjective and based on "experience" and "interpretations" etc., but if the product that's generated is largely an extended Barnum statement with continually low correlations with what's discovered upon arrest, then I question how much value they are in how many cases. Personally, I don't have many issues with the D'Ambrosia profile versus some that I've seen but I can't escape the idea of how much this certified social psychology interpretation and derivations from case facts will relate to reality when he's discovered. Profiling is a romantic concept to people who are "into" the true crime genre but to many it's more akin to variations of "bullshit is bullshit" just going by different names.