Leaders in Pharmaceutical Business Intelligence (LPBI) Group

Forensic Science Research Opportunity

Reporter: Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN

From: Pierson, Steve [mailto:spierson@amstat.org]
Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2014 9:16 AM
To: stat-acad-reps
Subject: Forensic Science opportunity

Dear Department Chairs/Representatives,

I write to request names of faculty who might be willing to serve on a standing review panel for the National Institute of Justice. The ASA forensic science committee cannot meet current demand for statisticians to be involved in forensic science and so suggested this email as an opportunity for younger faculty to learn about this funding agency and to be exposed to forensic science research challenges.

One of the standing review committee is an established one in Impression & Pattern Evidence (fingerprint, firearms, blood pattern, etc.) and the other is a new one in Trace Evidence (hair, fibers, paint, particles, etc.).  They ask reviewers for a 3-year commitment and hold an in-person review panel meeting annually in June in the DC area. Some of the ASA forensic science members have served on the established panel and describe as very interesting and less work than an NSF panel.

Please send any suggestions to me by Monday morning (and preferably sooner.)

Here’s additional information on the standing review panels that we’ve learned:
-Establishing scientifically valid foundations for assigning values to forensic comparisons is one of the top concerns in forensic science today.  We certainly feel that our funding decisions benefit when projects get adequate scrutiny of their statistical methods on the front end, and we hope to insure that by including the right expertise on our review panels.

– As to the question that your member had about subject matter expertise:  we’re not necessarily just looking for people with significant experience with a forensic science field.  If you’re able to refer qualified statisticians with that background, that would be great—but as you’ve said that list is rather short.  Primarily, we’re looking for statisticians who would be able to act as second reviewers of projects that rely to a large extent on statistical methods or that would only be successful if grounded in a statistically valid methodology.  For some particularly stats-heavy proposals, they may serve as lead reviewer, and would be appropriately paired with a technical expert. They would not be expected to weigh in on matters beyond the scope of their expertise (e.g., whether a specific FS technique is appropriate or practical).  Our panels will have 12-18 members, so there is plenty of room for a diversity of experience and background.

-Recusals from the panel are handled year by year. If they plan to apply this year to the solicitation “Research and Development in Forensic Science for Criminal Justice Purposes” (link below), it would be best if they didn’t offer to serve, as they would immediately be recused for COI. But once on the panel, there is nothing to prevent them from applying to the solicitation in a subsequent cycle, as long as they let us know that they will need to be recused. (FYI, here is the current solicitation: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/sl001082.pdf.)

I should also give you a heads-up that we’ll be encouraging statisticians to apply for positions on the various committees of the newly established NIST forensic science oversight body called Organization of Scientific Area Committees (OSAC), to replace what has been known as the Scientific Working Groups. The OSAC and the ways to serve are described at http://www.nist.gov/forensics/upload/osac-021814.pdf. We expect the application process to open up within a month. If you open up those slides, you’ll see that “statistician” is mentioned 7 times.

Best Wishes,
Steve

Steve Pierson, Ph.D.
Director of Science Policy

American Statistical Association
Promoting the Practice and Profession of Statistics™
732 North Washington Street
Alexandria, VA 22314-1943
(703) 302-1841
http://www.amstat.org/policy <http://www.amstat.org/policy>
For ASA science policy updates, follow us on Twitter: @ASA_SciPol

http://www.amstat.org/asa175/index.cfm 

SOURCE

From: Tom Lane <Tom.Lane@mathworks.com>
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2014 21:49:05 +0000
To: “tlane@alum.mit.edu” <tlane@alum.mit.edu>
Conversation: [BCASA] Forensic Science opportunity
Subject: [BCASA] Forensic Science opportunity