1/#APB Summer 2025 Spotlight Day 20! Many people misunderstand police use of force - how often it’s used, officer shooting accuracy, & training levels. Research by Ariane-Jade Khanizadeh, Craig Bennell, & Heather McGale tests if public education can fix that. 🧵👇
With government science and regulation under attack, I thought I’d reshare this:
The Myth That May Have Doomed the Titan www.nytimes.com/2023/06/28/o...
👋 To help us celebrate 10 years of CREST this October, we’re collecting case studies, quotes, stories, and stats to show how our work has been used in policy, practice, research, or teaching.
And we want to hear from YOU! 👉 lancasteruni.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...
1/ #APB Summer 2025 Spotlight, Day 14! Can mindfulness help officers manage stress, burnout, and mental health? Léa Plisson
& Shannon Ferguson highlight new a meta-analysis of mindfulness training in policing. 🧵👇
1/ 🧠 How much do we remember about a totally ordinary day...months later? Today’s #APB brief by yours truly😉,
Madison Harvey, & Heather Price tackles memory recall for “unremarkable” events that only became important in hindsight. 🧵👇
The ultimate responsibility of scientists is to uphold and speak for the truth, no matter ideological leanings. Regardless of how often and how loudly one repeats a lie—in some cases, lying about lie detection—it will not become the truth, and we should not surrender.
It is imperative that scientists not remain silent on “controversial” issues to maintain an appearance of being neutral, or say, apolitical. Nor should they give in to political censorship or censor themselves due to dogmatism.
Forewarning on fake debates was found to have minimal effect. Although our forewarning fell short in countering the power of false balance to overshadow consensus data, a glimpse of hope lies in communicating these descriptive norms, which indeed deliver empirical facts to people
Results showed people intuitively believe nonverbal cues reliably indicate deceit. Even after learning expert consensus is that nonverbal lie detection is futile, balanced comments reduced their perceived expert consensus and policy support for discarding such practices.
Following the data, they read either no comments from experts, balanced comments (3 from each expert on opposing sides), evidentiary balanced (5 from a deception detection expert and 1 from a contrarian expert), or same opposing comments with a forewarning (3:3 + fore; 5:1+fore)
We recruited members of the public, first asked their beliefs in nonverbal lie detection, and then had them read one of five versions of a media report indicating nearly 90% surveyed experts agreed that nonverbal cues are unreliable indicators of deception.
Therefore, we examined if false balance (fake debate) distorts people’s estimation of expert consensus pertaining to non-verbal lie detection, even after viewing the data. More importantly, we tested whether forewarning people about a fake debate protects them against harm.
The disproportionate hype around body language and microexpressions in lie deception creates a illusion of controversy. Fake experts also fuel fake debates, making misinformation on par with scientific facts and imposing a dangerous false balance.
One of the most contentious topics is nonverbal lie detection. There is strong scientific consensus that nonverbal cues cannot reliably detect lies. However, the fringe notion of nonverbal lie detection has permeated pop culture, media, and remains popular among practitioners.
Misinformation spans various societal issues and domains, including deception detection. Despite substantial empirical evidence on what works, this high-stake area remains riddled with misconceptions and deceitful practices about how to catch a liar.
What if we view misinformation as an errant golf ball? Does shouting fore before it reaches people protect them against nonsense. Do scientists have an obligation to try to protect people by shouting out for warnings?
A common practice in golf is for players to shout fore when an errant ball is heading towards others. This simple act is significant as it protects others from getting injured and it’s a form of insurance to show that the ball striker made every effort to protect someone else.
1/🚨Our new paper in Legal and Criminological Psychology🚨
Fore! Does Forewarning Inoculate People Against the False Balance Effect?
By Tianshuang Han, Brent Snook, and Martin V. Day
www.researchgate.net/publication/...
doi.org/10.1111/lcrp...
1/ 🏢 Do police stations deter crime in the surrounding area? Today’s #APB showcase by Holly Thomson & Rémi Boivin explores what happened when 2 stations in Montreal closed. 🧵👇
Check out our new publication bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... Fore! Does forewarning inoculate people against the false balance effect? Legal and Criminological Psychology
In a recent interview with The Conversation, Paddy Hill describes his harrowing experience being wrongfully convicted for the Birmingham pub bombings in 1974. His story underlines how the impact of a wrongful conviction can extend far beyond exoneration.
o theconversation.com/people-think...
#APB Spotlight Day 1, written by Sophie Curtis-Ham, Ryan Jones, & Cathrin Jordan, explores how we can measure police effort. Introducing the Police Response Effort Index (PREI), a new tool to quantify how much time different calls for service take. 🧵👇(1/5)
Cohen (1994) and Gigerenzer (2004) called for using an array of statistical tools with informed judgment. We continue to reiterate the need for forensic psych researchers to move beyond NHST and apply all tools critically to ensure our science rest on a solid foundation.
So, a short answer to our question: there is a somewhat, but superficially uptake of stats reform in forensic psychology. Despite an increase in reporting of ESs and CIs, these values were often reported with no further interpretation and the field remain strongly reliant on NHST.
As expected, the use of NHST was consistently high (≥96%), while Bayesian was rare (≤ 3%) between 2000 and 2020. The use of effect sizes steadily increased, from 70% in 2000, 86% in 2010, to 94% in 2020. The reporting of CIs showed a large jump between 2010 and 2015 (19%–62%).
We provided a comprehensive snapshot of stats reporting practices in 813 empirical studies published in six prominent forensic psychology journals for the years 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2020.
There has been a considerable amount of attention given to reproducibility crisis, calls for reform to statistical procedures, and improvements in reporting practices over the past 20 years. Is there anything changing within the field of forensic psychology?
Our new meta-science collaboration on @lhb-apls.bsky.social, Statistical Reporting Practices within Forensic Psychology, under the lead of Dr. Joseph Eastwood, Dr. Kirk Luther @kirkluther.bsky.social, and Dr. Brent Snook. We examined the stats evolution of field over 20 years doi.org/10.1037/lhb0...
Research day! Our honours students Sittara and Sarah presented their thesis. 🎉
