Interpretation of forensic science evidence at every step of the forensic science process

Decision-making under conditions of uncertainty is present at every stage of the forensic process. The holistic and interactive nature of the different parts of the forensic science process as presented in this chapter, illustrates that decisions are not made in isolation. There is the potential for decisions and inferences made at one stage to impact a later stage and therefore, the ultimate judicial outcome of a case (Dror et al. 2017). It is therefore important to build the management of context effects on decision-making into every stage of the forensic process, not just the ‘interpretation’ stage.