ABSTRACT
So let me briefly spell out why any project ‘evaluating profiles’ is pointless. These projects typically come in two forms. One is to present one or two accounts
of cases and to ask people to guess the characteristics of the perpetrator. The other is to provide a questionnaire that asks questions about success and influence over investigations. Both of these strategies are worthless for the following reasons:
Profiling is not a Reliable and Distinct Process
They assume there is some ‘process’ of profiling. As if it were some engine or technology that just needed to be turned on. Yet if you read the accounts of people contributing to investigations you will see that there is no such process in existence. It is merely people giving opinions. There is no more point in evaluating this activity than in evaluating astrology columns in newspapers. There is an interesting question about why people believe these charts, but that is a quite different matter.
