ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews six biases that are especially pertinent to forensic psychopathology. They are nave realism; confirmation bias; hindsight bias; uncritical use of heuristics; illusory correlation; and bias blind spot. In Donald Campbell's influential evolutionary epistemology, science is analogous to natural selection in that it ideally discards unfit ideas those that do not withstand the test of rigorous scrutiny and ideally leaves more fit ideas in its wake. Framing Richard Feynman's and Karl Popper's views in the lingo of modern social cognition, one can say that scientific methodology comprises a set of systematic tools for compensating for confirmation bias and allied cognitive biases. Nave realism bears significant implications for forensic psychology. Researchers in forensic psychopathology attempt to compensate for confirmation bias in numerous ways, such as by using blinded observations. Bias blind spot holds important implications for forensic assessment. Sciences and pseudosciences almost certainly fall along a continuum, with no bright line demarcating them.
