ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 explored how forensic reasoning practices are produced and made accountable in the context of investigating criminal cases. This chapter moves on to consider how forensic epistemologies may be contested and negotiated across a wider series of institutional spaces. STS research has explored how divisions of epistemological labour in court proceedings are constructed between science and law, and have illuminated juridical assumptions about the nature and role of the scientific method in legal procedure. In one such notable example, Lynch and McNally (2003) studied attempts by defence counsel to introduce Bayesian reasoning practices to jurors in English courts in order to challenge prosecution arguments concerning the probative weight of DNA evidence in a case involving suspected rape. The court, however, viewed Bayes’ Theorem as limited to the interpretation of DNA evidence alone, and not as a means of probabilistically analysing other circumstances relating to the case. In a series of hearings, judges opined jury reasoning to be based on ‘commonsense’ collective experience rather than mathematical ratiocination.
