Analogs of the lawyer and prosecutor fallacy in paternity testing

Abstract

The fallacy is a subject that any forensic geneticist should be aware of, as its occurrence implies misrepresentation of forensic evidence presented in court. It is usually committed by lawyers, prosecutors, jury and judge, and can confuse the forensic geneticist in his testimony in court, if he is not aware of the principles of interpretation of evidence. The most common fallacies are that of the lawyer and that of the prosecutor, which are well covered in the literature in relation to a criminal court of a forensic case of violence such as murder, for example. But there is a shortage of analogues of these fallacies in forensic paternity cases. This work is an initiative to bring this subject to the paternity test that is in the civil scope and less frequently in the criminal one. First, general aspects of Bayesian and frequency statistics in paternity will be discussed. And then based on these concepts, the most common fallacies: prosecutor and lawyer in courts of paternity cases making analogy with terms already common in the fallacies of courts of cases of criminal scope. It is hoped that this work will alert the forensic geneticist to the possibility of a gap in communication with the court and contribute to their competence in dealing with this adverse situation when presenting forensic evidence.

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