Highlights
- •p-Values have recently been proposed for interpreting DNA evidence instead of likelihood ratios.
- •p-Values do not relate to the strength of DNA evidence.
- •Evaluating DNA evidence using p-values can be problematic and misleading.
- •Examples from mixture interpretation and kinship testing demonstrate the problems associated with p-values.
Abstract
Recently, p-values have been suggested to explain the strength of a likelihood ratio that evaluates
DNA evidence. It has been argued that likelihood ratios would be difficult to explain
in court and that p-values would offer an alternative that is easily explained. In this article, we argue
that p-values should not be used in this context. p-Values do not directly relate to the strength of the evidence. The likelihood ratio
measures the strength of the evidence, while the p-value measures how rare it is to find evidence that is equally strong or stronger,
which is something fundamentally different. In addition, a p-value is not always unambiguous. To illustrate our arguments, we present several
examples from forensic genetics.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: January 30, 2015
Accepted:
January 14,
2015
Received in revised form:
December 30,
2014
Received:
July 11,
2014
Identification
Copyright
© 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
