The expert practice of the production of primary and repeated examinations, the analysis of the review of conclusions in the systems of expert institutions of various departments indicate that experts make various kinds of mistakes and omissions. The most common mistakes in the practice of forensic examinations occur with a superficial examination of objects, an unfair attitude to their duties or low professionalism. For example, very few comprehensive and situational examinations are carried out, despite the fact that experts are aware of the wide possibilities and value of such studies. Micro-objects and micro-signs are rarely studied.
Expert errors are inherently heterogeneous: they can be divided into three classes: procedural errors; epistemological errors; activity (operational) errors. The first class includes errors consisting in violation of procedural norms and the procedure for conducting expert research. For example, the expert’s going beyond his competence; substantiation of conclusions not by the results of the study, but by the case materials. The first are violations of the rules of application of logical techniques and operations in the course of expert research. Typical are, for example, the confusion of a causal relationship with a simple sequence in time or the justification of a thesis by arguments from which the thesis being proved does not follow.
The second, factual errors may occur with an incorrect or distorted view of the relationship between the objects of objective reality. Activity (operational) errors are associated with a violation of the sequence of using methods and tools, obtaining low-quality samples for comparison (Maxfield, 2015). The reasons for expert errors, as it follows from the above classification of errors, can be objective and subjective. The first ones do not depend on the expert, they are rooted in his way of thinking and the actions that follow from it.
In conclusion, the above suggests that forensic expert activity is a rather complex structure carried out in the course of legal proceedings by forensic experts. It unites and mutually conditions many types of human activity: cognitive, mental, psychological, which are aimed at solving the main task — assisting law enforcement agencies in establishing the circumstances to be proved in a particular case.
Reference
Maxfield, M. G. (2015). Basics of Research Methods for Criminal Justice and Criminology (4th ed.). Cengage Learning US. Web.