I’m pleased that you say this. Sometimes I come away from GD threads with the disheartening sense that people would rather volley uninformed opinion back and forth instead of considering empirical evidence on a given topic.
This is a case where empirical evidence is only required to disprove the underlying logical conjecture, that there is no connection between the unique elements of profiling and the perpetrator of a crime. There is no logical process where one can use a profile alone to identify a specific individual. There is the supposition that a profile could be used to identify a set of potential suspects, which in conjunction with actual evidence could identify an individual, but it remains for those claimants to present the empirical evidence of such a case.
So you keep saying… and yet there is no reliable published information regarding the success rate of profiling. So obviously, this conclusion is not something that you arrived at through careful research. I think we can all guess where you pulled that little factoid out from.
Oh, nonsense. Diogenes’s claim went far beyond merely stating that we can’t consider profiling to be reliable. Rather, he asserted — and continues to assert — that criminal profiling has NEVER, EVER been helpful in solving a crime. This goes far beyond merely stating that it’s not a reliable technique.
If there are no statistics available on the success rate of profiling, then one cannot rationally claim that it has NEVER been helpful. That’s just plain common sense.
“But what about psychics???” you might protest. The same standard applies. In the absence of hard statistics, it would be foolish to claim that the use of psychics has never — not even once — been useful in solving a crime. One might dismiss the use of self-proclaimed psychics on other grounds, and I would wholeheartedly join in that criticism. One might also dismiss the supposed scientific foundation behind psychic activity, and I would likewise agree. To state that they have never once been helpful is a much stronger claim though, and that requires serious substantiation. One can be dismissive of psychics, for example, and yet acknowledge that their use has occasionally (perhaps rarely) been helpful – whether through subconscious processes or just sheer dumb luck.
And yet it continues. 1+1 never equals 3. No amount of opinion or anecdotes will change that. Until someone posits the mechanism by which a profile would be useful in a criminal investigation, and some reasonable basis to assume it has been used in that manner, it is perfectly reasonable to assert that profiling has never helped solve a crime.
No, it isn’t. It is perfectly reasonable to withhold judgment. It also perfectly reasonable to express skepticism – extreme skepticism, even. It is NOT reasonable to state that criminal profiling has never been helpful – not even once – if you don’t have the stats and methodology to back that claim up.
Is it reasonable to state, “Based on a lack of evidence, I believe that unicorns never, ever existed?”
Is it reasonable to state “Unicorns never, ever existed?”
Is there a difference between those statements, and in turn is there a difference if we substituted “criminal profiling” and “been helpful” as appropriate?
Yes, there is a difference. A substantial difference, in fact.
Moreover, the parallelism between these statements and criminal profiling is flawed. Your statements are making an ontological claim – a claim about the existence of unicorns. We also have a widely acknowledged explanation for how belief in unicorns came about. This makes it entirely different from criminal profiling. Nobody doubts that profiling exists; rather, the question is one of its effectiveness.
We also have numerous scientific resources covering the flora and fauna of the Earth. Admittedly, this does not guarantee that unicorns do not exist; however, when coupled with the widely accepted origins of this belief, one would be justified in concluding that unicorns do not exist.
Do any of you guys have comparable knowledge of the history of criminological investigation? I rather doubt, for if you had, you would have come forward to say so. Knowledge about criminal investigations is NOT as readily available as knowledge of the animal kingdom is, simply because those details are not typically made public. That’s why I have to call BS on anyone here who claims to have such exhaustive knowledge of criminal investigative history as to declare that criminal profiling has never, ever – not even once – been useful.
As I said, I don’t put a lot of stock in profiling myself. Having said that, I know better than to declare that it has never, ever been useful for solving crimes in the course of human history. You people who keep making that claim simply don’t have enough information to make such an absolutist claim.
I’m assuming that you are referring to the difference between the statements, when one begins with “Based on a lack of evidence, I believe…” and the other does not. You weren’t very clear in what you were referring to or why there is a substantial difference. You also just asserted that there was a substantial difference without prefacing it by saying “I believe.”
I really fail to see the difference. For one, I was taught that saying or writing “I believe” is redundant when making a statement. Secondly, I think the remainder of the difference is really also implicit, or readily assumed, especially when followed by a request to show an instance to the contrary.
I do not think it is reasonable to assume that profiling is based on secret information whose existence is unknown to us. I’ve never heard of such a thing, and if criminal profilers had such information that was useful in solving crimes, they would have said so even if there was a justification for keeping the details secret. Throughout this thread people have made attempts to find such information and offered none.
As for absolutism, you seem to have a problem with the term ‘Never’. (I believe) it is absolutist to say that the term cannot be used to describe an event for which there is no evidence or rational basis of its existence.
Somewhere I know I have citations of experiments that support the point of view **Diogenes **is arguing. As I recall, in one experiment chemistry undergrads not trained in criminology or psychology actually performed slightly better at criminal profiling than did professional profilers. I will dig for it.
It is a logically unassailable point anyway: as far as we know (i.e., the evidence available), psychological criminal profiling simply does not work any better than any other method, suggesting that it is in effect useless.
You can’t reasonably demand evidence that does not exist.
Since all that was requested was evidence for Dio’s claim, all you are saying here is that evidence for Dios claim does not exist,
Which was rather the point all along.
Looking at it the other way, Dio’s claim is that there is no evidence for successful criminal(not location) profiling, which is the reason for his statement. Has any been brought forth yet?
This is incorrect. Recent reviews of the scientific literature accord perfectly well with Diogenes position. These have been presented here, and if you are ignorant of them, you have nobody to blame but yourself.
Hardly. The point is that in the absence of evidence supporting the claim that criminal profiling is helpful in solving cases, Diogenes’s position is perfectly logical.
I went digging and found a chapter in the very useful 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology (Lilienfeld, Lynn, Ruscio, & Beyerstein, 2010) conveniently titled “Myth 34: Criminal Profiling is Helpful in Solving Cases”.
Some extracts (painstakingly typed by hand) where the authors summarize various studies:
This is the point already made on the first page about statistical profiling. But, as the writers go on to explain:
The evidence definitely suggests that criminal profiling (other than its statistical aspect) is not terribly useful.
Absence of evidence where evidence should exist = evidence of absence.
Thanks for the work you put into this.
Another thank you. I am siding with Dio/Czarcasm et al on this. Not much to add but I greatly appreciate the folks who have added some well-needed cites.
It seems to me that some people are arguing Dio instead of arguing the point.
Speaking for myself… if Diogenes had simply said that there’s insufficient reason to believe in the effectiveness of criminal profiling, I would not have had any argument with that. I may or may not have agreed after further research, but I would not have had any objection to that particular viewpoint.
He went beyond that that, though. He said that profiling has never been helpful at all in solving any criminal case… and he used this as “evidence” for it’s ineffectiveness. Even if it does turn out to be true that profiling has NEVER, EVER helped any criminal investigation, the point remains that Diogenes could not possibly have known that. Claims that are pulled out of thin are do not constitute evidence in any rational sense.
I still stand by that. It has no investigative utility and has never solved a crime.