Numerical likelihood ratios outputted by LR systems are often based on extrapolation: When to stop extrapolating?

A recent trend in forensic science is the development of objective, automated systems for the comparison of trace and reference material that give as output numerical likelihood ratios (LRs). For well discriminating LR systems, often the probability of the evidence given one or the other hypothesis depends on the density from the tail of a probability distribution. The models for probability distributions are trained by data. Since there is no proof of the applicability of the models beyond the data range, LR systems are sensitive to extrapolation errors.

Source: Science and Justice - July 6, 2016 Category: Forensic Medicine Authors: Peter Vergeer, Andrew van Es, Arent de Jongh, Ivo Alberink, Reinoud Stoel Source Type: research