Objective evaluation of similarity scores derived by Evofinder^® system for marks on bullets fired from Chinese Norinco QSZ-92 pistols

Abstract

In recent years, many studies have been conducted in the field of firearm identification with the objective of providing an objective method of evaluating the comparison of cartridge cases. However, less attention has been paid to the objective evaluation of bullet comparisons. In this study, 1 000 registered Chinese Norinco QSZ-92 pistols were used, and a database of 2 996 bullets was constructed. Both the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and the score-based likelihood ratio method were used to objectively evaluate the similarity scores derived by the Evofinder^® system. The results indicate that this system has excellent ability to discriminate between the selected pistols. This paper proposes an objective evaluation method, which serves as a response to the ongoing debates regarding the foundation of the discipline.

Keywords:

• Forensic sciences
• firearm identification
• Evofinder^®
• likelihood ratio
• automatic correlation

Acknowledgements

We thank the anonymous referees for their insightful and beneficial comments, which significantly improved our paper.

Authors’ contributions

All authors contributed equally to do the revision and to draft the manuscript. All the authors contributed to the final text and approved it.

Compliance with ethical standards

This paper does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of authors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study received funding from the Opening Project of Shanghai Key Laboratory of Crime Scene Evidence [grant number 2018XCWZK18].