How can Francis Bacon help forensic science? The four idols of human biases

Much debate has focused on whether forensic science is indeed a science. This paper is not aimed at answering, or even trying to contribute to, this question. Rather, in this paper I try to find ways to improve forensic science by identifying potential vulnerabilities. To this end I use Francis Bacon's doctrine of idols which distinguishes between different types of human biases that may prevent scientific and objective inquiry. Bacon’s doctrine contains four sources for such biases: Idols Tribus (of the 'tribe'), Idols Specus (of the 'den'/'cave'), Idols Fori (of the 'market'), and Idols Theatre (of the 'theatre'). While his 400 year old doctrine does not, of course, perfectly match up with our current world view, it still provides a productive framework for examining and cataloguing some of the potential weaknesses and limitations in our current approach to forensic science

Bergman interpolation on finite Riemann surfaces. Part I: Asymptotically Flat Case

We study the Bergman space interpolation problem of open Riemann surfaces obtained from a compact Riemann surface by removing a finite number of points. We equip such a surface with what we call an asymptotically flat conformal metric, i.e., a complete metric with zero curvature outside a compact subset. We then establish necessary and sufficient conditions for interpolation in weighted Bergman spaces over asymptotically flat Riemann surfaces.Comment: The main result has been corrected: Sequences of density <1 are still interpolating, but the density of an interpolation sequence is only shown to be at most 1. The corrected result is sharp, by work of Borichev-Lyubarskii. Also added a motivating section on Shapiro-Shields interpolation. Otherwise typos and minor errors corrected. To appear in Journal d'Analys