The criminal profiling illusion:what's behind the smoke and mirrors?

There is a belief that criminal profilers can predict a criminal's characteristics from crime scene evidence. In this article, the authors argue that this belief may be an illusion and explain how people may have been misled into believing that criminal profiling (CP) works despite no sound theoretical grounding and no strong empirical support for this possibility. Potentially responsible for this illusory belief is the information that people acquire about CP, which is heavily influenced by anecdotes, repetition of the message that profiling works, the expert profiler label, and a disproportionate emphasis on correct predictions. Also potentially responsible are aspects of information processing such as reasoning errors, creating meaning out of ambiguous information, imitating good ideas, and inferring fact from fiction. The authors conclude that CP should not be used as an investigative tool because it lacks scientific support

NICER Observes Transition to the Intermediate State in MAXI J1631-479

NICER has observed the new X-ray transient MAXI J1631-479 (Kobayashi et al., ATel #12320; Miyasaka et al., ATel #12340) on a daily basis since January 15, 2019

NICER Observes Transition to the Intermediate State in MAXI J1631-479

NICER has observed the new X-ray transient MAXI J1631-479 (Kobayashi et al., ATel #12320; Miyasaka et al., ATel #12340) on a daily basis since January 15, 2019

Initial NICER observation of the new X-ray transient Swift J1858.6-0814

We report on initial NICER observations of the new Galactic transient source Swift J1858.6-0814 (ATel #12151). It is unclear if the source is a black hole or a neutron star

Quantitative syntheses of the effects of administrative segregation on inmates' well-being

There is a widely held belief that the use of administrative segregation (AS) produces debilitating psychological effects; however, there are also those who assert that AS is an effective strategy for reducing prison antisocial behavior and prison violence. Given these conflicting opinions it is not surprising that the use of segregation in corrections has become a hotly debated and litigated issue. To clarify the competing perspectives, two independent meta-analytic reviews, in an unplanned systematic replication, were undertaken to determine what effect AS has on inmate's physical and mental heal