Needed: consensus and classification for terms used in cognitive, forensic and clinical bias discussions

摘要

All evolving disciplines have long grappled with nomenclature inconsistencies. Precise terminology facilitates communication among individuals, clinicians, academics and researchers. To arrive at definitions, the concepts underlying basic scientific vocabularies must be universally acceptable to all users. This is not always easy. Tarachow cautioned in 1965 about how contractions and abbreviations, "... eliminated practically all the associations connected with the original title and did not at all have the evocative impact of the complete word or title" [1] (Tarachow, 1965). Clinical medicine has designed and used with some success disease-diagnosis based classification systems. Forensic science, as does clinical medicine, relies on cognitive processes for its mission to achieve expert accuracy. Both fields are vulnerable to biases and errors in cognition, more so when no terminology standards exist. It is time to develop a nomenclature system in the field of cognitive bias and cognitive errors. This system should build transdisciplinary understanding, at least during expertise-based undertakings in forensic and clinical sciences. (c) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.