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Unlucky numbers: Toy examples of investigative bias
In "Unlucky Numbers" (Science magazine, 20 January 2023), an infographic (p. 231) demonstrates the effect of investigative bias in a case of suspected serial murder. By slightly changing how many deaths are attributed to a nurse under suspicion, biases could have a drastic effect on how suspicious a sequence of deaths appears to be. This script shows how the probabilities in the infographic were calculated.