CLPEX Chat Board

Synergistic Effect (Synergy)


The observation and accumulation of friction ridge detail (events) during phase 2 of Comparative Analysis is a synergistic effect.

Synergy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A synergy is where two or more things applied together have a greater or significantly different effect than the sum of effects of the things applied separately.

The ancient Greek word syn-ergos, συνεργός signified a rudimentary idea of things 'working together'. It was refined by R. Buckminster Fuller who analysed some of its implications more fully[1] and coined the term Synergetics.[2] It quite literally filled the space missing for an opposite of the concept entropy. Hence it was perhaps more of a 'discovery' etymologically speaking.

• A dynamic state in which combined action is favored over the difference of individual component actions.

But is it a useful distinction? Can you sum the values of individual observations? Do they have values to sum? The least observation that can be made is characterization of an impressed feature. That observation has no value at all to contribute toward identification. In our examination, it's an atom. The least meaningful observation that can be made is a complex of two features and a relationship between them appearing in one object that is duplicated in the other object. That observation has some value. Not a large value, but a value nevertheless. But that value is transitory and not registered as useful. Because...

As I make further observations, generally observing additional features that can be related to the previously observed features through contiguously impressed ridge detail, I expand the complex of features. I don't do this by identifying discrete small complexes with low values and combining them for greater value. Instead, I link atomic features to expand the one complex until I run out of details to relate and add to it or exceed some threshold value for the whole complex. I'm not summing items of value. I'm constructing a complex item of value out of features that individually have no value with regard to my threshold target. It's not synergy, because I don't say, "Look. Here's Complex-A of value n and Complex B or value m (and so on), and I add them all up to value t." Instead, I holistically inter-relate all the observed features as one complex with one value, much as I recognize Ursa Major, not by linking pairs of star-points, but by running the lines relating all the star-points as one constellation.

Now, proposal of a synergistic effect does have a place in latent print examination. Consider simultaneous impressions. I may propose to use multiple observations, each being a complex of related features, and each having a value less than threshold, and combining their values to achieve some threshold. That is synergistic, because each complex has a value and can therefore contribute to a sum. There's nothing wrong with the synergistic accumulation of value. There may, of course, be considerable wrong with the presumed threshold in this situation. We don't have the massive historical validation of using this mode of identification to know how liberal or conservative any proposed threshold might be. But that's another topic.

I've used "value" throughout this, but I could as well have used "effect." In some ways "effect" is better. It means that, to be considered in synergism, something has to be capable of some effect toward our goal. If one of the simultaneous impressions showed only a single feature, even if that feature also appeared in the prospective record impression, we wouldn't likely consider it to have any effect, any value, and would therefore not use it to accumulate. It's not synergy, just because things get summed. It has to be valid summing. Astrology adds imagined effects, but there's no valid synergy going on, because none of the observations has any actual effect.

Synergy. Another way of describing it is to say, "2+2=5". Huh? No, really, that is in effect what you are saying. While synergy is a real phenomenon, I'm not certain there is sufficient basis to suggest that its effects are at work during latent print comparisons.

I submit that the "synergy" you perceive in latent print comparison is simply your brain (consciously or unconsciously) processing additional data (i.e. qualitative factors, shape, orientation, ridge flow, rarity of feature, etc). If you could place a quantitative value on these factors and add them up, I suspect you'll find that it accounts for most if not all of the synergistic "effects".

2+2=5 (for large values of 2)

But maybe synergy is more like this:
2+3=5
but
2x3=6

More buzzword than function, today. Most of its current use amounts to a buzzy word applied to an obvious result. There's nothing very interesting about noting that John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson will get more votes as a team ticket than either could get alone. It would have been political incompetence to fail to invoke that kind of "synergy." Some examples of "synergy" are like that and no more noteworthy than boosting a partner up to pick a high hanging apple. Sure, my "apple picking value" is zero, and my partner's "apple picking value" is zero, and 0+0=0, while together 0+0=1 apple. But it kind of silly to give that principle an exalted label and not apply an equally exalted label to my knocking the apple down with a stick or shaking the tree.

It becomes interesting when the enhanced combined result is unexpected. That's discovered synergy, as opposed to strategic synergy. The pest synergy example is a good example of discovered synergy when the current knowledge offered no prediction that the host reaction to one pest made it more vulnerable to another pest and resulted in a mortality greater than the sum of the individual mortalities.

But to talk about either strategic or discovered synergy, you have to have component values of some kind. Otherwise, you can't strategize, and you can't be surprised by a discovery of a value greater than the sum. I will say that reaching the identification threshold in latent print comparison feels like synergy. I think that's because we don't make real use of an accumulation of values below that threshold. Because we don't we don't commonly think of it as accumulating specific values, it feels like a lot of individually rather trivial (low value) observations suddenly combine and flop over the spontaneous threshold which immediately takes on the maximum possible total value of "Sufficient." There's no real synergy, because there's no value in use short of "Sufficient." And if we knew the accumulating likelihood values at each stage of observation, we wouldn't have the synergistic feeling, because the running total would be progressing toward some specific threshold for a specific likelihood that would be reported.

Perhaps another way of describing this is by thinking of the number of minutiae vs. the evidential weight in a graphical format. I propose that a graph of minutiae # (x-axis) vs. evidential weight (y-axis) would look like a non-linear equation (sort of an "S" shape in which the graph is low and parallel to the x-axis until some critical number of minutiae is reached; the graph then rises at a steep angle say the 7-12 minutiae range and levels off).

I am not a mathematician, and this is not mathematical advice. I did a quick look for an example of this type of graph, but couldn't find any good examples. I'll keep looking to and post a better graph if I find one. But this is essentially the "S" shape I was referring to. In our case, the "S" would be flat or parallel to the x-axis instead of elevated as it is in the graphic.

Gerald, I guess I can take it from you post that Syngeristic Effect is right up there with 'Consistent With' !

To keep this short and sweet:
Gerald Asks

But is it a useful distinction?

Charles Responds

I think so---I like it----I think I will use it if the opportunity arrives---kind of helps with the point threshold thing like John V.'s Graph.

PS Relationship is one of the key compontents of any FR Examination and astronomers like to know how far a star is and whether it might be a red giant or blue dwarf and not just a point of light.

Thanks for the input.

I think the idea is there, but I don't think we can talk about a synergy among latent print points, because they don't exist independently. They are always a single constellation of points, completely interrelated. It is not the accumulation by observation of individual points. No single point has the slightest value. No large number of individual points has the slightest value.

To be fair, I think I could devise a synergistic but invalid model of latent print comparison. Imagine an opaque patch with a hole in it, say about 0.5 inches across. You drop that mask onto a latent impression. You can move it around some, but you have to settle on a location. Tell me how many of each type of detail you can see.

Now I take an identical mask and try to duplicate your counts on a record impression. Let's imagine that I am successful. We both can see the same numbers of specific details in locations of the same size. We simply have similar lists of details. They don't have much value. I know I could create an enormous number of impressions that would produce the same list. Now, if we report the relationships among all the points we observed (however we might express that) and find that we are describing the same complex interrelationship, we have a very high value indeed. Relating the points among themselves certainly made the combination vastly more valuable than the mere list of the points.

But that is not how we do examinations. We observe and construct a single discrete constellation. As we recognize and interrelate each additional point, we create a new and larger constellation. At no time do we consider a single detail standing alone, except for the trivial starting case, which is really a constellation of one point, not just a plain single point.

I agree that we could draw a graph representing the accumulation of details during an examination. But in the context of actual examination practice, it's accumulation of details under very special conditions of them each being absorbed into a growing constellation that has value because it is the holistic array of both details and their relationships. I've tried, but I can't make synergy fit, except maybe in the simultaneous impression case, and that's with severe reservations.

Charles Parker wrote: PS Relationship is one of the key compontents of any FR Examination and astronomers like to know how far a star is and whether it might be a red giant or blue dwarf and not just a point of light.

But Ogg not care about red giant or blue dwarf. Ogg just care that when Ogg look up at night, Ogg see group of points of light that make Ogg think of wild bear. (Ogg's nephew think it look like plow, but nephew is sissy.) Ogg no need synergy, because single point of light have no value to Ogg, so nothing to add up. Ogg look at whole thing all same time and see bear, not look at one point and see small bear.