Dean Knox, an assistant professor at the Wharton School, has won the 2021 NOMIS & Science Young Explorer Award, awarded by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His prize-winning essay illustrates the value of applying new tools and statistical techniques to imperfect data to reveal the extent and severity of racial bias in policing. 

Despite decades of high-profile and widely publicized incidents of excessive force against minorities in the United States and amid growing demands for police reform, courts, policy makers and the public struggle to understand the nature of racial disparities in law enforcement. According to Dr. Knox, the root of this problem may lie within the data being used to evaluate these questions. There is a pressing need for methods to make sense of policing data, which is often rife with inaccuracies, selective reporting, and potentially purposefully misleading information.

“We need to be extremely careful when drawing conclusions from messy data, especially on issues as high-stakes as racial bias in policing, where getting the answer wrong has real consequences,” said Dr. Knox. “As we have shown, it can lead to seriously underestimating the severity of the problem, and when we don’t get an accurate picture of the problem, it’s hard to identify the right reforms to fix it.”

The NOMIS Foundation & Science Young Explorer Award recognizes bold early-career researchers who ask fundamental questions at the intersection of the life and social sciences. Dr. Knox’s essay was published in the November 5 issue of Science.