Biotechniques published an interview with Patrick Ball, inspired by his John Maddox Prize award.

Earlier this year, the Canadian Tamil Congress connected with HRDAG to bring its campaign to Toronto’s annual Tamil Fest, one of the largest gatherings of Canada’s Sri Lankan diaspora.

Ravichandradeva, along with a few other volunteers, spent the weekend speaking with festival-goers in Scarborough about the project and encouraging them to come forward with information about deceased or missing loved ones and friends.

“The idea is to collect thorough, scientifically rigorous numbers on the total casualties in the war and present them as a non-partisan, independent organization,” said Michelle Dukich, a data consultant with HRDAG.

The Washington Post’s Paul Schemm recognized HRDAG’s work in Syria, in the category of research and activism. “HRDAG gained renown at the start of the war, when it was one of the few organizations that tried to put a number on the war’s enormous toll in Syrian lives.”

From the article: “Price described the touchstone of her organization as being a tension between how truth is simultaneously discovered and obscured. HRDAG is at the intersection of this tension; they are consistently participating in science’s progressive uncovering of what is true, but they are accustomed to working in spaces where this truth is denied. Of the many responsibilities HRDAG holds in its work is that of “speaking truth to power,” said Price, “and if that’s what you’re doing, you have to know that your truth stands up to adversarial environments.”

NPR Illinois has covered the new National Police Index, created by HRDAG’s Tarak Shah, Ayyub Ibrahim of Innocence Project, and Sam Stecklow of Invisible Institute.

Tarak Shah is quoted with regard to the National Police Index: “Police often avoid accountability by moving to another agency rather than face discipline. This tool, allowing anyone to look up and track the histories of such officers, provides an invaluable service for the human rights community in our fight against impunity.”

HRDAG director of research Patrick Ball is quoted in this New York Times article about a paper that models death tolls in Gaza.

“In a recent article, social scientist Patrick Ball revisited his and Kristian Lum’s 2015 study, which made a compelling argument for the underreporting of lethal police shootings by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). Lum and Ball’s study may be old, but it bears revisiting amid debates over the American police system — debates that have featured plenty of data on the excessive use of police force. It is a useful reminder that many of the facts and figures we rely on require further verification.”

In this video, Trina Reynolds-Tyler of Invisible Institute talks about her work with HRDAG on the missing persons project in Chicago and Beneath the Surface.

In a CNN interview predicting a Nobel Peace Prize winner, Henrik Urdal from PRIO talks about his shortlist and HRDAG.

“In January, Invisible Institute released the data on a tool called the National Police Index, which houses data from over two dozen of POST’s peer agencies around the country. Developed by Invisible Institute, Human Rights Data Analysis Group, and Innocence & Justice Louisiana, the NPI seeks employment history data from state POST agencies to track, among other questions, the issue of so-called “wandering cops” who move from department to department after committing misconduct.” Read the article.

Kristian Lum’s work on the HRDAG Policing Project is referred to here: “In fact, Lum argues, it’s not clear how well this model worked at depicting the situation in Oakland. Those data on drug crimes were biased, she now reports. The problem was not deliberate, she says. Rather, data collectors just missed some criminals and crime sites. So data on them never made it into her model.”

Patrick Ball es un sabueso de la verdad. Ese deseo de descubrir lo que otros quieren ocultar lo ha llevado a desarrollar fórmulas matemáticas para detectar desaparecidos.

Su trabajo consiste en aplicar métodos de medición científica para comprobar violaciones masivas de derechos humanos.