<P> Three psychologists from the Universities of Liverpool and Hull are questioning the basic presumption that one can draw conclusions about a person from a single instance of behaviour under such special circumstances . "The notion that particular configurations of demographic features can be predicted from an assessment of particular configurations of specific behaviors occurring in short - term, highly traumatic situations seems an overly ambitious and unlikely possibility . Thus, until such inferential processes can be reliably verified, such claims should be treated with great caution in investigations and should be entirely excluded from consideration in court ." </P> <P> Critics of the practice of offender profiling have mainly contended that few studies have produced clear, quantifiable, evidence of a link between crime scene actions (A) and offender characteristics (C), a necessary supposition of the A to C paradigm proposed by Canter (1995). However, recent research by Goodwill, Lehmann, Beauregard and Andrei (2014) has revealed compelling evidence of links between clusters of crime scene behaviours and offender characteristics . Goodwill et al. suggest that the failure of some previous research to find such links was based on a failure in those studies to examine offender behaviour as part of a dynamic decision - making process, or action phases of the offence . Their study an "Action Phase Approach to Offender Profiling" sought to identify and model the decision - making (action) phases of an offender based on their choice of behaviour and relate these behaviours to known characteristics of the offender . </P>

Which of the following is often considered the founding father of modern criminal investigations