Two experiments examined the role of expertise, consensus, and informational valence on children's acceptance of informant testimony about the quality of work produced by a target child. In Experiment 1, 96 4to 5.9-year-olds and 6to 8-year-olds were told about an expert who gave a positive or negative assessment of art or music that was contradicted by one layperson or a consensus of three layp...

It is without question that “‘[d]etermination of the proper coverage of an insurance contract when the facts are not in dispute is a question of law’”, i.e., a legal determination. Tennant v. Smallwood, 211 W.Va. 703, 568 S.E.2d 10, 13 (2002) (citations omitted). Nevertheless, it is not uncommon for a party seeking coverage in a declaratory judgment action to identify an “expert witness” to tes...

BACKGROUND This paper investigates whether state legislators find testimony influential, to what extent testimony influences policy-makers' decisions, and defines the features of testimony important in affecting policy-makers' decisions. METHODS We used a mixed method approach to analyze responses from 862 state-level legislators in the United States (U.S.). Data were collected via a phone su...

Lawyers make short work of “clinical experience” testimony by defendants and expert witnesses in suicide malpractice cases. Clinical experience, unaided by evidence-based research, can be idiosyncratic, insufficient, uninformed, or just plain wrong when applied to complex, fact-specific suicide cases. Both in the clinical setting and in providing expert witness testimony, clinical experience ca...

Law360, New York (February 11, 2015, 10:13 AM ET) -For decades, parties accused of patent infringement in district court litigation have relied upon the doctrine of inherent anticipation to attack the validity of patent claims. Generally, such inherency arguments are supported by testimony from an expert witness. Because America Invents Act reviews before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s ...

This paper describes the experiences of a sociologist as a mitigation expert during the "typical" first degree murder case, from indictment through the penalty phase of the trial. The author, who has worked in death penalty cases (capital murder) since 1988, has served as a mitigation expert in over 40 such cases. Topics covered include: working with a death penalty mitigation team and what to ...

UK "Psychiatric Survivors"-a variety of activist groups comprising individuals who have been on the "receiving end" of psychiatric treatment-have, since the mid-1980s, mounted a challenge to the psychiatric system. "Survivors" have formulated their own knowledge-base concerning a range of human problems hitherto regarded as the province of "official" psychiatry only. "Official" knowledge stress...

Psychiatrists and other mental health professionals retained in civil or criminal litigation are frequently required to travel to a state in which they are not licensed to perform assessments and offer testimony. Adverse professional and legal consequences may await the unwary peripatetic forensic expert. Failure to address local practice requirements may result in disqualification to testify a...