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Full-Text Articles in Law

The Use Of Neuroscience Evidence In Criminal Proceedings, John B. Meixner Jr. Jan 2016

The Use Of Neuroscience Evidence In Criminal Proceedings, John B. Meixner Jr.

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While law and neuroscience has been an increasingly popular topic in academic discourse, until now, little systematic research had examined how neuroscience evidence has actually been used in court. Do courts actually admit and consider evidence of brain trauma that might indicate that an individual did not have the capacity to achieve the mental state required for conviction of particular crime? Do they use such evidence to consider the relative culpability for the crime in the event of conviction? Do they consider or understand brain scan data? For much of the life of this infant field, we have only been …


Decision Making And The Law: Truth Barriers, Jonathan J. Koehler, John B. Meixner Jr. Jan 2016

Decision Making And The Law: Truth Barriers, Jonathan J. Koehler, John B. Meixner Jr.

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Reaching an accurate outcome is a central goal of the American trial. But structural features of the legal system, in combination with the cognitive shortcomings of legal actors, hinder the search for truth. Regarding the legal system, various rules and policies restrict decision makers’ access to evidence, violate the laws of probability, and limit the evidentiary concerns that may be considered on appeal. Regarding legal actors, informational deficits (particularly regarding scientific and statistical evidence) and cognitive biases of police investigators, witnesses (lay and expert), attorneys, judges, and jurors pose serious obstacles. We conclude by suggesting that research in judgment and …


The Hidden Daubert Factor: How Judges Use Error Rates In Assessing Scientific Evidence, John B. Meixner Jr., Shari Seidman Diamond Jan 2014

The Hidden Daubert Factor: How Judges Use Error Rates In Assessing Scientific Evidence, John B. Meixner Jr., Shari Seidman Diamond

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In Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, the United States Supreme Court provided a framework under which trial judges must assess the evidentiary reliability of scientific evidence whose admissibility is challenged. One factor of the Daubert test, the “known or potential rate of error” of the expert’s method, has received considerably less scholarly attention than the other factors, and past empirical study has indicated that judges have a difficult time understanding the factor and use it less frequently in their analyses as compared to other factors. In this paper, we examine one possible interpretation of the “known or potential rate of …


Detecting Knowledge Of Incidentally Acquired, Real-World Memories Using A P300-Based Concealed-Information Test, John B. Meixner Jr., J. Peter Rosenfeld Jan 2014

Detecting Knowledge Of Incidentally Acquired, Real-World Memories Using A P300-Based Concealed-Information Test, John B. Meixner Jr., J. Peter Rosenfeld

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Autobiographical memory for events experienced during normal daily life has been studied at the group level, but no studies have yet examined the ability to detect recognition of incidentally acquired memories among individual subjects. We present the first such study here, which employed a concealed-information test in which subjects were shown words associated with activities they had experienced the previous day. Subjects wore a video-recording device for 4 hr on Day 1 and then returned to the laboratory on Day 2, where they were shown words relating to events recorded with the camera (probe items) and words of the same …


Genomics Unbound: The Scientific And Legal Case Against Patents Based On Naturally Occurring Dna Sequences, Fazal Khan Apr 2013

Genomics Unbound: The Scientific And Legal Case Against Patents Based On Naturally Occurring Dna Sequences, Fazal Khan

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While there have been mixed opinions as to whether gene patents were dead in light of Prometheus,this Article argues that a proper understanding of patent law, genomics, and public policy concerns should lead to no other result. The primary focus of this piece is to rebut certain vested interests in the biotechnology industry and affirm the normative claim that gene patents improperly fetter genomics research and development. First, through the lens of the Myriad case, we will recount why there was such a strong public interest movement against recognizing such patents. Specifically, we will show how patents on naturally occurring …


P900: A Putative Novel Erp Component That Indexes Counter-Measure Use In The P300-Based Concealed Information Test, John B. Meixner Jr., Elena Labkovsky, J. Peter Rosenfeld, Michael R. Winograd, Michael Winograd, Alexander Sokolovsky, Jeff Weishaar, Tim Ullmann Jan 2013

P900: A Putative Novel Erp Component That Indexes Counter-Measure Use In The P300-Based Concealed Information Test, John B. Meixner Jr., Elena Labkovsky, J. Peter Rosenfeld, Michael R. Winograd, Michael Winograd, Alexander Sokolovsky, Jeff Weishaar, Tim Ullmann

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Countermeasures pose a serious threat to the effectiveness of the Concealed Information Test (CIT). In a CIT experiment, Rosenfeld and Labkovsky in Psychophysiology 47(6):1002–1010, (2010) observed a previously unknown positive ERP component at about 900 ms poststimulus at Fz and Cz that could potentially serve as an index of countermeasure use. Here, we explored the hypothesis that this component, termed P900, occurs in response to a signal that no further specific response is required in a trial, and could thus appear in countermeasure users that respond differentially depending on the stimulus that appears. In the present experiments, subjects viewed four …


Gene Patents No More? Deciphering The Meaning Of Prometheus, Fazal Khan, Lindsay Kessler Apr 2012

Gene Patents No More? Deciphering The Meaning Of Prometheus, Fazal Khan, Lindsay Kessler

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When Congress enacted the United States Patent Act in 1952, it specified that patentable subject matter included anything “under the sun that is made by man.” Three decades ago the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued the first gene patent and ushered in a brave new gold rush. Some genes are associated with specific diseases, so being able to identify these sequences is an essential first step for developing genomic diagnostic tests and therapies. The problem with gene patents is that they allow modern-day prospectors to cordon off access to naturally occurring DNA sequences and exclude others from …