Evidence Commons^™

Conflicts Of Interest In Scientific Expert Testimony, Mark R. Patterson

Faculty Scholarship

Conflicts of interest have significant implications for the reliability of scientific expert testimony. However, the courts' treatment of conflicts is not always in accord either with the treatment of conflicts in scientific practice or with the particular problems that scientists' conflicts present in court. In response, this Article proposes two basic changes in the treatment of scientific expert testimony. First, courts should strive to separate issues of bias from issues of scientific validity-the two sets of issues are now conflated at times. Second, courts should pay more attention to biases of scientists who perform the research underlying expert testimony, whereas …