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Boston University School of Law

Faculty Scholarship

Series

2012

Bias

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

The Effect Of Blinded Experts On Jurors’ Verdicts, Christopher Robertson Jan 2012

The Effect Of Blinded Experts On Jurors’ Verdicts, Christopher Robertson

Faculty Scholarship

“Blind expertise” has been proposed as an institutional solution to the problem of bias in expert witness testimony in litigation, as a way to improve litigation outcomes. At the request of a litigant, an intermediary selects a qualified expert and pays the expert to review a case without knowing which side requested the opinion. This paper reports an experiment that tests the hypothesis that, compared to traditional experts, such “blinded experts” will be more persuasive to jurors. A national sample of mock jurors (N = 275) watched an online video of a staged medical malpractice trial, including testimony from two …


Effect Of Financial Relationships On The Behaviors Of Health Care Professionals: A Review Of The Evidence, Christopher Robertson, Susannah Rose, Aaron Kesselheim Jan 2012

Effect Of Financial Relationships On The Behaviors Of Health Care Professionals: A Review Of The Evidence, Christopher Robertson, Susannah Rose, Aaron Kesselheim

Faculty Scholarship

This symposium paper explores the empirical evidence regarding the impact of financial relationships on the behavior of health care providers, specifically, physicians. We identify and synthesize peer-reviewed data addressing whether financial incentives are causally related to patient outcomes and health care costs. We cover three main areas where financial conflicts of interest arise and may have an observable relationship to health care practices: physicians’ roles as self-referrers, insurance reimbursement schemes that create incentives for certain clinical choices over others, and financial relationships between physicians and the drug and device industries. We found a well-developed scientific literature consisting of dozens of …