Expert credibility

[jaydeehess]

The truther crowd often proclaims that they want a court to look into 9/11. they would call upon their 'experts' to testify. So how does one's credibility get viewed by the court. A recent court challenge in Canada illustrates what the defence would be saying.

http://cgi.bowesonline.com/pedro.php?id=3&x=story&xid=293440


Firearms activist Bruce Montague’s constitutional challenge of the federal Firearms Act finally got underway Monday afternoon in Kenora Superior Court, with the Crown immediately attacking the credibility of his two witnesses.
Crown attorney Peter Keen told Justice John Wright he objected to all evidence provided by Montague’s two “alleged expert” witnesses as opinion and any of the facts reported as hearsay.


The Crown asserts that the 'experts' are speaking outside of their area of expertise. So how would Griffen, Jones, Reynolds, Woods or the great and exalted Rob Balsamo (jdx) be viewed by a court of law if a person was ever brought up on charges based on the 'truther' contentions one wonders?

[LashL]

Good point.

The four criteria for admissibility of expert testimony are:
(1) properly qualified expert; (2) relevance; (3) necessity in assisting the trier of fact; and (4) absence of any exclusionary rule.

The troofers' "experts" would not get past the first hurdle as they would not be accepted as experts in the fields to which they wish to proffer opinion evidence.

There is a process that has to be followed in having a witness qualified as an expert in a relevant field before his or her opinion evidence can be received by a court. Generally, I take an approach like the following when qualifying an expert:


Name and occupation.
Current place of employment and position held.
Description of the subject matter of the proposed witness' specialty.
Specializations within that field.
Academic degrees held, and details of same.
Specialized degrees and training.
Licences held in the field, in which province, and for how long.
Length of time practicing in the relevant field.
Certification as a specialist in the field, and for how long.
Walk through all positions held since completion of formal education, and length of time in each position, as well as an overview of the duties and functions of the proposed witness' current position.
Length of time at current position.
Specific employment, duties, and experience.
Personal examination or testing of (subject matter/person/instrumentality).
Number of tests or examinations conducted, and details of each.
Teaching or lecturing in the field seeking to be qualified as expert in.
Details of such teaching and lecturing.
Peer reviewed publications in the field.
Membership in professional societies/associations/organizations.
Requirements for membership and advancement within such organizations.
Honors, acknowledgments, and awards received by the proposed witness in the field.
Previous acceptance by a court as an expert in this field.

Then I put the proposed witness' CV into evidence and tender the witness as a qualified expert in a particular field or fields.

Imagine the answers that the likes of Griffen, Jones, Reynolds, Woods, Balsamo, and Ryan would have to give to those qualifying questions, and it is obvious that they would not make it past the starting gate if they were proffered to give expert evidence in a courtroom on the subject matters upon which they opine so often on the internet.

While a couple of them could potentially be qualified as experts in certain fields, they wouldn't be qualified to give opinion evidence in court about 99% of the things that they spew all over the internet.

[CHF]

Even the twoofers who ARE experts wouldn't be of much use.

Imagine twoofers calling Danny Jowneko to the stand who then tells the court that WTC7 was a demolition but the WTC towers were not.

What on earth would they do with that?

[Babbylonian]

Even the twoofers who ARE experts wouldn't be of much use.

Imagine twoofers calling Danny Jowneko to the stand who then tells the court that WTC7 was a demolition but the WTC towers were not.

What on earth would they do with that?
That goes back to one of the [many] fundamental problems with the twoof movement: No two twoofers believe exactly the same thing. The only thing that most of them seem to agree on is that the events of 9/11 weren't solely the work of OBL, his terrorist organization and the 19 murderers.

[gumboot]

That goes back to one of the [many] fundamental problems with the twoof movement: No two twoofers believe exactly the same thing. The only thing that most of them seem to agree on is that the events of 9/11 weren't solely the work of OBL, his terrorist organization and the 19 murderers.


That's not entirely true. The truthers are unanimously united in their belief that the official version of events is not true. Any of their crazy theories are nothing more than attempts at presenting "Evidence" that their belief is true.

-Gumboot

[Alt+F4]

While a couple of them could potentially be qualified as experts in certain fields, they wouldn't be qualified to give opinion evidence in court about 99% of the things that they spew all over the internet.

Sometimes I think the use of "experts" can backfire in the court room. I think your list of questions is great but let's remember that "experts" are being paid by one side or the another.

Recently I watched a murder trial on Court TV. A man was accused of murdering his infant daughter. The prosecution's expert said the baby died of blunt force trauma to the head. The defense's expert said the baby died of a brain infection. Both experts had impecable creditials and expertise but came to such polar opposite conclusions. What choice did the jury have? Not guilty.

[volatile]

On that note, see the case of Professor Sir Samuel Roy Meadow ("http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Meadows), a highly qualified, knighted paediatrician who was responsible for some shocking errors (if not abuses) of expert testimony in unexplained infant deaths.

[Babbylonian]

Sometimes I think the use of "experts" can backfire in the court room. I think your list of questions is great but let's remember that "experts" are being paid by one side or the another.
That's generally true, but if the case was between twoofers and the "official theory," the latter could call experts for months while the former would be lucky to make it a week. The jury, of course, would be bored to tears, but they'd end up with no real choice of which "story" to go with.

[LashL]

Sometimes I think the use of "experts" can backfire in the court room. I think your list of questions is great but let's remember that "experts" are being paid by one side or the another.

Recently I watched a murder trial on Court TV. A man was accused of murdering his infant daughter. The prosecution's expert said the baby died of blunt force trauma to the head. The defense's expert said the baby died of a brain infection. Both experts had impecable creditials and expertise but came to such polar opposite conclusions. What choice did the jury have? Not guilty.

I agree with you that the use of experts (and particularly the "duelling experts" dilemma) can be problematic at times, but experts are necessary sometimes.

Without them, for instance, on the question of whether a building collapsed from fire & debris or whether it was brought down by controlled demolition, in the absence of experts, you would be left with jurors relying upon their limited knowledge of what makes buildings fall down and their personal impressions based on limited knowledge that "it looks like" a CD.

With regard to the point you made about experts being paid, I always research the experts beforehand, and I only hire those who testify on both sides (i.e. both for the prosecution and the defence, or for both plaintiff and defendant sides), otherwise they are open to challenge by my opponent. Similarly, if I find that an expert being proffered by the other side nearly exclusively testifies on only one side, I challenge them on that. (The model, if you will, that I set out in my previous post is one that I tend to follow when I am qualifying my own witness as an expert; challenging the other side's witness is a whole different story ~ and a lot more fun! ;) )

[PhantomWolf]

Hmmmm, perhaps we should challenge them to a real court case, loser pays the bills.

[JimBenArm]

Hmmmm, perhaps we should challenge them to a real court case, loser pays the bills.
Well, that would be nice, but how much do they make posting from their parent's basement? Don't imagine they make enough to keep them in Big Macs!

[PhantomWolf]

Dylan can take it out of the income from LC:FC lol.

[T.A.M.]

Even the twoofers who ARE experts wouldn't be of much use.

Imagine twoofers calling Danny Jowneko to the stand who then tells the court that WTC7 was a demolition but the WTC towers were not.

What on earth would they do with that?

I would love to see him called. He would either (a) haev to actually read NIST to sound like he knows what hes talking about, in which case I dont think the twoofers would want him, or (b) he wouldnt read it, and would sound like a retard, and has been said, would likely not be considered an expert.

TAM:)

[R.Mackey]

Given experts that didn't agree... the obvious follow-up question is to ask them why they think Exhibit A matches Hypothesis X and not Hypothesis Y. Personal opinion is not enough on the stand.

That will knock Jowenko's "expert testimony" on WTC7 right out of the box. Not to mention virtually every Troother knee-jerk YouTube argument.

I don't see the problem here.

There are, obviously, some situations that are open to interpretation, and if experts honestly don't agree, and for good reasons, then there is truly reasonable doubt. However, this just doesn't exist in the Sept. 11th investigation.

[Unfit4Command]

I would pay to see Judy Wood on the stand talking about her Laser Beams.

[Obviousman]

The biggest problem will be that when the Twoofers 'expert' witnesses are discredited, they will claim the whole thing is rigged and nothing but a 'show trial'. If they don't win, they'll claim foul and want to restart the process all over again. In their opinion, the only 'fair' proceedings are ones that support their view.

[westprog]

Sometimes I think the use of "experts" can backfire in the court room. I think your list of questions is great but let's remember that "experts" are being paid by one side or the another.

Recently I watched a murder trial on Court TV. A man was accused of murdering his infant daughter. The prosecution's expert said the baby died of blunt force trauma to the head. The defense's expert said the baby died of a brain infection. Both experts had impecable creditials and expertise but came to such polar opposite conclusions. What choice did the jury have? Not guilty.

That won't happen in the case of 9/11 though. The witness for the defence will be asked for his qualifications. He'll say that he's worked as an air crash investigator for twenty-three years and has on occasion testified against the government. He'll describe his visit to the crash site and the calculations he used.

Then the Truth expert will take the stand. He'll have to explain that he's never seen an air crash. He's never been to the actual crash site, never spoken directly to the witnesses, and not examined any of the physical evidence. He will have to admit that he's read none of the standard texts. Then he'll be asked to comment on some of the hypotheses that have been put forward, like Dylan Avery's idea that the plane should have been embedded in the ground like a dart.

It will be a very, very painful process. If they had to go through it with every part of the conspiracy, with their experts being humiliated on a daily basis, it could shatter them.

[JimBenArm]

I would pay to see Judy Wood on the stand talking about her Laser Beams.
I want some fricken' laser beams! Is it too much to ask?

[jaydeehess]

I would pay to see Judy Wood on the stand talking about her Laser Beams.

Next in line I would like to see would be Reynolds.

,,,,, and I think I can speak for all in wanting to see klowntown on the court witness stand.

[Architect]

Any illusions I had about expert witnesses were completely smashed the first time I was asked to be one..... :p


...but the key point here is that an expert witness who is patently no such thing is usually rumbled very early on indeed, and finds his evidence set at naught.

So imagine what hope the trooofers have?!