3/16/2018·
Sexual Abuse - Molestation - Harassment
Sources of Bias and Evidentiary Standards in Forensic Psychology Expert Reports: Best Practices Forensic Psychology Guidelines
By:
Dr. Michael J. Perrotti
Voir dire of experts as to credentials and experience needs to be viewed as only one aspect of the vetting process of forensic work product. Experts, as much as anyone else, are prone to conscious and unconscious sources of bias. This rather significant problem area in forensic reports is discussed by (Stuld and Simon, 2013) under the rubric of heuristic and cognitive biases. Heuristics addresses how people arrive at decisions or reach conclusions in complex family law, civil, or criminal matters. Errors in this area are of concern when experts focus or overly attend to only a part of the problem or afford overemphasis to certain factors and minimize the contribution of other factors. One can also see this problem in medicine. A patient may complain of pain in a particular body region whereas the provider focuses only another medical issue.