Mavroforou Anna, Michalodimitrakis Emmanuel
Department of Forensic Sciences, University of Crete Medical School, Heraklion, Crete, Greece.
Med Law. 2008 Dec;27(4):755-65.
Numerous product liability and toxic tort verdicts were arguably unjustly made on the basis of "junk science" threatening not only justice but the workings of the American economy. This problem was expected to be solved with the application of Daubert criteria, which require the courts to determine whether an expert's testimony reflects scientific knowledge, whether his/her findings are derived by the scientific method, and whether the work product is based on good science. Moreover, the Daubert criteria were expected to have an extraordinary impact on criminal litigation because there is rarely a criminal trial that does not rely on some form of expert testimony. However, there has been some debate on how such standards should be applied to cases involving relatively new product technologies, which only recently have been approved for a specific use, when an incident occurs and for which no published articles or other peer review summaries exist. Additionally, because most violent crimes are committed by the poor and their court appointed advocates, who are overworked and under-financed, are not up to the challenge. Therefore, with the Daubert standards for the admissibility of scientific evidence in the courts alone no significant improvement is expected. The presence of a system of effective representation in criminal cases along with efforts to educate judges and courts to understand ranges of scientific evidence and to recognise the reasonableness of scientific disagreements in civil and criminal cases are of paramount importance.
许多产品责任和有毒侵权裁决可以说是基于“垃圾科学”做出的不公正裁决，这不仅威胁到司法公正，还危及美国经济的运转。人们期望通过应用达伯特标准来解决这个问题，该标准要求法院确定专家的证词是否反映科学知识，其研究结果是否通过科学方法得出，以及其工作成果是否基于可靠的科学。此外，达伯特标准预计会对刑事诉讼产生重大影响，因为几乎没有刑事审判不依赖某种形式的专家证词。然而，对于如何将这些标准应用于涉及相对较新的产品技术的案件存在一些争议，这些产品技术最近才被批准用于特定用途，在事件发生时没有已发表的文章或其他同行评审总结。此外，由于大多数暴力犯罪是由穷人实施的，而他们由法庭指定的辩护人工作过度且资金不足，无法应对挑战。因此，仅靠达伯特标准来确定科学证据在法庭上的可采性，预计不会有显著改善。在刑事案件中建立有效的代理制度，同时努力教育法官和法院理解科学证据的范围，并认识到民事和刑事案件中科学分歧的合理性，至关重要。
