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Article Excerpt
Experts in Court: Reconciling Law, Science, and Professional Knowledge
Bruce D. Sales Daniel W. Shuman American Psychological Association www.apa.org 162 pp., $49.95
In 1993, the older brother of experimental psychologist Margaret Hagen faced a $3.4 million lawsuit. A daughter of the brother's former girlfriend alleged--on the basis of recovered memories--that Hagen's brother had sexually abused her 20 years earlier. According to Hagen, half a dozen psychological experts who had never even met her brother testified that the daughter suffered from mental disorders caused by his abuse. The defense team countered with its own parade of psychologists, who argued against the accuracy of recovered memories.
Although the defense prevailed, Hagen was amazed and outraged by the extent to which psychologists had infiltrated the justice system. Her response was an influential 1997 book: Whores of the Court: The Fraud of Psychiatric Testimony and the Rape of American Justice. Most reviewers of the book noted Hagen's intemperate tone, her disdain for clinical psychology, and her failure to distinguish wheat from chaff. But many also agreed that she had a useful point buried in her angry rhetoric: Sometimes, scientific experts--for a...
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