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The History of Scientific Expert Testimony in the English Courtroom *

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Tal Golan
Tal Golan
Affiliation:
Dibner InstituteMassachusetts Institute of Technology
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Abstract

This paper provides a historical perspective to one of the liveliest debates in common law courts today — the one over scientific expert testimony. Arguing against the current tendency to present the problem of expert testimony as a late twentieth-century predicament which threatens to spin out of control, the paper shows that the phenomena of conflicting scientific testimonies have been perennial for at least two centuries, and intensely debated in both the legal and the scientific communities for at least 150 years.

Type
Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , Spring 1999 , pp. 7 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1999

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Footnotes

*

This paper was written with the generous support of the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology. I would like to thank also Noah Efron, Robert Nye, and Paul Lucier who read drafts of the paper and made valuable comments.

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