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Does Clinical Experience Increase Forensic Reliability?

By Jeffrey P. Wittmann
February 28, 2006

It is not uncommon in Family and Supreme Court matters for a moment to come in the court proceedings when, having been asked for the basis of a particular forensic opinion, the forensic evaluator utters the famous words, “Well, based on my clinical experience … ” In addition, it is commonly assumed among legal professionals that one good way of supporting a forensic evaluator's assertions is to amplify for the court the number of years of clinical experience a particular expert has had, the number of evaluations he or she has completed, etc. However, the sobering reality is that decades of research on clinical judgment accuracy raise questions about the weight that should be given to how experienced a particular clinician is.

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