Experts, lawyers & the judiciary should receive training in how human cognition is relevant to legal proceedings, says Dr Itiel Dror
In an ideal world, experts would be brought into a case to help ascertain what has happened, use objective instruments that quantify and interpret the evidence, and provide the court with an unbiased view. However, the reality is that often experts are recruited to help make a case for an existing theory of what has happened, and they rely on subjective judgments and interpretations. Can we expect experts to be objective? Is it realistic that without specific cognitive measures experts can be impartial?
Even when experts are hard-working, dedicated, and do their best to be objective and impartial, the reality of the legal proceedings (especially in the adversarial legal system), and human cognitive architecture, means that often experts are intrinsically biased.
The kind of bias referred to here is a cognitive bias, not an intentional bias, but a reflection of how the brain works. Such biases affect even areas that are often
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