April 05, 2005

From The Register (U.K.):

A group of British MPs has called for juries to be dropped from trials involving complicated scientific evidence. The Commons select committee on science and technology argues that jury members are often unable to evaluate this kind of testimony, and can be swayed by the charisma of the witness.

The British controversy over science in court, in contrast to much of that here, has arisen mostly in the context of criminal law; in a series of scandals, it has been brought to light that plausible-sounding but erroneous expert testimony promoted by crown prosecutors probably led to the criminal conviction of numbers of innocent Britons in infant-death and other cases.