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4 months ago in Evidence Law By Heena

Do expert witnesses in malpractice cases have a built-in bias?

When an expert testifies that a doctor's care fell below the standard, they already know the patient had a bad outcome. Doesn't that distort their judgment?

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By Joshna Answered 1 month ago

Yes and the law knows it. This is hindsight bias: knowing the outcome inevitably colors perception of the decisions leading to it. The legal standard, however, is supposed to be prospective: was the care reasonable given the information available at the time, not in retrospect? Skilled experts consciously resist this bias by walking through the clinical moment as it unfolded. But the risk is real, which is why courts also value practice guidelines and contemporaneous records evidence from before the outcome was known.

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