Reasoning About Scientific Evidence: The Effects of Heuristic Cues, Evidence Quality, and Reasoning Ability

摘要 Kovera 9711225 虽然专家证据在民事诉讼中很常见，但人们对陪审员如何评估社会科学证据知之甚少。 对于法律的专业人士对他们可能面对的科学证据做出称职判断的能力，我们所知更少。 方法论推理研究表明，人们可以通过训练以更复杂的方式进行推理，但这项研究并没有调查决策者在发现自己需要对科学证据的质量进行推理时使用哪些因素。 本文通过两个实验考察了法官和律师如何评价科学证据。 在第一个案例中，法官们阅读了关于原告专家在性骚扰案件中的直接证词和盘问的详细描述。 专家就她为解决一个有争议的重要事实而进行的一项研究作证。 证据的两个特征被操纵：科学界对研究的普遍接受（启发式线索）和社会科学证据的质量（例如，研究是否包括适当的对照组，实验设计中是否存在混淆，或者专家证词中是否存在实验者偏见。 法官对这一社会事实证据的科学有效性和可采性进行评估。 在第二个实验中，律师阅读专家的直接证词的描述。 律师被要求评估研究的科学有效性，并表明他们是否会提出动议，禁止专家在审判中作证，如果是，根据什么理由。 这项研究的结果将推进认知心理学理论的过程中用于评估科学证据在法医方面。 它还可以建议提供哪类培训，以协助法律的专业人员评估此类证据。 ***

Abstract Kovera 9711225 Although expert evidence is common in civil litigation, little is known about how jurors evaluate social scientific evidence. Even less is known about the ability of legal professionals to make competent judgments about the scientific evidence they are likely to confront. Methodological reasoning research suggests hat people can be trained to reason in a more sophisticated manner, but this research has not investigated which factors decision makers use when they find themselves needing to reason about the quality of scientific evidence. Two experiments are conducted to examine how judges and attorneys evaluate scientific evidence. In the first, judges read a detailed description of the direct testimony and cross-examination of a plaintiff's expert in a sexual harassment cases. The expert testifies about a study she conducted to address a material fact at issue. Two characteristics of the evidence are manipulated: the scientific community's general acceptance of the research (a heuristic cue) and the quality of the social scientific evidence (e.g., whether the study included appropriate control groups, whether there is a confound in the experimental design, or whether experimenter bias is present in the expert testimony. Judges evaluate the scientific validity and admissibility of this social fact evidence. In the second experiment, attorneys read the description of the expert's direct testimony. Attorneys are asked to evaluate the scientific validity of the research and indicate whether they would file a motion to bar the expert's testimony at trial and if so, on what grounds. The results of this research will advance cognitive psychological theory about the processes used to evaluate scientific evidence in a forensic context. It may suggest the type of training that would assist legal professionals in evaluating such evidence, as well. ***