COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Why do forensic evaluators with access to the same information come to different conclusions when retained by opposing sides in legal proceedings?

在对抗性法律诉讼中，当一方聘请专家证人时，他们的客观性如何？社会科学几乎没有提供任何数据来解决“对抗性效忠”问题，即专家得出的结论倾向于支持保留他们的政党。最近，主要调查人员发现，在一些为面临审判的性犯罪者评分风险评估工具的法医评估人员中，存在对抗性忠诚的有力证据。但只有经过仔细控制的实验研究才能确定为什么存在对抗性忠诚。本研究采用实验设计来检验a)当对抗性程序中的评估者无法选择他们所服务的案件的一方时，风险评估分数中的忠诚效应是否会发生，以及b)评估者的结论在多大程度上似乎是决策过程的产物，而在其他情况下，这些决策过程已知会导致有偏见的结论。参与者是法医评估员和研究生，他们在性犯罪者审判中为一方的罪犯风险措施打分。参与者将在他们记录罪犯数据之前和之后完成问卷调查，使研究人员能够评估与忠诚效应相关的预先存在的态度和决策过程。结果将有助于法院更好地审查专家的科学证词。研究结果还将为培训课程提供信息，以减少法医心理评估中的偏见，也许在其他法医科学学科中也是如此。不管他们的纪律如何，在对抗性法律诉讼中被一方聘请的专家很可能因为类似的原因而容易受到忠诚的影响。最终，一项研究计划可以识别潜在的对抗性忠诚过程，从而为干预措施提供信息，以最大限度地减少这些过程。

How objective are expert witnesses when they are retained by one side in adversarial legal proceedings? The social sciences have offered almost no data to address "adversarial allegiance," the presumed tendency for experts to reach conclusions that support the party who retained them. Recently, the principal investigators found strong evidence of adversarial allegiance among some forensic evaluators who scored risk assessment instruments for sex offenders facing trial. But only carefully-controlled experimental research can identify why adversarial allegiance exists. This study uses an experimental design to examine a) whether allegiance effects in risk assessment scores occur when evaluators in adversarial proceedings do not get to choose the side of the case they work for, and b) the extent to which evaluators' conclusions appear to be the product of decision making processes that are known to lead to biased conclusions in other contexts. Participants are forensic evaluators and graduate students who score offender risk measures for one side in a sex offender trial. Participants will complete questionnaires before and after they score offender data, allowing researchers to assess the pre-existing attitudes and the decision making processes associated with any allegiance effect. Results will help courts better scrutinize expert scientific testimony. Results will also inform training curricula to reduce bias in forensic psychological evaluation, and perhaps in other forensic science disciplines. Regardless of their discipline, experts who are retained by one party in adversarial legal proceedings are probably vulnerable to allegiance for similar reasons. Eventually, a research program that identifies the processes underlying adversarial allegiance can inform interventions to minimize these processes.