Factual Section vs Interpretation Section
Definition
A structural distinction in expert reports between what was observed (verifiable facts, not requiring expert judgment) and what those observations mean (expert opinion). Mixing them makes a report harder to challenge and evaluate correctly.
Related terms
- Daubert Standard
- The US federal evidentiary standard (Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, 1993) requiring that expert testimony be based on scientifically valid methods with...
- Duty of Impartiality
- The obligation that an expert witness owes to the court rather than to the party that retained them. Codified in England and...
- Frye Standard
- The US legal test for admissibility of scientific evidence, originating from Frye v. United States (1923), which required that a technique be...
- Likelihood Ratio (LR)
- The ratio of two conditional probabilities: the probability of the observed evidence given the prosecution's hypothesis (same source), divided by the probability...
- Verbal Scale
- The ENFSI translation of numerical likelihood ratios into courtroom language: very strong support (LR over 10,000), strong support (LR 1,000-10,000), moderate support...
Explained in
- Expert Reporting and Court Testimony in Forensic BotanyA structural distinction in expert reports between what was observed (verifiable facts, not requiring expert judgment) and what those observations mean (expert...