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.
- Field
- Expert report structure, forensic botany
- Factual side
- Verifiable observations not requiring expert judgment
- Interpretive side
- Expert opinion on what observations mean
- Consequence of mixing
- Harder to challenge and evaluate the report correctly
Common questions
Why is this distinction specifically emphasised in forensic botany reporting?+
Botanical evidence, such as plant material found on a body or vehicle, often requires an expert to move from a raw observation (a seed pod of a given species was present) to an inference (that indicates recent contact with a particular habitat type), and keeping those steps visually and structurally separate lets opposing counsel test each inference individually.
How does a court or opposing expert benefit from this separation?+
A clearly separated structure lets a reviewer accept the factual section largely at face value while scrutinising only the interpretive section's reasoning, focusing cross-examination and rebuttal on the actual points of expert judgment rather than relitigating undisputed observations.
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...