"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." - HL Mencken
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"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." - Confucius
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"The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease" - Sir William Osler
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" The best test of a person's character is how he or she treats those with less power." - Bob Sutton
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"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them - well, I have others." - Groucho Marx
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"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
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"It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them" - Friedrich Nietzsche
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"Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple." - Charles Mingus
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"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." - Albert Einstein
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"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesman and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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"This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around." - Talking Heads, Life During Wartime
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"What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour. This is the whole Torah; all the rest is commentary. Go and learn it." - Hillel, Talmud, Shabbath 31a
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"You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing." - Thomas Sowell
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"An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup." - HL Mencken
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"If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail." - Abraham Maslow
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"A great teacher is one who realizes that he himself is also a student and whose goal is not to dictate the answers, but to stimulate his students creativity enough so that they go out and find the answers themselves." - Herbie Hancock
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"There are no facts, only interpretations." - Nietzsche
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"An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't." - Anatole France
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"In character, in manner, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Workouts by month - Goal 200 from 11/1/09 through 10/31/10
RT @yejnes: My thoughts on the annual exam, etc., final letter ACP Internist, March 2010 http://bit.ly/9FNcXn wel-stated & importantMarch 15, 2010 12:47
A note to the professors, from the "real" world, on the use of ICDs in a fee for service community... http://ow.ly/1jaPy - great postMarch 13, 2010 2:19
RT @paulinechen: New "Doctor and Patient"; Learning to Keep Patients Safe in a Culture of Fear http://nyti.ms/bYA14V - blog post comingMarch 12, 2010 1:35
RT @tom_peters: @kevinmd Spoken like an MD. - true primary care is very complex - it is not simple care -March 11, 2010 12:43
RT @efalchuk: Seriously, what is Nancy Pelosi Talking About? http://bit.ly/9sHSc2 #healthreform #hcr #healthcare think Dazed and ConfusedMarch 10, 2010 7:53
Obama Says Health Overhaul Should Trump Politics - http://nyti.ms/bwKRyo - and he is correctMarch 8, 2010 7:28
@BertDecker multiples of 37 - trivial - any factor of 111 would factor into the others. The key here is that 37 * 3 = 111March 7, 2010 9:00
RT @dmrind: Meta-analysis and New Knowledge http://bit.ly/awMtmT important and well statedMarch 7, 2010 12:10
Slowly and quietly, the rules regarding expert witness testimony in medical malpractice cases have been changing: a handful of states have passed legislation in the last two years that generally requires physician experts to work in the same field as a defendant doctor, while professional doctors’ groups are setting up committees to review the testimony of their members.
A medical expert is indispensable to a medical malpractice case. To show negligence, the plaintiff must demonstrate that the “standard of care” has been breached by the doctor in question. And who knows more about that standard than another doctor? Without a medical expert, there is no case.
As I say repeatedly, we need a new system. The current one does not work. Comments on the article??
Scrutiny of expert testimony is extending beyond the review by professional societies to include state boards of medicine, on the theory that expert testimony is a practice of medicine and that specious testimony is professional misconduct. Physicians offering conflicting testimony are now finding themselves not only discredited as witnesses but also under investigation for unprofessional conduct.
True, they are receiving more scrutiny from state medical boards; however, the courts have been knocking down disciplinary action by state medical boards on issues pertaining to the meat of the testimony (their expert opinions), limiting the realm of the “unprofessional conduct” discipline to such issues as whether the expert misrepresented his credentials or lied about something on the stand (e.g., if they’ve been disciplined in another jurisdiction).
I think that state medical boards need not be involved. If the state medical society or a medical specialty society adopts resolutions censuring these whores, surely that would be admissible to court? How much faith would a jury have in an expert witness if they knew that he had been condemned for false or misleading testimony by the AMA or ACOG?
Please read my response to the NYTimes article, which merely repeated false information previously published in the LA Times and elsewhere regarding an expert witness’s specious claim of intimidation by a specialty society, at http://www.ccemt.org Breaking News story 12/21/03.
You may also read about the latest state board attempt to regulate expert witness testimony at http://www.ccemt.org, Breaking News story from 11/26/03.
In my opinion, although specialty societies’ peer review of expert testimony is a start, there is a definite bias inherent in the process because society members will naturally only request review of plaintiff testimony, when in fact, there is quite a bit of dishonest testimony on both sides of the courtroom. The AMA will do nothing with the dishonest expert unless a licensure board has taken action, or unless a witness has actually been convicted of perujury. The state licensure boards are accessible by the public as well as the physician licensees, and they have an obligation to protect the public as well as the licensees who are practicing appropriately. Since expert witness testimony (when incorporated into a legal judgment) does set the standard of care for practice in a given state, such testimony can be construed as practice of medicine. Thus it is appropriate behavior for peer review by a state licensure board.
Good points here. In my state (WA) the Supreme Court made it clear that expert testimony is subject to professional discipline. As professional licensing & discipline is my speacialty, I have waited in vain for the cases to come in. To my knowledge, so far no one has even made a referral for investigation, let alone have charges been layed.
The licensing boards have to want to take the case, which they do not appear to.
5 Responses to Expert witnesses – a vanishing breed?
CHenry
December 21st, 2003 at 8:32 pm
Scrutiny of expert testimony is extending beyond the review by professional societies to include state boards of medicine, on the theory that expert testimony is a practice of medicine and that specious testimony is professional misconduct. Physicians offering conflicting testimony are now finding themselves not only discredited as witnesses but also under investigation for unprofessional conduct.
Ross
December 22nd, 2003 at 10:43 am
CHenry,
True, they are receiving more scrutiny from state medical boards; however, the courts have been knocking down disciplinary action by state medical boards on issues pertaining to the meat of the testimony (their expert opinions), limiting the realm of the “unprofessional conduct” discipline to such issues as whether the expert misrepresented his credentials or lied about something on the stand (e.g., if they’ve been disciplined in another jurisdiction).
Shadow Merchant
December 26th, 2003 at 9:46 pm
I think that state medical boards need not be involved. If the state medical society or a medical specialty society adopts resolutions censuring these whores, surely that would be admissible to court? How much faith would a jury have in an expert witness if they knew that he had been condemned for false or misleading testimony by the AMA or ACOG?
Louise B Andrew MD JD FACEP
December 29th, 2003 at 10:23 am
Please read my response to the NYTimes article, which merely repeated false information previously published in the LA Times and elsewhere regarding an expert witness’s specious claim of intimidation by a specialty society, at http://www.ccemt.org Breaking News story 12/21/03.
You may also read about the latest state board attempt to regulate expert witness testimony at http://www.ccemt.org, Breaking News story from 11/26/03.
In my opinion, although specialty societies’ peer review of expert testimony is a start, there is a definite bias inherent in the process because society members will naturally only request review of plaintiff testimony, when in fact, there is quite a bit of dishonest testimony on both sides of the courtroom. The AMA will do nothing with the dishonest expert unless a licensure board has taken action, or unless a witness has actually been convicted of perujury. The state licensure boards are accessible by the public as well as the physician licensees, and they have an obligation to protect the public as well as the licensees who are practicing appropriately. Since expert witness testimony (when incorporated into a legal judgment) does set the standard of care for practice in a given state, such testimony can be construed as practice of medicine. Thus it is appropriate behavior for peer review by a state licensure board.
John Schedler
January 3rd, 2004 at 5:44 pm
Good points here. In my state (WA) the Supreme Court made it clear that expert testimony is subject to professional discipline. As professional licensing & discipline is my speacialty, I have waited in vain for the cases to come in. To my knowledge, so far no one has even made a referral for investigation, let alone have charges been layed.
The licensing boards have to want to take the case, which they do not appear to.