Monday, January 29, 2024

Dr. Debra Eserno-Jennsen: Pennsylvania: Lehigh County child abuse diagnosis report: No rush for reform! Worse, as Reporter Graysen Golter reports in The Morning Call, "The report also led to infighting among county officials, with Controller Mark Pinsley, the report’s author, accusing the county executive and commissioners of threatening to cut his department’s budget in retaliation."… "Pinsley’s August report, “The Cost of Misdiagnosis,” criticized doctors for what it alleges were rushed medical decisions that led to unsubstantiated reports of medical child abuse and to children being taken from homes by child welfare workers in both Lehigh and Northampton counties. While not specifically named in the report, families who appeared with Pinsley all pointed to one doctor in question: Debra Esernio-Jenssen, then-head of the Lehigh Valley Health Network’s John Van Brakle Child Advocacy Center, the only child advocacy center in the region and one of more than 40 in the state. While defending Esernio-Jenssen’s work, LVHN would later go on to replace her with Dr. Sarah Kleinle after what the network said was a yearlong search."

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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: " So far, two lawsuits have been filed, both this week, naming LVHN, Esernio-Jenssen and Northampton County, allegi...

Bibliometrics! Dear Reader: This sounds technical! And it is: It's a valuable piece of research which I suspect will prove of great value in cases where a defence counsel is trying to make sense out of the CV of an expert witness called by the prosecution (or vice versa!) The author provides valuable tools for determining the credibility of a CV - and of the experts whose works are noted. I only wish that I had read this useful article years ago! HL: 'A plethora of citation metrics exist, and love them or hate them, they are an important part of scholarly publishing whenever the significance of a person’s contributions to research are evaluated. Bibliometric methods have already been used to evaluate the field of criminology, forensic science and legal and forensic medicine. The point made in this article is that bibliometric methods might also prove useful in jurisprudence, such as when expert witnesses disagree about the evidential value of certain scientific evidence. The expert witness who can document his or her own research and publications on the scientific topic being litigated obviously deserves more credibility compared with one without such qualifications. Prolific authorship of papers that subsequently become highly cited enhances a person’s reputation and expertise when they serve as expert witnesses."

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PAPER: "Use of Bibliometric Methods to Verify the Credentials of Expert Witnesses in Forensic Science and Legal Medicine and the Dilemm...