Or option 3, the plaintiff counsel successfully convinces some or all members of the jury that a biased testimony is unbiased.
These are "experts", after all. They're already starting from a position of credibility, and I don't think the defense lawyer is necessarily equipped to deconstruct whatever the "experts" spend their professional lives working on, regardless of the objectivity of their teatimony.
If the subject is politically polarized then I am inclined to agree. Its an open secret that right leaning opinions are taboo across academia. That doesn't actually mean such opinions are wrong.
>>Its an open secret that right leaning opinions are taboo across academia.
Nonsense
I went to a top school in the US and encountered if anything, a constant right-leaning bias, and some people at the same school at the same time are now top RW personalities on Fox, books, etc.
What is happening is that the RW, and particularly the GOP, which was formerly the party of science, technology, and progress, has in more recent years turned towards authoritarianism and this requires a decoupling from facts.
And, yes, the facts (e.g., anthropomorphic global warming, vaccination, voting dynamics, etc.++) do in fact lean against common RW shibboleths used to crank up their populist amplification needed for their ambitions.
If a bona-fide expert presents data and expert scientific interpretation about how vaccines, public health measures, or voting actually works, that is not political. What is political is calling that political and attempting to silence it because you do not like the conclusions.
What it does mean is that people making claims like yours are most likely in the wrong here, and are attempting to silence the very real opposition because they do not like it.
Your anecdote does not match study/survey data that has been around for at least a decade.
>And, yes, the facts (e.g., anthropomorphic global warming, vaccination, voting dynamics, etc.++
Part of the problem is this insidious, preemptive appeal to "consensus" as a misleading substitute for certainty, particularly in biological or social sciences. This isn't physics or math and the science is never so certain as to justify putting careers into jeopardy over dissent.
>a bona-fide expert presents data and expert scientific interpretation about how vaccines, public health measures, or voting actually works, that is not political
It is political when the science on these subjects is not actually settled as is dishonestly claimed and the only allowable opinions of so called experts at the vast majority of our academic institutions consistently align in a certain political direction.
Reality's liberal bias is an illusion, borne of groupthink, social shaming, a collusive media, and exclusion/shaming of dissent. The fact that one or more experts believe something does not make it true, and there is clear evidence of political bias in the sciences. For a more obvious example, consider nonsensical "consensus" that race does not exist, or cannot be used to predictively classify humans. Look at what happen to Watson for daring to suggest that maybe 200k years of natural selection did not stop at the shoulders. The same ideologically driven bias has spread to virtually all soft sciences, and laymen do not understand the hard/soft distinction.
Can I, in the process of litigation, bring in political polarization experts to testify that a subject is too politically polarized to permit experts testifying?
Sure, the defense lawyer may not be personally "equipped to deconstruct whatever the "experts" spend their professional lives working on".
However, the defense team certainly has the full capability (including budget) to find their own experts in the field to present to the jury whatever counter-arguments may exist to the plainiff's experts.
If the defense fails to do so, it is either their malpractice, or the reality that they actually have no effective argument.
Either way, even with your original assumption that those plaintiff experts are biases, that is ZERO reason to prevent their testimony.
The only reason to prevent their testimony is that the defense has no real case, and they know it.
You are correct! But this is the situation with our entire adversarial legal system. We have in general not solved this by excluding expert witnesses, so it is indeed out of the ordinary to block testimony like this.
For example, police have a long-documented history of not giving reliable testimony. And yet these "experts" provide testimony at most criminal trials. If a state is willing to allow its police to provide expert testimony, why not its other employees?
These are "experts", after all. They're already starting from a position of credibility, and I don't think the defense lawyer is necessarily equipped to deconstruct whatever the "experts" spend their professional lives working on, regardless of the objectivity of their teatimony.