An Impartial Psychiatric Expert?

Comments on an article by Abraham Goldstein (see record 2013-39559-015). Goldstein believes that the disagreement among the psychiatric witnesses in criminal trials, which results in the so-called battle of the experts, is due primarily to the disparate value systems, the individual ways of working and the varying tenets of the schools of psychiatry to which the experts belong. It is my belief that not many psychiatrists are controlled by venality, and yet, i n many communities there are still men with limited ability and mediocre scientific training who are readily available as experts i n civil and criminal cases. With their need to achieve an importance of status, their zeal to please and their desire to give their employers their money's worth, they will bend the truth as far as they can without doing it overt violence, finding comfort in the rationalization that the other side's expert will behave similarly and thus provide a counterbalance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)