I think you have an unrealistically high bar for who is suitable to be an expert witness. People who are not even remotely experts are often trotted up as "expert witnesses". OP is very easily an expert in his field; the only issue is that his communication style is not quite tuned properly for legal matters. Which shouldn't be surprising; that's the case for pretty much anyone who isn't in the legal profession, doing this sort of thing day in and day out.
And I think this is the correct state of affairs. The kind of person who does have their communication style tuned for legal matters probably engages in so much legal work that they aren't doing enough work in their field to truly be considered an "expert".
If you say "Even I don’t know what I meant by that" ... that's not really communication "tuning" now is it?
I don't expect someone -- even an expert -- to have perfect phrasing. But if they can't even tell you what they meant to say? How is that unrealistic expectations?
The only problem seemed to be that he was unable to rule anything out, no matter how unlikely, because he is honest and an expert. He lacked the dishonesty and false confidence that we demand from an expert witness within an adversarial justice system.
No he didn't. The grandparent comment here was just a snarky put-down. No part of my testimony was impacted by a casual write-up I did about it 4 years after the fact.
I think you have an unrealistically high bar for who is suitable to be an expert witness. People who are not even remotely experts are often trotted up as "expert witnesses". OP is very easily an expert in his field; the only issue is that his communication style is not quite tuned properly for legal matters. Which shouldn't be surprising; that's the case for pretty much anyone who isn't in the legal profession, doing this sort of thing day in and day out.
And I think this is the correct state of affairs. The kind of person who does have their communication style tuned for legal matters probably engages in so much legal work that they aren't doing enough work in their field to truly be considered an "expert".
If you say "Even I don’t know what I meant by that" ... that's not really communication "tuning" now is it?
I don't expect someone -- even an expert -- to have perfect phrasing. But if they can't even tell you what they meant to say? How is that unrealistic expectations?
The only problem seemed to be that he was unable to rule anything out, no matter how unlikely, because he is honest and an expert. He lacked the dishonesty and false confidence that we demand from an expert witness within an adversarial justice system.
No he didn't. The grandparent comment here was just a snarky put-down. No part of my testimony was impacted by a casual write-up I did about it 4 years after the fact.
The author already said he messed up. What are you adding by saying this?
Occasionally on HN, you will see comments that callout a portion of the article as being particularly important or insightful.