THE  AMERICAN 
JOURNAL  OF  PHARMACY 
JANUARY,  1 905. 
THE  PROPER  SCOPE  OF  SCIENTIFIC  (SO-CALLED  EX- 
PERT) TESTIMONY  IN  TRIALS  INVOLVING  PHAR- 
MACOLOGIC QUESTIONS.1 
By  Solomon  Sous  Cohen,  M.D.,  of  Philadelphia, 
Professor  of  Clinical  Medicine  in  Jefferson  Medical  College. 
It  is  by  request  of  your  committee  of  invitation  that  I  shall  devote 
the  address  I  have  the  honor  to  make  to  you  to-day  to  the  con- 
sideration of  the  subject  of  "  expert  testimony  "  in  certain  of  its 
relations  having  a  common  interest  for  physicians  and  pharmacists. 
My  criticisms  will  be  addressed  principally  to  our  own  faults,  not  to 
those  of  others.  Doubtless  there  are  many  motes  in  the  eyes  of  the 
lawyers ;  but  before  we  discuss  the  best  method  of  extracting  these 
motes,  let  us  try  to  discover  how  we  can  get  rid  of  the  beams  that 
tend  to  make  our  own  vision  oblique. 
It  is  not  to  be  denied  that  the '"  medical  expert  "  or  "  chemical 
expert"  witness  is  often  an  object  of  suspicion  to  courts  and  juries; 
that  lawyers  out  of  court  find  no  impropriety  in  ridiculing  him,  while 
in  court,  if  he  is  on  the  other  side,  their  attitude  toward  him  is  not 
invariably  one  of  the  highest  respect  for  his  knowledge  or  his  devo- 
tion to  the  truth.  Moreover,  this  unflattering  estimate  of  the  sin- 
cerity ©f  the  expert  witness  is  not  confined  to  courts  ■  and  lawyers ; 
it  is  reflected  in  the  press  and  in  the  comments  of  the  man  in  the 
street.  It  would  be  soothing  to  wounded  vanity  to  attribute  the 
distrust  of  expert  testimony  entirely  to  the  obscurity  of  the  difficult 
scientific  questions  so  often  involved  and  the  inadequacy  of  the  legal 
methods  of  the  day  for  the  development  and  presentation  of  such 
1  An  address  delivered  before  the  Philadelphia  College  of  Pharmacy,  Novem- 
ber 15,  1904. 
(1) 
