Expert Witness: In a perfect world

Dalai has a post that talks about being sued...something that hasn't happened to me...but will. I am recently out of training...which is probably why I haven't been sued yet.

Expert witnessess, as Dalai points out, are in many instances nothing more than whores (my wording, not his) to state whatever their side wants them to.

What I would like to see (and you could do this in radiology...it is a digital medium) is the ACR or some other professional society sponsor a case review panel.

Example: You are sued for calling a lesion a calcified granuloma. As it turns out, it was cancer, and the "central calcification" is two pixels off when you magnify it on the PACS monitor to the subatomic level. This case could be sent to all the experts electronically for review. They could then render their opinion. Then, in court, the jury could be told that 99 out of 100 radiologists said they would have called it the same way.....this would carry far more weight then 2 dueling expert witnessess.

To me...this makes perfect sense....which is exactly why it won't happen.

By the way, the above example came from:

THE PRACTICE OF RADIOLOGY:
Leonard Berlin
Failure to Diagnose Lung Cancer: Anatomy of a Malpractice Trial
Am. J. Roentgenol., Jan 2003; 180: 37 - 45.

A VERY depressing article!