JUNK SCIENCE? A New Study Challenges the Reliability of Court Psych Exams. “A team of lawyers and psychologists reviewed 364 exams used in the legal system, finding a third of them don’t pass muster with forensic mental health experts.”

I ran across this article recently (yes, it is two years old but still relevant) and was not surprised that many of these evaluations that access high stakes decisions such as child custody or competency issues are just plain unreliable and done shoddily. The worst part is that rarely do judges or lawyers challenge these mistakes and if they do, they only succeed about a third of the time. Lawyers should start challenging the experts and their instruments (if they even use any) more often or hire an expert who can consult and help them understand what questions to ask to make it clear that some of these evals are suspect. Add in a program to educate judges on what should be in a forensic exam and maybe this will help clean up the problem.