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Comment by gowld | Hacker News Reader

Expert testimony just mean two opposing claims paid for by the respective sides. The jury is in no position to determine which claim is more correct.

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Actually that is the exact position the jury is in, and they do it everyday.

Do you have any evidence or studies to suggest juries can’t determine credibility of expert testimony?

It's almost impossible to determine credibility in a field that you know nothing about. Any sufficiently complicated question can be argued using facts on both sides, and a non-expert will have no idea how much weight each fact should have. For example anyone in software could argue why using the cloud for anything is a horrible idea. And remember that jurors are not allowed to do research at home, and expert witnesses cannot directly debate the topics.

> a non-expert will have no idea how much weight each fact should have

In theory, that is the purpose of the lawyer(s) -- to try to ground the technical expertise in a way that the jury (and often the judge!) can understand and assign value/import/trustworthiness/credibility to the testimony and exhibits they are given.

in theory.

Juries combine those expert testimonies with documents from discovery to try to piece together the real story. In this case they were likely trying to determine if the company new it was dangerous, if they knew it caused cancer, if they tried to cover it up, etc.

Experts testifying under oath present facts. The jury doesn't determine which experts are correct, they use the facts to evaluate the opposing claims.

Expert witnesses are there to present opinions. Fact witnesses are there to present facts.

Why would anyone else be more equipped?

> The jury is in no position to determine which claim is more correct.

Society determines what is correct or wrong. A jury is a random selection of society. Anyone who wants provide a good to a society must follow principles set by the society.

And maybe Society gets things wrong right? We dont torture people to get confessions anymore (in most western countries at least) so surely our standards evolve over time. We are not at the Apex of everything yet.

Yes society sometimes gets things 'wrong' in retrospective

Not 'wrong', just wrong. There is such a thing as an objective truth (for a given question), and you can be relatively closer to or farther from it than the next guy (or next 8 billion guys).

No - the facts don't change just because a large enough number of people disagree.

Facts in a society are what that society deems or 'proven to be as truth'. Most facts are indeed a fact because a large amount of people (in the respective field) agree that it is a 'fact' ('irrefutable truth' as seen by that society or group).

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