Professors Konrad Lachmayer (LAW) and Peter Walla (PSY) have recently published an intriguing open-access paper in Brain Sciences titled
Neurophysiological Correlates of Expert Knowledge: An Event-Related Potential (ERP) Study about Law-Relevant Versus Law-Irrelevant Terms
Background: The evaluation of evidence, which frequently takes the form of scientific evidence, necessitates the input of experts in relevant fields. The results are presented as expert opinions or expert evaluations, which are generally accepted as a reliable representation of the facts. A further issue that remains unresolved though is the process of evaluating the expertise and knowledge of an expert in the first instance. In general, earned certificates, grades and other objective criteria are typically regarded as representative documentation to substantiate an expert status. However, there is a possibility that these may not always be sufficiently representative.
Objectives: The goal of the present study was to provide evidence that the neural processing of law-relevant and law-irrelevant terms varies significantly between participants who have received training in the field of law (experts) and those who have not (novices). …(more)