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dberg [18] the expert called was a long standing colleague of Mr Goldberg who admitted that he had ‘personal sympathies’ for Mr Goldberg and hence the judge found the evidence inadmissible. Membership of the same organisation or professional body is another potential cause of personal bias in an expert witness.

Another form of ‘personal’ bias is when the expert witness happens to be the patient’s medical practitioner. Dwyer cautions that the expert might aim to achieve their clinical aims through their expert evidence.

Financial bias is usually subconscious and is referred to as the ‘hired gun’ syndrome. This is particularly valid when the expert is a shareholder of one of the parties, an employee or where the expert has an interest in making a career out of acting as an expert witness and hence might have a tendency to specialise as either the claimants’ or defendants’ expert.

Dwyer also points out another potential source of bias which is ‘intellectual’ and this is usually due to a reputation built by an expert to favour a particular interpretation of scientific data which leads to either the claimants or defendants preferring this particular expert whose opinions are favourable to them ‘expert shopping’. Since either party is not required to disclose how many experts were approached, this ‘expert shopping’ may not be readily discerned. This is more valid in the adversarial system and perhaps not likely to have the same intensity in a SJE.

Disagreement between experts can exist on certain areas of scientific evidence which per Dwyer could be the facts themselves, the particular theory to be applied and the manner in which the theory should be applied. However, in the opinion of this author, this is not too different from their own individual intellectual bias. It is hoped that the opinion held by the SJE would be nearer the mean rather than the extremes sometimes held by multiple experts.

Perhaps we could look at some possible mechanisms to attempt at reducing bias (conscious or unconscious) in expert evidence and see if the usage of a SJE might fit into these potential solutions.

Christopher Robertson [19] proposes a ‘Blind Expert’ as a litigant-driven solution to bias and error in his article ‘THE BLIND EXPERT: A LITIGANT-DRIVEN SOLUTION TO BIAS AND ERROR ‘. He cites the example of a ‘double blind trial’ in scientific research as an example to illustrate his proposal “If litigants use an intermediary to randomly select qualified experts

to render opinions without knowledge of their sponsors, some biases can be eliminated

and those litigants will win more cases”. This is an interesting concept where perhaps the experts look at facts and analyse without knowing which party these facts belong to and the expectation is that any expert opinion offered would be purely objective and devoid of bias.

Auld LJ in his ‘Review of the Criminal Courts of England and Wales’ [20] (11.130) suggests that a Regulatory body for Expert Witness (as suggested by the Runciman commission earlier) and the maintenance of a Register of Accredited Experts who could be called upon for evidence would be useful. Regarding: Competence: 11.130 “The competence of an expert witness is governed by the common law. Whether, in any particular case, a witness is qualified to give expert evidence is for the judge. However, there is no single