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•Case-specific expert evidence must be demonstrably reliable to all.•Experts should convey the foundational, applied and evaluative validity of an opinion.•An expert’s report should transparently demonstrate their reasoning process.•The strengths and weakness of expert evidence must be clear to all concerned.•Supporting structures are necessary for critical trust in forensic science. In recent decades, forensic science evidence has come to play an increasingly significant role in criminal proceedings. However, the ability of non-scientists (lay-persons, including lawyers and judges) within criminal justice systems to recognise and resolve issues of validity and reliability relating to expert opinion evidence has not maintained pace with the need to do so. Despite international scrutiny from scientists, statisticians, governments and those involved in law reform, the parameters of a) different forensic disciplines and b) some case specific interpretations, remain elusive to some legal practitioners and judges. It is therefore essential that within the context of national, and increasingly international and transnational criminal investigations, forensic science experts convey the evidential value of the scientific findings in a manner that is understandable to, and useable by all. To assist, this paper first identifies the organisational structures necessary to scaffold and support the delivery of reliable expert opinion evidence. This is followed by a format for transparently reporting the reasoning and the scientific validity underpinning the expert’s evidence within their report: a tripartite Scientific Validity Framework. This framework is comprised of (i) foundational validity, (ii) applied validity and (iii) the new concept of evaluative validity. Such a framework, because of its underlying scientific principles, is applicable to expert reports in any jurisdiction and is complementary to different national approaches. That is because utilising this framework could ensure that experts can, and do, demonstrate that their case-specific opinion is reliable and alert the legal profession to the expert’s reasoning process and any limitations in the scientific validity underpinning the opinion.

Organizations need innovation to be competitive and sustainable on their marketplace. Sustainable performance is an important precondition for growth and development. In spite of a body of literature, non-financial factors of sustainable performance remain an open issue. Coaching has gained considerable attention in the business world for its impact on sustainable performance. The current research investigates the use of coaching interaction to facilitate organizational sustainable growth and development in the context of Miller and Friesen’s five stage life-cycle model. The expert opinion survey is chosen as a central method of research. The questionnaire is developed on the literature review that is focused on the drivers for sustainable development throughout the life cycle, and the features of coaching that accelerate these driving forces. Fifteen experts took part in the survey conducted from November 2017 to January 2018. The results are estimated by considering the competence coefficient for each expert. The findings led to creation of an open innovation model, which displays relationships between the appropriate coaching forms and types and the organizational life cycle stages. The developed model enables choosing the optimal way of coaching delivery at any life cycle stage. This model is particularly valuable for the coaching support programs.

Conceptual frameworks for understanding animal welfare scientifically are widely influential. An early “biological functioning” framework still influences expert opinions prepared for Courts hearing animal cruelty cases, despite deficiencies in it being revealed by the later emergence and wide scientific adoption of an “affective state” framework. According to “biological functioning” precepts, indices of negative welfare states should predominantly be physical and/or clinical and any that refer to animals’ supposed subjective experiences, i.e., their “affective states”, should be excluded. However, “affective state” precepts, which have secure affective neuroscience and aligned animal behaviour science foundations, show that behavioural indices may be utilised to credibly identify negative welfare outcomes in terms of negative subjective experiences, or affects. It is noted that the now very wide scientific acceptance of the “affective state” framework is entirely consistent with the current extensive international recognition that animals of welfare significance are “sentient” beings. A long list of negative affects is discussed and each one is described as a prelude to updating the concept of “suffering” or “distress”, often referred to in animal welfare legislation and prosecutions for alleged ill-treatment of animals. The Five Domains Model for assessing and grading animal welfare compromise is then discussed, highlighting that it incorporates a coherent amalgamation of “biological functioning” and “affective state” precepts into its operational features. That is followed by examples of severe-to-very-severe ill-treatment of dogs. These include inescapable psychological and/or physical abuse or mistreatment, excessively restrictive or otherwise detrimental housing or holding conditions, and/or seriously inadequate provision of the necessities of life, in each case drawing attention to specific affects that such ill-treatment generates. It is concluded that experts should frame their opinions in ways that include negative affective outcomes. Moreover, the cogency of such analyses should be drawn to the attention of the Judiciary when they are deliberating on suffering in animals, thereby providing a basis for them to move from a current heavy reliance on physical and/or clinical indices of cruelty or neglect towards including in their decisions careful evaluations of animals’ negative affective experiences.

Recent disputes (Mizrahi in Inform Logic 33(1):57–79, 2013; Mizrahi in Inform Logic 36(2):238–252, 2016; Mizrahi in Argumentation 32(2):175–195, 2018; Seidel in Inform Logic 34(2):192–218, 2014; Seidel in Inform Logic 36(2):253–264, 2016; Hinton in Inform Logic 35(4):539–554, 2015) on the strength of arguments from expert opinion (AEO) give rise to a potential legitimacy crisis of it. Mizrahi (Inform Logic 33(1):57–79, 2013; Inform Logic 36(2):238–252; Argumentation 32(2):175–195, 2018) claims that AEO are weak arguments by presenting two independent arguments. The first argument (i.e., the argument of unreliable experts) is that AEO are weak arguments because empirical studies show that expert opinions p do not make p significantly more likely to be true. The second argument (i.e., the argument of biased experts) is that AEO are weak arguments because empirical studies show that expert opinions are susceptible to the kinds of cognitive biases that novice opinions are susceptible to. In this paper, I intend to argue that Mizrahi’s two arguments both fail because of inconsistency, irrelevance, and insufficiency. Nevertheless, Mizrahi’s arguments help to evaluate AEO better by expanding the relevant critical questions.

This expert opinion study examined the current status of the intertidal zone in the Western Indian Ocean (WIO) and ranked and discussed future management approaches. Information was gathered from scientists, practitioners, and managers active in the WIO region through a questionnaire and a workshop. The experts stated that the productive intertidal environment is highly valuable for reasons such as recreation, erosion protection, and provision of edible invertebrates and fish. Several anthropogenic pressures were identified, including pollution, harbor activities, overexploitation, and climate change. The experts considered the WIO intertidal zone as generally understudied, undermanaged, and with poor or no monitoring. The most important management strategies according to the expert opinions are to develop and involve local people in integrated coastal zone management (ICZM), to increase knowledge on species–environment relationships, and to develop awareness campaigns and education programs. To improve coastal environmental management and conservation, we argue that the intertidal zone should be treated as one organizational management unit within the larger framework of ICZM.

PurposeThe role of evidence-based psychological knowledge in cases of juvenile offending is essential to make appropriate decisions relating to youth who violate legal or social norms, as it carries implications for treatment, intervention and practice. Psychological expert opinions therefore need to meet high formal and methodological requirements while maintaining ethical standards. The purpose of this study is to investigate psychological expert opinions in cases of juvenile misbehavior reported to regional courts in Poland. Juvenile court proceedings concern cases of demoralization and/or delinquent offenses. Demoralization is a legal concept described in the Act of June 9, 2022 on juvenile support and resocialization. This concept was not defined; it was only described through examples of behaviors indicating demoralization. These include the following: violations of the principles of community life; evading compulsory education or schooling; use of alcohol, narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances, their precursors, substitutes or new psychoactive substances; and prostitution.Design/methodology/approachTo reach these goals, court records of juvenile cases in six district courts (N = 253) were gathered and analyzed. A semistructured questionnaire was used to examine the cases in which psychologists were appointed and to analyze the procedures used by these experts for assessing adolescents and their families.FindingsFindings revealed that family judges appoint psychologists both in cases of “demoralization” (i.e. status offenses) and in cases of juvenile delinquency. The opinions were delivered by psychologists who were mostly members of diagnostic teams. Results indicate that such opinions generally comply with the minimal standards recommended by the Ministry of Justice, yet a few problems were observed with the determination of levels of demoralization.Originality/valueThe limitations of diagnostic tools used by psychologists are discussed, and recommendations for future practice are provided.

The book describes the author's extensive experience of working as an expert witness in family courts. It provides detailed guidance for assessing families for the courts, as well giving many detailed clinical examples to illustrate points made.

The idea of sustainability has been exerting an impact on public awareness for nearly five decades. However, representatives of various sciences interpret it in many different ways, and there were several hundred definitions of it already at the end of the 20th century. There is no doubt that a proper understanding of the essence and meaning of sustainable development by opinion leaders representing various scientific disciplines determines transformations in particular sectors of the economy, especially in the energy sector. Economics, which considers the relationship between the economy and the environment, seems to have a special role with regard to this issue. Models and concepts of managing limited environmental resources are considered based on this science. Thus, economists have a kind of greater responsibility for the shape and direction of development, and especially for whether it will be durable and balanced. With these issues in mind, the aim of this paper is to review and systematize the opinions of Polish experts on the concept of sustainable development and to indicate the most important parameters that define it. The paper presents the results of an opinion survey of 105 experts affiliated with a wide variety of institutions. Respondents represented economic, technical, social, and natural sciences.

We extend the omitted variable bias framework with a suite of tools for sensitivity analysis in regression models that does not require assumptions on the functional form of the treatment assignment mechanism nor on the distribution of the unobserved confounders, naturally handles multiple confounders, possibly acting non-linearly, exploits expert knowledge to bound sensitivity parameters and can be easily computed by using only standard regression results. In particular, we introduce two novel sensitivity measures suited for routine reporting. The robustness value describes the minimum strength of association that unobserved confounding would need to have, both with the treatment and with the outcome, to change the research conclusions. The partial R² of the treatment with the outcome shows how strongly confounders explaining all the residual outcome variation would have to be associated with the treatment to eliminate the estimated effect. Next, we offer graphical tools for elaborating on problematic confounders, examining the sensitivity of point estimates and t-values, as well as ‘extreme scenarios’. Finally, we describe problems with a common ‘benchmarking’ practice and introduce a novel procedure to bound the strength of confounders formally on the basis of a comparison with observed covariates. We apply these methods to a running example that estimates the effect of exposure to violence on attitudes toward peace.

The elicitation of scientific and technical judgments from experts, in the form of subjective probability distributions, can be a valuable addition to other forms of evidence in support of public policy decision making. This paper explores when it is sensible to perform such elicitation and how that can best be done. A number of key issues are discussed, including topics on which there are, and are not, experts who have knowledge that provides a basis for making informed predictive judgments; the inadequacy of only using qualitative uncertainty language; the role of cognitive heuristics and of overconfidence; the choice of experts; the development, refinement, and iterative testing of elicitation protocols that are designed to help experts to consider systematically all relevant knowledge when they make their judgments; the treatment of uncertainty about model functional form; diversity of expert opinion; and when it does or does not make sense to combine judgments from different experts. Although it may be tempting to view expert elicitation as a low-cost, low-effort alternative to conducting serious research and analysis, it is neither. Rather, expert elicitation should build on and use the best available research and analysis and be undertaken only when, given those, the state of knowledge will remain insufficient to support timely informed assessment and decision making.