Seymour Pollack

Observations on the adversary system and the role of the forensic scientist: "scientific truth" v. "legal truth"

At the first plenary session of the 24th Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, discussions were directed to the role of the forensic scientist in the adversary system. The morning Plenary Session of Thursday, March 2, 1972 was entitled “The Adversary System and the Role of the Forensic Scientist.” The evening Special Seminar on “Truth and Consequences in the Court Room or Open Season on the Expert Witness” was followed by a film on “The Murder of Fred Hampton” in which the approach of the criminalist in accumulating scientific data for legal purposes was detailed. In these sessions, the adversary process was often attacked as interfering with or hiding and distor,ing scientific truth as provided by the expertise of the forensic scientist, rather than serving to promote scientific truth and enhancing its exposure and meaningful application to legal issues.

Psychopharmaceutical restoration to present sanity (mental competency to stand trial).

Defendants considered under the influence of drugs have usually been found to be mentally incompetent to stand trial. In recent years the advent of psychopharmaceuticals in treatment of the mentally ill has created a number of interesting questions for psychiatry and law. How should the mentally ill defendant under the influence of psychotherapeutic drugs be considered? How mentally impaired should such a defendant be in order to be considered mentally incompetent to stand trial? What legal standards apply? Does the standard for level of competency differ, if the defendant is on psychopharmaceuticals? If his mental impairment has improved under the influence of drugs, should these drugs be removed in order for him to demonstrate his capacity for mental competency without drugs? If so, how long should such a drug-free period be before his return to trial? Should he be denied the right to stand trial while still under the influence of such drugs? If he relapses into mental illness after psychotherapeutic drugs have been discontinued, how does this affect his mental competency to stand trial? If he demonstrates that he requires ongoing medication for continued suppression of his impairing symptoms, can he then be returned to trial while under the influence of these drugs? For how long a period of time on drugs during which time he demonstrates mental competency to stand trial should he be considered mentally incompetent to stand trial? And finally, what trends are visible in the psychiatric and legal literature that predict the future direction of psychiatry and law in answering these questions?

Shifts in Measures of Attitudes of Medical Students Toward Those of Their Professors Relative to the Doctor Image and the Doctor-Patient Relationship: Implications for Prediction of a Clinically Oriented Criterion

IN two previous studies, the writers (Pollack and Michael, 1965; 1966) investigated changes in the attitudes of medical students toward psychological characteristics of the doctor image and the doctor-patient relationship on four empirically derived factor scales in Blum’s (1957) Patient Attitude Test (PAT)-three scales-and in the Doctor’s Opinion Questionnaire (DOQ)-one scale. Although only the mean changes on the dimension concerned with fee-setting practices could be judged as statistically significant, there were, at that time, no available data concerning the attitudes of doctors as measured on the three dimensions of the PAT, against which the attitudes of medical students could be compared.

The mental health expert witness

The mental health professional is called upon to apply his technical material to legal issues. In order for the mental health professionals involvement to be of benefit to the legal system, he must understand the legal issues posed and know how to answer them.

The Predictive Validity of a Battery of Measures for Each of Four Different Classes of a Medical School

Problem. For samples of fifty-nine freshmen, fifty-five sophomores, forty juniors, and thirty-three seniors out of classes usually numbering between sixty and sixty-nine students at the University of Southern California School of Medicine, the purpose of this investigation was to determine the criterion-related validity of each of twelve measures representing scholastic aptitude, achievement in premedical college courses, and attitudes toward psychological aspects of the doctor image and the doctor-patient relationship as perceived by students. In addition to ascertaining the validity of several types of predictors it was also thought informative to determine any discernible pattern of change in the strength of the coefficients of validity relative to the stage of progress of students in the medical school program. Predictors and criterion variable. The twelve measures which are cited in Table 1 are largely self explanatory. Unfamiliar to many readers may be Blum’s (1957) Patient Attitude Test (PAT) and the Doctors’ Opinion Questionnaire (DOQ), which the writers have described elsewhere (Pollack and Michael, 1965). Estimated by Blum (1957) to have internal consistency estimates of reliability of