Practical Ethics for the Expert Witness in Ergonomics and Human Factors Forensic Cases
This chapter describes how many texts concerning the intersection of law and applied disciplines address ethical concerns in passing or do not address them at all. Ethical concerns are like skin, skin is our larges organ and the one that interacts with the world around us. However, it is simply overlooked until something goes wrong – and so it with ethics. If ethical concerns are unaddressed, they will surely emerge during forensic consultation and often with potentially disastrous results. The objective of this chapter is to alert the reader to some concerns which, if addressed appropriately, lead to the immense satisfaction of doing a job professionally and also serving society. The chapter will address the ethical questions that face the expert at the beginning of a case, followed by some questions that might arise during the data gathering and consultation state, and the chapter concludes with questions that arise during the concluding stage.
Forensic standards in the American Psychological Association's new ethics code.
The 1992 revision of the American Psychological Association's ethics code includes, for the first time, a section devoted to forensic issues. This article examines the adequacy with which the Forensic Activities section addresses fundamental ethical issues inherent in forensic practices (i.e., being competent in forensic practice, dealing with requests for service, providing informed consent, providing services, and reporting findings). We conclude that the ethics code modestly addresses important forensic ethical issues and that it too often is characterized by inconsistencies, insufficient information, omissions, and the inappropriate application of the term forensic to general standards not uniquely related to forensic practice.
Social Responsibility Ethics: Doing Right, doing Good, doing Well
The ethics of social responsibility is discussed in reference to six case vignettes drawn from forensic psychology. A definitional model of social responsibility is proposed, and two unequal components of the concept—respect for the individual and concern for social welfare—are identified. The sources of ethical conflict in regard to social responsibility are enumerated. Scholarly criticism of the value orientation of forensic psychology is reviewed, and forensic psychology is contrasted with social policy advocacy efforts made by organized psychology. The social responsibility obligations of psychologists in the microethical sphere, where their actions affect individuals, are diffentiated from the obligations psychology has when operating in the macroethical sphere of social policy. The ethical problems inherent in policy advocacy brought about by individual psychologists working with individuals are underscored: the inevitable element of deception, the violation of role integrity, and the circumvention ...