How can you be sure your expert's evidence is reliable — evidence that gives a solid footing to your case? In the area of mental illness there is such a very broad range of opinion on many issues, ranging from the soft psychoanalytic/pre-scientific theorising about unconscious motivations to the supposedly hard-edged science of brain-MRIs. [...]
This is an always-sensitive topic, not least because of the way in which the concept of deception is misused by clinicians. If you listen to clinicians talk about this idea, particularly in occupational health and disability-assessments, you’ll typically hear about how often there is fabrication of symptoms and how people try to ‘game’ the system. [...]
A crime based on an act of hate of, or prejudice against, an individual’s or individuals’ legally protected characteristics is, effectively, a legal concept and social construct only. It has its longest history in the USA, the seeming birthplace of identity-politics, but varies by society based on what social and personal characteristics are deemed particularly [...]
