I never know what to make of articles that appear in The West Virginia Record, the state’s only real legal rag (they prefer the term “journal”).

This week’s edition contains an interesting article about some federally-funded research conducted by WVU health sciences faculty who also moonlight as expert witnesses in railroad workers’ solvents exposure cases.

Several points worth making:

• For those of you who think lawyers are whores, you haven’t met a real whore until you’ve met some of the “expert” witnesses that are paraded regularly through our courtroom doors.  Indeed in all my years associated with the legal system, I can think of only a handful of times when an expert produced an opinion that was inconsistent with what the person paying his or her bill wanted him or her to find.
• The work of James Turner and others in exposing the WVU researchers’ questionable work is an example of fine lawyering.  Lawyers have to become experts themselves to challenge expert witnesses effectively.  Mr. Turner appears to have left no stone unturned in getting to the bottom of this matter.
• If the allegations are true, several remedies are available to address it.  There are federal criminal and civil penalties for research fraud and/or misuse of federal funds, as well as penalties for perjury.  Furthermore, WVU has a system whereby tenured faculty can be stripped of both tenure and their jobs if allegations like these turn out to be true.  Finally, courts can sanction lawyers and others who knowingly perpetrate frauds like this on the court.
• I note that Mr. Turner hired as his expert a University of Michigan neurology professor.  The University of Michigan is one of the nation’s premier research universities  and member of the Association of American Universities.  See “To Research or Not to Research?  That Is the Question.”