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When expert opinion evidence goes wrong

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Abstract

This paper combines three computational argumentation systems to model the sequence of argumentation in a famous murder trial and the appeal procedure that followed. The paper shows how the argumentation scheme for argument from expert opinion can be built into a testing procedure whereby an argument graph is used to interpret, analyze and evaluate evidence-based natural language argumentation of the kind found in a trial. It is shown how a computational argumentation system can do this by combining argument schemes with argumentation graphs. Frighteningly, it is also shown by this example that when there are potentially confusing conflicting arguments from expert opinion, a jury can only too easily accept a conclusion prematurely before considering critical questions that need to be asked.

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Notes

  1. https://the-line-up.com/the-staircase-documentary.

  2. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0901693/.

  3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Peterson_(murder_suspect).

  4. http://araucaria.computing.dundee.ac.uk/doku.php.

  5. https://carneades.github.io/.

  6. Available at https://github.com/carneades.

  7. A blow poke is a long poker built as a hollow metal tube. You blow into the hole at the one end to help the embers in a fireplace spark back into flame without getting burned. At the other end is a prong for moving the logs.

  8. http://owltheory.blog.lemonde.fr/2008/09/05/feathers-flying-in-michael-peterson-case-by-bernie-reeves/.

  9. http://www.newsobserver.com/news/special-reports/article10365449.html.

  10. http://carneades.fokus.fraunhofer.de/carneades/.

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Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for support from Insight Grant 435-2012-0104: The Carneades Argumentation System. I would like to thank my PhD student Waleed Mebane for help in constructing figure 10. I would also like to thank my colleagues Ron Allen, Michal Araszkiewicz and Bart Verheij. They made especially helpful comments after an earlier version of this paper was read at the Conference on Legal Evidence held in Lisbon in 2017.

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  1. Centre for Research in Argumentation, Reasoning and Rhetoric, University of Windsor, Windsor, Canada

    Douglas Walton

  2. Philosophy Department, University of Windsor, 401 Sunset Avenue, Windsor, ON, N9B 3P4, Canada

    Douglas Walton

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Correspondence to Douglas Walton.

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Walton, D. When expert opinion evidence goes wrong. Artif Intell Law 27, 369–401 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10506-019-09249-w

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