Emedinews:Insights on MEdicolegal Issues:Medical Testimony of Doctor in the Court of law

Medical literature/document produced as evidence in the court of law must be a published one. For a document to serve as legitimate evidence in a trial/debate, it must exist in the public domain i.e. the document must potentially be available to any debater researching the topic or lawyer/interested party of cross examining side. Unpublished documents are privileged information, and using such information gives the doctor an unfair advantage. Academic debate does not have a discovery rule. The only opportunity your opponents have to examine your documents prior to a trial/debate is to have found the documents during their own research. That they may not have taken the opportunity to do so, or did not discover a document, does not obviate the rule. The advent of the Internet has created a new form of publication – electronic documents like this e–medinews. Electronic documents are accepted as published if they are accessible by the general public. Thus, electronic files to which other debaters would be denied access are not published. However, files and documents which other debaters may access, even if they have no subscription to a commercial service to do so, satisfy the publication rule.