Personal Injury Law

Six Myths Regularly Encountered in Forensic Practices

By Bruce Stern

The June issue of Clinical Neuropsychologist contains an article by Manfred F. Greiffenstein, a psychologist from Royal Oak, Michigan. 
 
In his article, Dr. Greiffenstein comments on six myths that he regularly encounters in his defense  forensic practice.  I earlier discussed my agreement with him where he attacks the idea that only the Halstead-Reitan neuropsychological test battery is legally admissible under Daubert.
 
However, I take exception with him when he implies that there is no permanency resulting from mild traumatic brain injury.
 
In this section of his paper, Dr. Greiffenstein quotes from Dr. Iverson’s 2005 paper stating that the commonly accepted figure for permanent disability following mild TBI is 15% is incorrect. 
 
While Dr. Greiffenstein accurately quotes from Dr. Iverson’s paper, he fails to acknowledge that even Iverson accepts that there is a percentage of mild TBI patients who do not go on to a full and uneventful recovery but rather, develop  long-term chronic and permanent residuals from mild TBI.
 
Dr. Greiffenstein is a co-author with Dr. Paul Lees-Haley of a study dealing with the neuropsychological effects following exposure to manganese.  You will recall that the Center for Public Integrity and Mother Jones recently published an expose with regard to the amount of money paid by the welding industry to Paul Lees-Haley.  Dr. Greiffenstein also acknowledges that his practice includes “defense selected evaluations in personal injury matters.”  He also thanks Drs. Larrabee and Binder for their preliminary reviews and helpful criticisms.  A review of deposition testimony given by Larrabee and Binder reflect that they, like Dr. Greiffenstein, primarily performed defense forensic evaluations.
 
Those who represent people who have sustained traumatic brain injury need to investigate the biases of the authors and journals and editors of journals before being so quickly to accept the authenticity of any cited literature.

Full post as published by Traumatic Brain Injury Law Blog on August 27, 2008 (boomark / email).