This is not a comment on science or any other academic discipline. But the news that Dr David Southall has been struck off by the GMC for serious proffessional misconduct, raises valid questions about the role, status and authority that society endows upon the ‘academic expert witness’.

Lawyers show again and again that an expert does not know what he is talking about. Scientists, especially physicians, frequently come to different results so that it is up to the relatives of the sick person (or the inhabitants of a certain area) to decide by vote about the procedure to be adopted. P.Feyerabend

Feyerabend may be both prejudicial and exaggerated in his judgements. But incidences (such as this new one in the news) justify our questioning of the credibility of the authority given to ‘expert witnesses’.

Is not the whole sorry area of the ‘expert witness’ bordering upon a mass susceptibility to the fallacy of the appeal to authority; where an assertion is deemed true because of the position or authority of the person asserting it?