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Jumping from the Frye Plan into the State Farm Fire: An Analysis of Spinal Thermography as Scientific Test Evidence
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 April 2021
Extract
“Pictures of Pain Pay Off,” proclaimed the title of a recent article in the legal literature. The thermographic picture, or thermogram, is raising the stakes in plaintiff back cases and gaining national attention in both the medical and legal communities. Doctors see it as a diagnostic tool; lawyers, as an objective means of documenting injuries.
Yet the diagnostic and demonstrative potentials of this modality are also arousing considerable controversy—of the kind that has attended the use in court of blood tests to determine paternity, intoxication tests, polygraphs tests, hypnosis, spectrographs, and neutron activation analysis. This article will examine the use and value of thermographic pictures as evidence of spinal conditions and nerve root compression.
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