Online identities and expert witnesses

For the astute readers who are looking for a future in expert testimony or may be pursuing to advance your career, some words of advice: be cautious about what you post online in online forums, especially about what questions you ask. During expert testimony, if the opposing counsel can't discredit your facts, they will attempt to discredit you. One method that has been used to do this is to Google your online activity and then try to use that against you. For example, if you post a perfectly innocent question early on in your career that any skilled professional should know the answer to, the opposing counsel can try to make you out to be a bumbling fool.

An associate of mine, in the forensics field, uses several online identities to bolster and protect his reputation. He uses his "professional identity" to answer other newbies' questions and present himself as an expert in the field and he uses his "throw away identities" to ask questions.

Chalmer