Earlier this year the High Court ruled that the General Medical Council (GMC) should not have struck off Professor Sir Roy Meadow, a retired paediatrician, in relation to the mistaken evidence he gave in the case against Sally Clark. His evidence was in relation to the statistical likelihood of two children in the same family dying of sudden infant death syndrome. This was misleading because it took no account of environ-mental and genetic factors and his maths was flawed.
In that ruling, the High Court said that expert witnesses who mistakenly give flawed evidence should be immune from disciplinary action by their profession’s regulatory body. The only exception should be where a judge refers the matter to the expert’s regulatory body.
