The explosion of expert evidence in our courtrooms in the last several decades has been accompanied by increasing concerns about "junk science" and "pseudo-science". After many years of debate within the legal and scientific communities regarding the nature and extent of junk science, the US Supreme Court, in the 1993 landmark case, Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. articulated an entirely new set of criteria based on the scientific method for the admissibility of expert testimony. In 2000 the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. J.-L. J. referenced Daubert as a relevant authority and expressly adopted the same elements of analysis. Expert evidence in both countries must now obey the rules of science to be admissible. Science lessons for lawyers and judges have now been mandated by the highest courts in both Canada and the United States.
Expert Evidence in Criminal Law: The Scientific Approach by Alan D. Gold is the first and only Canadian book on expert evidence entirely from a scientific perspective.
The book is written in plain language making it easily accessible to lawyers and judges approaching the topic for the first time. At the same time it contains all the principles and knowledge needed to expose bogus experts and junk science, and to reduce inflated expert evidence to its proper valuation.
Everything from forensic identification evidence, including fingerprints and toolmarks, to psychological and psychiatric evidence such as post traumatic stress syndrome are discussed and evaluated according to the rules of science, and the deficiencies and weaknesses of the evidence are demonstrated in detail.

Alan D. Gold practices at Alan D. Gold Professional Corporation, Barristers, in Toronto. He has argued hundreds of appeals, as well as over fifty cases in the Supreme Court of Canada. Mr. Gold is certified by the Law Society of Upper Canada as a specialist in criminal litigation, and was the first chairperson of the Criminal Litigation Specialty Committee, a position he held for five years. In 1993, in Washington, DC, Mr. Gold was inducted into the American College of Trial Lawyers. He received the G. Arthur Martin Award for Contribution to Criminal Justice in November 1997. He is a past president of the Ontario Criminal Lawyers Association (1997–2001). Mr. Gold is a bencher of the Law Society of Upper Canada, elected in May 2003 for a four-year term, and re-elected in May 2007 and May 2011. He was appointed by convocation as chair of the Hearing Panel on 26 June 2008, and has served in that position since.

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Dr. Elizabeth F. Loftus is a Distinguished Professor at the University of California at Irvine, teaching in the Department of Psychology and Social Behavior; the Department of Criminology, Law and Society; and the Department of Cognitive Sciences. She is also a fellow with the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory and a past president of the American Psychological Society.

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• Winner, Walter Owen Book Prize