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Case 1:20-cr-00330-PAE Document 452 Filed 11/12/21 Page17 of 84
patients are telling the truth.” (Def. Mot. 3 at 6). The defendant claims that this “fatally
undermines the reliability of her opinion” because her conclusion has “no known or identified rate
of error... nor is there a reliable method or a series of factors guiding Rocchio’s conclusion as to
whether an individual victim is fabricating her abuse.” (/d. (alterations and quotation marks
omitted)). Clinical psychologists are not so credulous. As part of Dr. Rocchio’s work as a
practicing clinician, she examines consistencies and inconsistencies in the information provided
by patients and assesses patient self-reporting in the context of literature and knowledge that she
has developed in her years of practice. As the Government’s expert notice makes clear, Dr.
Rocchio has treated hundreds and hundreds of patients in her decades of experience, and her
opinions are based in part on the significant patterns she has observed among the patients she has
treated. The Court should reject the defendant’s speculative claim that Dr. Rocchio has been
misled by hundreds of patients who sought professional treatment for traumatic events that did not
occur.
In any event, the defendant’s argument about error rates misunderstands the nature of a
Daubert inquiry. An error rate is but one of the Daubert factors that may or may not be applicable
in every case. See Romano, 794 F.3d at 330. And in cases such as this, where a social science
expert is testifying based on qualitative methodology, that factor is inapplicable. See Torres, 2021
WL 1947503, at *6n.8. As the Second Circuit has explained, “Peer review, publication, potential
error rate, etc... . are not applicable to this kind of testimony, whose reliability depends heavily
on the knowledge and experience of the expert, rather than the methodology or theory behind it. In
such cases, the place to quibble with [an expert’s] academic training is on cross-examination . . .
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Dates
Document Details
| Filename | DOJ-OGR-00006725.jpg |
| File Size | 683.5 KB |
| OCR Confidence | 93.9% |
| Has Readable Text | Yes |
| Text Length | 2,022 characters |
| Indexed | 2026-02-03 17:13:47.552342 |