Today@Dal

From Saturday's Globe and Mail:

How people fall, how they land and what injuries they incur is the stuff of a field of expertise encompassed by kinesiology, the study of human movement. Numerous universities offer kinesiology postgraduate and doctoral degrees, paving the way for jobs in research, the fitness industry and other fields.

In court, however, its veracity as a science is often called into doubt, says retired Dalhousie University kinesiology professor Larry Holt, who has provided evidence in several criminal cases, and played a key role in the 2002 reversal of the murder conviction of Nova Scotian Clayton Johnson.

Mr. Holt spent the bulk of his career studying injuries sustained by athletes, particularly those resulting from falls, and has co-authored two authoritative papers about forensic kinesiology.

“When a person from the field of kinesiology wants to be involved in a court case, there is no established credibility accepted by the legal system,” he says.

Read the rest of the article at the Globe's website.