America has a floor safety problem, and it has nothing to do with floors.

Across the country, Americans suffer millions of slip-and-fall injuries, with some serious enough to require emergency medical treatment. Many never fully recover. Some lose mobility permanently. And yet, case after case, the same outcome emerges. Property owners face litigation, a professional witness takes the stand, produces a number from a device that no other country would accept as credible, and declares the floor safe. The building owner is vindicated. The injured party is left without compensation. And the machinery that produced that verdict moves on to the next case, without any reassessment.

I have spent decades in floor safety science and slip resistance, and I believe one of the biggest problems in this field is hiding in plain sight. And that is the rise of the professional expert witness whose expertise lies less in science and more in persuasion.

A troubling number of these witnesses operate as full-time litigation consultants. One week, they testify about aviation failures. The next week, they are suddenly experts in construction defects, automobile crashes, or slip resistance. Courts present them as authorities because they know how to perform in front of juries and create the appearance of technical certainty. Any scientific credibility becomes secondary.

Slip resistance testing in the United States has become especially vulnerable to this problem because many of the instruments and methods being presented in court would not survive serious scrutiny outside that environment. Several devices commonly used in American litigation have repeatedly shown poor precision and inconsistent repeatability. Yet those same devices continue appearing in courtrooms because they can produce results favorable to whichever side is paying the invoice.

Meanwhile, the........

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