{"id":5986,"date":"2023-05-01T06:30:31","date_gmt":"2023-05-01T10:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/?p=5986"},"modified":"2023-05-01T15:38:27","modified_gmt":"2023-05-01T19:38:27","slug":"may-2023-dr-christopher-robertson-bu-school-of-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/2023\/05\/01\/may-2023-dr-christopher-robertson-bu-school-of-law\/","title":{"rendered":"May 2023: Dr. Christopher Robertson (BU School of Law)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Professor<\/span> Christopher Robertson<\/span><\/a> joined the BU Law faculty in 2020 as a tenured professor and N. Neal Pike Scholar in Health & Disability Law. He is also a Professor of Health Law, Policy & Management in the <\/span>BU School of Public Health<\/span><\/a>. Professor Robertson is an expert in health law, institutional design, and decision making. His wide-ranging work includes torts, bioethics, professional responsibility, conflicts of interests, criminal justice, evidence, the First Amendment, racial disparities, and corruption. <\/span>Robertson is author of the 2019 book <\/span>Exposed: Why Our Health Insurance is Incomplete and What Can be Done About It<\/span><\/i><\/a> (<\/span>Harvard University Press<\/span><\/a>)<\/span>. He has also co-edited three additional books, <\/span>Nudging Health: Behavioral Economics and Health Law<\/span><\/i><\/a> (2016), <\/span>Blinding as a Solution to Bias: Strengthening Biomedical Science, Forensic Science, and Law<\/span><\/i><\/a> (2016), and <\/span>Innovation and Protection: The Future of Medical Device Regulation<\/span><\/i><\/a> (2022). Learn more about <\/span>Professor Robertson<\/span><\/a> in his full interview below.<\/span><\/p>\n

What made you decide to be a social scientist\/why does social science matter to you?<\/b><\/p>\n

I was originally trained as a philosopher, and eventually realized that many of our moral intuitions were contingent, so I wanted to understand the underlying causes of why we believe what we believe.\u00a0 I found empirical work to be generative, moving debates forward, in a way that pure theory cannot.\u00a0 Once I moved into law, I also had some early successes, where empirical work made an impact on the policy process.<\/span><\/p>\n

Can you tell us about a recent research project that you\u2019re excited about?<\/b><\/p>\n

I am now wrapping up a five-stage project exploring whether moral framing can improve insurance uptake in the United States.\u00a0 This work was exciting because it tries to solve a fundamental problem in the U.S.\u00a0 with an alternative approach to the individual mandate, which the courts have struck down.\u00a0 We are trying to mobilize Americans\u2019 political commitments to getting everyone covered as a potential reason for them to each buy health insurance, if they can.\u00a0 Our preliminary work, using five million advertisements on Google in a randomized field experiment, was very promising.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What is the best piece of professional advice you ever received?<\/b><\/p>\n

Work with great people and big ideas.\u00a0 Keep learning along the way.<\/span><\/p>\n

What is your favorite course you\u2019ve taught at BU?<\/b><\/p>\n

I\u2019m relatively new at BU, but at my <\/span>prior institution<\/span><\/a> (University of Arizona) I taught a course called the Law and Behavior Research Lab, in which we recruited law students and undergraduate students to conduct original social science research, using a mini-grant from the <\/span>Provost\u2019s Office<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 The law students framed the legal questions, and worked with the undergraduates and their social scientist mentors to develop the empirical answers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Tell us a surprising fact about yourself.<\/b><\/p>\n

I was once an actor on a national television show episode, Real Stories of the Highway Patrol.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Professor Christopher Robertson joined the BU Law faculty in 2020 as a tenured professor and N. Neal Pike Scholar in Health & Disability Law. He is also a Professor of Health Law, Policy & Management in the BU School of Public Health. Professor Robertson is an expert in health law, institutional design, and decision making. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20070,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5986"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20070"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5986"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6183,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5986\/revisions\/6183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}