Query: Disclaimers... to use or not?

["Geoff Hart" <geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca>]

FERIC (my employer) does operational forestry research in 
Canada, and we publish the results for our clients in the fond hope 
that they'll use the results to improve their forest operations. 
Because we want to remind readers that we're impartial when it 
comes to our evaluations ("scientific objectivity"), and because we 
want to protect ourselves from liability if someone follows our 
advice carelessly and gets hurt or loses money or equipment as a 
result, we've had to put various formal disclaimers in our reports.

My feeling has always been that if we don't exercise "due 
diligence", and don't provide appropriate warnings directly beside 
the instructions that might prove risky, no liability disclaimer is 
going to save us from a lawsuit; if we do, then no lawsuit should 
ever arise in the first place. As well, I've yet to see any research 
agency (public or private) publish such disclaimers in their reports, 
though admittedly my sample is small (a dozen or so organisations 
similar to FERIC whose reports I could check in our library).

Now we're redesigning all our reports from the ground up, and we're 
reconsidering what kind of disclaimer, if any, we need to include. 
This is properly a question to ask a lawyer (and we will!), but I'd like 
to provide the lawyer with a well-considered, well-researched 
opinion first on what other organisations do, and why. So, to the 
question: What types of disclaimers, if any, does your organization 
use in its research (or related) reports?


--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca (Pointe-Claire, Quebec)
"The [red] pen is indeed mightier than the sword:
you can obtain one anywhere, for next to no money;
you can legally carry one concealed, even in
jurisdictions that frown on concealed weaponry;
and it takes little skill learn to to wield a pen
as a weapon."--GH