In more recent years, there has been some reassessment of Spilsbury's reputation, which has raised questions over his degree of objectivity. Professor Sir Sydney Smith judged Spilsbury 'very brilliant and very famous, but fallible...and very, very obstinate.' Keith Simpson wrote of Spilsbury 'whose positive evidence had doubtless led to conviction at trials that might have ended with sufficient doubt for acquittal.'. Burney and Pemberton (2010) noted how the "virtuosity" of Spilsbury's performances in the mortuary and the courtroom "threatened to undermine the foundations of forensic pathology as a modern and objective specialism."