![]() One notorious example is the claim made in 1989 by two chemists from the University of Utah, B. An attempt to bypass peer review by taking a new result directly to the media, and thence to the public, suggests that the work is unlikely to stand up to close examination by other scientists. Thus, scientists expect their colleagues to reveal new findings to them initially. ![]() The integrity of science rests on the willingness of scientists to expose new ideas and findings to the scrutiny of other scientists. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media. Of course, they are only warning signs - even a claim with several of the signs could be legitimate.ġ. I have identified seven indicators that a scientific claim lies well outside the bounds of rational scientific discourse. Judges are still concerned about meeting their responsibilities under the Daubert decision, and a group of them asked me how to recognize questionable scientific claims. He noted that courts can turn to scientific organizations, like the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, to identify neutral experts who could preview questionable scientific testimony and advise a judge on whether a jury should be exposed to it. Breyer encouraged trial judges to appoint independent experts to help them. Recognizing that judges are not scientists, the court invited judges to experiment with ways to fulfill their gatekeeper responsibility. In ruling that such testimony was not credible because of lack of supporting evidence, the court instructed federal judges to serve as "gatekeepers," screening juries from testimony based on scientific nonsense. Yet eight so-called experts were willing to testify, in exchange for a fee from the Daubert family, that Bendectin might indeed cause birth defects. It had been used by millions of women, and more than 30 published studies had found no evidence that it caused birth defects. The case involved Bendectin, the only morning-sickness medication ever approved by the Food and Drug Administration. In 1993, however, with the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Daubert v. Jurors were bamboozled by technical gibberish they could not hope to follow, delivered by experts whose credentials they could not evaluate. Expert testimony often consisted of tortured theoretical speculation with little or no supporting evidence. ![]() How are juries to evaluate them?īefore 1993, court cases that hinged on the validity of scientific claims were usually decided simply by which expert witness the jury found more credible. And many such claims end up in a court of law after they have cost some gullible person or corporation a lot of money. There is, alas, no scientific claim so preposterous that a scientist cannot be found to vouch for it. And major power companies have sunk tens of millions of dollars into a scheme to produce energy by putting hydrogen atoms into a state below their ground state, a feat equivalent to mounting an expedition to explore the region south of the South Pole. The Patent and Trademark Office recently issued Patent 6,362,718 for a physically impossible motionless electromagnetic generator, which is supposed to snatch free energy from a vacuum. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is investing close to a million dollars in an obscure Russian scientist's antigravity machine, although it has failed every test and would violate the most fundamental laws of nature. (Swiped from The Chronicle of Higher Education)
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