Evaluating Scientific Evidence: An Interdisciplinary Framework for Intellectual Due Process

by Erica Beecher-Monas

• ISBN13: 9780521859271
• ISBN10: 0521859271
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-11-20
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Scientific evidence is crucial in a burgeoning number of litigated cases, legislative enactments, regulatory decisions, and scholarly arguments. Evaluating Scientific Evidence explores the question of what counts as scientific knowledge, a question that has become a focus of heated courtroom and scholarly debate, not only in the United States, but in other common law countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. Controversies are rife over what is permissible use of genetic information, whether chemical exposure causes disease, whether future dangerousness of violent or sexual offenders can be predicted, whether such time-honored methods of criminal identification (such as microscopic hair analysis, for example) have any better foundation than ancient divination rituals, among other important topics. This book examines the process of evaluating scientific evidence in both civil and criminal contexts, and explains how decisions by nonscientists that embody scientific knowledge can be improved.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction	1	(202)
1 Triers of science	4	(13)
2 What is intellectual due process?	17	(19)
3 A framework of analysis	36	(21)
4 Toxic torts and the causation conundrum	57	(37)
5 Criminal identification evidence	94	(28)
6 Future dangerousness testimony: The epistemology of prediction	122	(24)
7 Barefoot or Daubert? A cognitive perspective on vetting future dangerousness testimony	146	(9)
8 Future dangerousness and sexual offenders	155	(13)
9 Models of rationality: Evaluating social psychology	168	(35)
10 Evaluating battered woman syndrome	203	(29)
Conclusion	232	(7)
Index	239