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Evaluating Scientific Evidence
By
Erica Beecher-Monas
Description
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.
• Emphasizes
the unifying themes of probabilistic reasoning, hypothesis testing
and interdisciplinarity • Provides the guidance that judges,
lawyers, and scholars need to make scientifically legitimate
determinations about scientific validity • The heuristic it
proposes consists of five parts and emphasizes underlying principles
common to all fields of science
Contents
Introduction; 1.
Triers of science; 2. Intellectual due process; 3. A framework of
analysis; 4. Toxic torts and the causation conundrum; 5. Criminal
identification evidence; 6. Future dangerousness testimony: the
epistemology of prediction; 7. Barefoot or Daubert? A cognitive
perspective on vetting future dangerousness testimony; 8. Future
dangerousness and sexual offenders; 9. Models of rationality:
evaluating social psychology; 10. Evaluating battered woman syndrome;
Conclusion.
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