Research Subpoenas and the Sociology of Knowledge

Abstract

Like Moliere's Monsieur Jourdain on learning that he had been speaking prose for forty years, most U.S. judges would probably be astonished to find that their everyday assessments of scientific evidence recapitulate some of the most profound contemporary debates in the philosophy and sociology of scientific knowledge. In an increasing variety of lawsuits, judges are confronting, and innocently resolving, epistemological questions that have perplexed academic analysts of science for many decades.1 What is the nature of truth and validity in science? What makes one disputed scientific claim better than competing interpretations and points of view? When is the science invoked by parties to a lawsuit sufficiently reliable to be heard in court, let alone to justify the imposition of serious financial liability or restraints on personal liberty? And when conflicts occur between alternative approaches to interpreting scientific information, who should decide which approach is better? Questions like these have arisen in remarkably diverse factual contexts, and they tax judicial understandings of how scientific research is done. For example, the landmark environmental controversies of the 1970s and 1980s invited courts to compare legal and scientific standards of certainty and to give administrative agencies a reasoned basis for acting as they did when there was no consensus in science to guide them.2 Toxic tort claims pitted medical and scientific experts against each other, requiring courts to assess their relative credibility as well as their competence to testify on matters relevant to determinations of liability.3 Requests to exclude various types of novel scientific evidence forced courts to act in effect as gatekeepers for scientific methodologies and