Scientific evidence in court retains validity

Abstract

Last summer's Supreme Court decision that changed the ground rules governing the admission of scientific evidence in trials generated fears that the wave of junk science that had threatened to overwhelm the nation's courtrooms in recent years would grow to tidal proportions (see page 43). So far that hasn't happened, said Richard B. Racine during the American Chemical Society's national meeting in San Diego. Racine, a partner at Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner in Washington, D.C., spoke at a symposium titled The Importance of Technology to Legal Decision-Making, sponsored by the ACS Division of Chemistry and the Law. In June 1993, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in the case of Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals that the proper test of whether scientific evidence is admissible in a court of law is spelled out in rule 702 of the Federal Rules of Evidence enacted by Congress in 1975 (C&EN, July 12, 1993, page 20). Basically, ...