A decades-old idea of convening “science courts” to make informed judgments on controversies such as federal funding for nuclear power or the safety of a pharmaceutical drug is now being promoted as a way to bolster public confidence in the scientific method and end "cherry-picked facts" advanced by "expert witnesses" trying to persuade judges and juries in big money disputes.
The concept of science courts was featured last May in an article on a website of the nonprofit group Undark, which explores topics at the intersection of science and the greater society. The article, co-authored by Leana King, a Ph.D. candidate in the Cognitive Neuroanatomy Lab at the University of California at Berkeley, suggests that such courts could help the legal system better deal with cases involving hard science and the reliance of dueling expert witnesses.
Science courts were first proposed in 1967 by Arthur Kantrowitz, a physicist and educator at Cornell University, who thought such courts could tackle controversies such as the safety of food additives.
“Expert advocates would publicly argue the merits or demerits of the science before a judge who would render an informed decision based on the facts,” the article states.
A version of this science-court concept has been playing out for several years at the University of Minnesota, where an aerospace engineering and mechanics professor, Ellad Tadmor, developed an honors seminar where students research controversial issues facing science and society, come to common ground on the factual underpinnings of the issue and then present their findings and answer questions before a mock jury session.
Once the class votes on the topic they want to tackle, they split up into three groups, Tadmor told the Southern California Record. A science team probes different aspects of the science involved and how previous research bears on the topic, a legal team develops pro and con arguments based on objective research developed by the science team and a media team creates content for the seminar’s website to keep the public engaged on the progress of research, legal presentations and deliberations of a volunteer jury, he said.
“The idea is to generate public interest to get them to learn with us,” Tadmor said. “... After doing it for several years, I almost think of it as a theater presentation.”
A key difference in the course when compared to a more traditional court proceeding, however, is that no professional expert witnesses are allowed to address the court proceedings or advise the jury, he said.
“This is not a standard trial in many ways,” Tadmor said. “... The (expert) witnesses are the students who did the research on a particular domain. The fact that science is presented by a neutral party is important.”
Indeed, scientists are often focused on minute details in their studies and can have difficulty getting through to an average person, according to Tadmor. In the wake of the Covid pandemic and increasing political polarization in society, public trust in scientists has dropped from 87% in 2020 to 73% in 2023, according to the Pew Research Center.
Meanwhile, controversies over the validity of scientific studies – on topics from whether certain weed killers or baby powders cause cancer to the best ways to mitigate traffic in urban areas – continue to challenge California courts.
The idea of courts using independent science reporters or investigators to put scientific questions into a real-world context and provide recommendations to judges and juries could humanize the scientific method and boil down probabilities over who’s culpable, according to some court system observers.
“Uncertainty doesn’t need to be foreign to people,” Tadmor said. “Everybody has to live their lives balancing uncertainties.”
The United Kingdom employed a science-court format in 2022 to determine whether scientists would be allowed to edit the DNA of embryos to treat genetic disorders.
Tadmor believes science courts would likely produce better outcomes than dueling expert witnesses in adversarial cases where facts are cherry-picked.
“I think that would come out much better than this kind of expert stuff,” he said. “These guys are hired guns.”