“The art of junk science is to brush away just enough detail to reach desired conclusions, while preserving enough to maintain an aura of authoritative science.” This statement by Peter William Huber in his 1991 book Galileo’s Revenge: Junk Science in the Courtroom was never more evident than in current civil trials involving complex scientific and medical studies and associated testifying experts.
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Current state and federal trials concerning the use [of] Roundup herbicide “causing” one of the nearly 60 diverse sub-types of Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma (NHL) provide a judicial environment amenable for junk science….The first Roundup trial in a San Francisco state court combined causation and “document interpretation” and generated an environment laden with junk science and higher order speculation.
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The unique trial environment combined with the speculative leaps by plaintiff’s medical expert supported an opinion plaintiff’s rare and idiopathic NHL cancer sub-type was incurred during the first days of Roundup spraying, required a much shorter latency period than significant exposure to well recognized cancer agents and was based upon statistically significant, but not causally associated odds ratios from exploratory case studies of epidemiology.
Read full, original article: Junk Science & U.S. Civil Juries: Roundup Trials
