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Two Confusions in Daubert
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2014
[U]nder the [Federal Rules of Evidence] the trial judge must ensure that any and all scientific testimony or evidence admitted is not only relevant, but reliable…. The subject of an expert’s testimony must be “scientific … knowledge.” The adjective “scientific” implies a grounding in the methods or procedures of science…. [I]n order to qualify as “scientific knowledge,” an inference or assertion must be derived by the scientific method…. “Scientific methodology today is based on generating hypotheses and testing them to see if they can be falsified; indeed, this methodology is what distinguishes science from other fields of inquiry.”
–Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (1993)After Mrs. Daubert had taken Bendectin for morning-sickness in pregnancy, her son Jason was born with severe birth defects. Believing that Bendectin was the cause, in 1989 the Dauberts brought suit against the manufacturers of the drug, Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals. At trial, however, the court excluded the expert witnesses the Dauberts had proffered to testify on the question of causation, on the grounds that the consensus in the relevant scientific community was that Bendectin does not cause birth defects. With the plaintiffs’ causation experts excluded, there was no case to answer, and the trial court granted summary judgment in favor of Merrell Dow; the appeals court affirmed.
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