How science works? David Goodstein
Chief Justice Rehnquist, responding to the majority opinion in Daubert, was the first to express his uneasiness with the task assigned to federal judges as follows: “I defer to no one in my confidence in federal judges; but I am at a loss to know what is meant when it is said that the scientific status of a theory depends on its ‘falsifiability,’ and I suspect some of them will be, too.” 509 U.S. 579, 600 (1993)(Rehnquist, C.J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). His concern was then echoed by JudgeAlex Kozinski when the case was reconsidered by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit following remand by the Supreme Court. 43 F.3d 1311, 1316 (9th Cir. 1995) (“Our responsibility,then, unless we badly misread the Supreme Court’s opinion, is to resolve disputes among respected,well-credentialed scientists about matters squarely within their expertise, in areas where there is no scientific consensus as to what is and what is not ‘good science,’ and occasionally to reject such expert testimony because it was not ‘derived by the scientific method.’ Mindful of our position in the hierarchy of the federal judiciary, we take a deep breath and proceed with this heady task.”)