Galileo's Revenge: Junk Science in the Courtroom

Author:   Peter Huber
Publisher:   Basic Books
ISBN:  

9780465026241


Pages:   288
Publication Date:   24 March 1993
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
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Galileo's Revenge: Junk Science in the Courtroom


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Overview

A scathing indictment of the growing role of junk science in our courtrooms. Peter W. Huber shows how time and again lawyers have used, and the courts have accepted, spurious claims by so-called expert witnesses to win astronomical judgments that have bankrupted companies, driven doctors out of practice, and deprived us all of superior technologies and effective, life-saving therapies.

Full Product Details

Author:   Peter Huber
Publisher:   Basic Books
Imprint:   Basic Books
Dimensions:   Width: 20.70cm , Height: 1.60cm , Length: 12.40cm
Weight:   0.290kg
ISBN:  

9780465026241


ISBN 10:   0465026249
Pages:   288
Publication Date:   24 March 1993
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  General/trade ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

* Introduction The Lawyer And The Scientist Trade Places * Liability Science: Better Living Through Litigation * The Science of Things That Arent So: Junk Science and Its Origins Law And Pseudoscience * The Midas Touch: How Money Causes Disease * Sudden Acceleration: Runaway Panic in the Mass Media * Gadgets and Knives: Cashing in on Magical Cures * No Immunity: Chemicals Cause Everything * Nausea: The Massed Legal Attack * The Paranoia Plebiscite: The Legal Pursuit of Fad Terrors * Harmonious Coupling: Ignoring the Environment The Rule Of Fact * The Cargo Cult: Does Liability Science Work? * Stopping Points: Confronting Malpractice on the Witness Stand * Science and Certitude

Reviews

A polemic twice as long as it should be by lawyer/engineer Huber (Liability, 1988), now taking aim at the hired-hand expert witnesses who are called upon in liability cases where appeal to science is the issue. Where are the days of yore when judges exercised judgment about the credentials of experts? Or when juries acted on the conviction that victims might be self-destructive, ignorant, or otherwise to blame? All that is gone in these days of junk science, says Huber, in which self-proclaimed fringe scientists are given equal weight in the courtroom. So we hear about trauma-induced cancers, chemically induced AIDS, the dangers of all IUDs and of self-accelerating Audi cars (dramatically depicted on 60 Minutes). Huber sees the new let-it-all-hang-in courtroom behavior as rooted in a new liability-science that uses law to effect social control by charging accidents to the person (or agent) who might have prevented it most cheaply. So instead of blaming the victim for mistaking the accelerator for the brake, blame the car designer; blame the tobacco company and not the chain-smoker; blame the IUD for pelvic inflammatory disease and not its promiscuous user. Indeed, Huber's blame-the-victim harping mars what is often an incisive indictment of stupidity, arrogance, and deception masking as fair justice. Moreover, the question of why America is so litigious a society, driven to vicious circles of fear and distrust, suit and countersuit, and what can be clone about it are barely touched upon. Huber's appeal to good science and the noble search for truth are to be commended, but, it should be noted, manufacturers do make mistakes that cost lives, victims are often innocent, and medical science has yet to reach consensus concerning the cause and cure of many an ailment. (Kirkus Reviews)


Author Information

Peter Huber is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute's centre for Legal Policy, where he specializes in issues related to technology, science, and law. His previous books include Hard Green, Liability, and Galileo's Revenge. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland. Peter W. Huber, an M.I.T.-trained engineer and a Harvard law graduate, has also taught at M.I.T. and formerly clerked for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. A Manhattan Institute Fellow, he lives in Washington, D.C.

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