Daubert and Scientific Evidence: Assessing Evidentiary Reliability in Toxic Tort Litigation

Science and technology have played an increasing role in legal disputes in recent years, largely as the outgrowth of an explosion of scientific and technical knowledge in such diverse areas as computer technology, human genetics, the role of chemicals in disease causation, and the psychology of human behavior. Although science can now answer questions that were only dimly conceived a few years ago, the difficulties courts experience with scientific evidence have probably increased rather than abated. If anything, scientific advances have prompted the legal system to posit still more difficult questions. These questions require courts to grapple with perplexing issues of scientific uncertainty, even the question of what constitutes science.