A Climate Science Manual for Judges Discredits Itself
My guest post at the Civitas Institute
I have a guest post up at the Civitas Institute, a think tank housed at the University of Texas at Austin.
The post shares additional thoughts I have on the NASEM Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence.
Here is an excerpt from my Civitas post
The report’s second chapter, “How Science Works,” has bearing on how courts prioritize scientific consensus reports and understand science as an institution. It prompts the legal experts to trust the abstract system of science against fabled stories and . What this chapter refuses to understand and admit is that science never generates policy outcomes through an infallible formula; those outcomes emerge from deliberation and judgment about competing resources and goals of the political community.
The Reference Manual has thus become its own case study, an extreme example, of the internal workings of science being used politically such that it undermines its own credibility and, in the process, brings into question the authority of our core institutions that need scientific expertise to inform decision-making.
Righting the ship needs a full public account of what happened to produce such a troubling rendition of the Reference Manual by bringing together faces with names and their decisions.
Check out the link below for the rest.
I'm glad you've dug deeply on this manual for judges and agree with your assessment that the project set itself up for this assault to a significant extent.