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)
Expert witnesses claim a luxury car accelerates when you step on
the brake, though no defect is ever found. Whooping cough vaccine,
said to cause brain damage and death, is almost removed from the
market, though 30 years of epidemiological studies attest to its
safety. Cerebral palsy cases, using electronic fetal monitoring
(EFM) as evidence, flood the courts, despite overwhelming proof
that EFM doesn't cause birth defects. Spurious claims such as
these, backed by fringe eccentrics whose research has no standing
in the scientific community, have resulted in astronomical
judgments that have bankrupted companies, driven doctors out of
practice and deprived all of us of superior technologies and
effective and life-saving therapies.
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