In an attempt to incite righteous anger and induce change in the nation’s educational standards, the late Carl Sagan often lamented the American public’s profound scientific illiteracy, which by even conservative measures is estimated to include ninety percent of the population. This sobering statistic suggests that many decisions in our increasingly technological society are being made without the requisite scientific understanding — decisions that influence critical social issues from Sagan’s educational focus, to politics, to commerce. And law. Once limited to a few high-profile courtroom battles between large corporations, scientific disputes are more common in courts today because scientific and technological advances permeate — and in fact drive — our society. As law and science converge ever-more frequently, our society is arriving at a critical juncture: Litigation raising sophisticated scientific concepts is expanding to include not only large corporations, but small businesses and even individuals, as well. Additionally, everyday activities are subject to higher levels of legal scrutiny than ever before in areas as diverse as surfing the Internet (copyright and trademark), business conduct, land ownership (environmental impact) and eating alar on apples or breathing second-hand smoke (public health). Consequently, juries and judges are increasingly being asked to consider questions involving matters of science, which, distressingly for them (and the parties whose fates are at stake), are often completely foreign. One complicating factor is that the void in scientific knowledge is rapidly filled with “junk science” or pseudo-science: generally facile and inaccurate explanations for phenomena with perfectly rational, if less […]