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“You could file briefs on a napkin right now and get it granted.”
Alan Lange & Tom Dawson, Kings of Torts 87 (2d ed. 2010) (quoting convicted former lawyer, Zach Scruggs)
Back in the 1980s, I started to see expert witnesses stray into the business of psychoanalysis of corporate defendants. Perhaps it took place earlier;

Antic proposals abound in the legal analysis of expert witness opinion evidence. In the courtroom, the standards for admitting or excluding such evidence are found in judicial decisions or in statutes. When legislatures have specified standards for admitting expert witness opinions, courts have a duty to apply the standards to the facts before them. Law

This blog is not about politics, although sometimes I have wandered into the political thicket when the events of the day involved scientific and statistical issues.[1] Our current events today do not involve statistical evidence so much as political, moral, and practical judgment. At some point, however, I cannot avoid a sense of responsibility

“Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of Mankind is Man.”[1]
 
Kristen Ranges recently earned her law degree from the University of Miami School of Law, and her doctorate in Environmental Science and Policy, from the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science. Ranges’ dissertation

“There is no expedient to which man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.”
              Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92)
Some courts appear to duck the real labor of thinking, and the duty to gatekeep expert witness opinions,  by deferring to expert witnesses who advert to their

Back in 1997, Francis Douglas Kelly Liddell, a real scientist in the area of asbestos and disease, had had enough of the insinuations, slanders, and bad science from the minions of Irving John Selikoff.[1] Liddell broke with the norms of science and called out his detractors for what they were doing:
 “[A]n anti-asbestos lobby,

Or How Irving Selikoff and His Lobby (the Collegium Ramazzini) Fooled the Monsanto Corporation
Anyone who litigates occupational or environmental disease cases has heard of the Collegium Ramazzini. The group is named after a 17th century Italian physician, Bernardino Ramazzini, who is sometimes referred to as the father of occupational medicine.[1] His children have