| Sumario: | Part of a special issue on conventions in science and law. Scientific testimony in litigation has always prompted complaints both about the venality and dishonesty of scientific witnesses and about the scientific ignorance and credulity of jurors, attorneys, and judges. There are deep tensions between the goals and values of the scientific enterprise and the culture of the law. More specifically, there are tensions between the investigative character of science and the adversarial culture of the U.S. legal system, between the scientific search for general principles and the legal focus on particular cases, between the pervasive fallibilism of the sciences and the concern of the law for prompt and final resolutions, between the scientific push for innovation and the legal system's concern for precedent, between the informal pragmatism of scientific investigation and the reliance of the legal system on formal rules and procedures, and between the theoretical goals of science and the legal system's link to policy.
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