This week, I present an excerpt from a book called Anti-vaxxers How: to Challenge a Misinformed Movement. I’ve often wrestled with a person I know from law school who can’t distinguish between scientific/medical facts and legal facts. This is a good summation of the difference:
Legal rulings have no bearing on scientific and medical truth. Like scientists, legal professionals are interested in finding the truth (well, at least sometimes). However, the means that the legal profession uses to arrive at decisions are different from those used in science. In a legal ruling, a decision must be reached. In scientific inquiry, the starting point of every investigation, “I don’t know,” is the default epistemological standpoint, and most common endpoint for an investigation. There are not specific rules that scientists must follow to the letter while evaluating evidence; however, there are heuristics and scientific virtues that scientists follow and apply when conducting, evaluating, and peer reviewing evidence. Results published in the scientific literature are not considered to be final but may at any time be reconsidered in the light of additional evidence, conflicting experiments, or new discoveries. Only rarely does a scientific proposition rise to the point where it is considered to be a “theory,” which is accepted to be true pending further evidence, or a new model that better explains existing data. Legal rulings by the VICP do not determine scientific truth; rather, they determine if a case presented meets the standards set out in law. These standards are often flawed and partial.