There is no scientific claim so preposterous that a scientist cannot be found to vouch for it. And this is how it should be. Manned, heavier than air flight was preposterous a hundred years ago, even AFTER the Wright brothers proved it could be done! Using electricity to light whole cities was a ridiculous proposal before Thomas Edison put a carbon filament in a vacuum tube. New discoveries are almost never stumbled across by entrenched scientists who already have all the answers; they have no reason to LOOK for them!

When such claims end up in a court of law after they have cost some enterprising, or perhaps just gullible person or corporation a lot of money, how are juries to evaluate them?

Before 1993, court cases that hinged on the validity of scientific claims were usually decided simply by which expert witness the jury found more credible. Expert testimony often consisted of tortured theoretical speculation with little or no supporting evidence. Jurors were bamboozled by technical gibberish they could not hope to follow, delivered by experts whose credentials they could not evaluate.

In 1993, however, with the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. the situation began to change. The case involved Bendectin, the only morning-sickness medication ever approved by the Food and Drug Administration. It had been used by millions of women, and more than 30 published studies had found no evidence that it caused birth defects. Yet eight so-called experts were willing to testify, in exchange for a fee from the Daubert family, that Bendectin might indeed cause birth defects.

In ruling that such testimony was not credible because of lack of supporting evidence, the court instructed federal judges to serve as "gatekeepers," screening juries from testimony based on scientific nonsense. Recognizing that judges are not scientists, the court invited judges to experiment with ways to fulfill their newfound responsibility.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer encouraged trial judges to appoint independent experts to help them. He noted that courts can turn to scientific organizations, like the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, to identify neutral experts who could preview questionable scientific testimony and advise a judge on whether a jury should be exposed to it. Unfortunately, these are just the sort of 'old boy' networks that have traditionally hampered legitimate scientific progress. Fortunately, judges are still concerned about meeting their responsibilities under the Daubert decision, and so should be amenable to some of the ideas put forth herein on how to recognize questionable scientific claims.

What are the warning signs?

I have modified Dr Park's seven indicators that a scientific claim may 'lie well outside the bounds of rational scientific discourse'. Of course, they are still only warning signs -- even a claim with several of the signs could be legitimate.

1. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media. The integrity of science rests on the willingness of scientists to expose new ideas and findings to the scrutiny of other scientists. Thus, scientists expect their colleagues to reveal new findings to them initially. An attempt to bypass peer review by taking a new result directly to the media, and thence to the public, suggests that the work is unlikely to stand up to close examination by other scientists.

One notorious example is the claim made in 1989 by two chemists from the University of Utah, B. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, that they had discovered cold fusion -- a way to produce nuclear fusion without expensive equipment. Scientists did not learn of the claim until they read reports of a news conference.

But the real problem was that the announcement dealt largely with the economic potential of the discovery, and was devoid of the sort of details that might have enabled other scientists to judge the strength of the claim or to repeat the experiment. Ian Wilmut's announcement that he had successfully cloned a sheep was just as public as Pons and Fleischmann's claim, but in the case of cloning, abundant scientific details allowed scientists to judge the work's validity.

Some 'scientific claims' avoid even the scrutiny of reporters by appearing in paid commercial advertisements. A health-food company marketed a dietary supplement called Vitamin O in full-page newspaper ads. Vitamin O turned out to be ordinary saltwater. Like P.T. Barnum said...

2. The scientific effect fails the basic tests of science. Is it testable? Can it be quantified? Can it survive "Occam's Razor"? Will it pass "double blind" experiments? Are there fallacies of logic or rhetoric involved in its presentation? Do the proponents twist their statistics? Beware of ANYONE who fails these tests!

With some discoveries, powerful establishment forces have actually succeeded in suppressing inventions. Most notably, the Moray Radiant Energy device, which eventually cost the inventor his life. The problem is that some establishment types really WILL stop at nothing to suppress discoveries that might shift the balance of wealth and power in society. Obviously, judges should never give aid and comfort to these people!

3. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection. All scientific measurements must contend with some level of background noise or statistical fluctuation. But if the signal-to-noise ratio cannot be improved, even in principle, the effect is probably not real and the work is not science. This is why alternative scientists MUST use appropriate detectors and calibrate and document EVERYTHING!

Immature technological understanding of phenomena, or the use of inappropriate methods to detect phenomena may cause good candidates for new technologies to fall by the wayside. Controlled fusion is STILL not a reality. Shall we scrap all the work done on it over the last 50 years? High- dollar funding of basic research is always risky, but we should nevertheless invest in these explorations at SOME level.

Thousands of published papers in para-psychology claim to report verified instances of telepathy, psychokinesis, or precognition. But those effects show up only in statistical analyses. They KNOW something is there. But the researchers can find no way to boost the signal, which strongly suggests to skeptics that it isn't really there. Which is why an 'aether detector' would be so very nice, assuming it would work for this application!

4. Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal. Anecdotal evidence is a necessary first step, allowing scientists to ask the question, 'does this work?' But it can hardly be depended upon for high dollar research. Excluding it from the toolbag of science however is akin to taking knives away from hunters because they have rifles. So how are you gonna clean the deer??? The most important discovery of modern medicine is not vaccines or antibiotics, it is the randomized double-blind test, by means of which we know what works and what doesn't. Unfortunately, such testing is not cheap, and it can become unconscionable if lives are forfeit in pursuit of such 'pure' data.

5. The discoverer says a product will work merely because the belief it is based on has endured for centuries. Much of what is termed "alternative medicine" is indeed related to ancient folk wisdom. But this wisdom would never have been handed down from generation to generation if it didn't WORK. Often, modern pharmaceuticals merely distill and repackage these remedies and call them modern drugs. Aspirin is merely willow bark processed into something that can be sold at a huge profit. Why can folk wisdom, alternative medicine AND modern lab research not CO-EXIST and support each other?

6. The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation. This is an unusual event and should be looked at with suspicion. However, a 'new' law of nature, once invoked to explain some extraordinary result, must not conflict with known data. Newton, for example, and Einstein, both rocked their scientific worlds with their theories. But then they went on to prove that they were correct, and eventually, science was forced to agree. Certainly Galileo made enemies among those who already 'knew' the truth. Scientific laws must be able to defend _themselves_. If they cannot, they do not deserve the accolade 'laws'.

7. The discoverer has worked in isolation. Unless you count the dozen or so Silicon Valley geeks like Steve Jobs, and such men as Michael Faraday, Nicola Tesla, Marconi, Crookes, Farnsworth, Ford, Hughes, etc... Hmm. Maybe that should be a REQUIREMENT...

I began this list of warning signs to help federal judges detect the scientific religiosity of mainstream scientists. But as I finished the list, I realized that in our increasingly technological society, spotting charlatans in lab coats is also a skill that every citizen should develop.

LarryH