This chapter follows the intertwined careers of epidemiology and toxic tort litigation, and exami... more This chapter follows the intertwined careers of epidemiology and toxic tort litigation, and examines their effects on the relations between science and law in the late twentieth-century American courtroom. Epidemiology’s career in the American courtroom has been short but brilliant. Until the 1970s, epidemiological evidence could hardly be found in the legal system. By the 1980s, it was already announced “the best (if not the sole) available evidence in mass exposure cases,”1 and by the start of 1990s, judges were dismissing cases for not supporting themselves with solid epidemiological evidence.2 Epidemiology, I argue below, owed much of this prosperity to the equally meteoric career of mass tort litigation—a late-modern American species of litigation involving crowds of plaintiffs, all claiming to be harmed by the same exposure or mass-marketed product. Ever since the 1980s, dangerous drugs, industrial accidents, design defects, environmental pollutants, radiation exposure, and other species of technological breakdowns, have all become the subject of prolonged mass tort litigation with ever-escalating financial stakes.3 Questions about risk and causation have been central to a great majority of these cases, and when a direct proof of cause and effect has proven elusive, the courts turned to statistical evidence to resolve these questions.4
The Sixteenth Conference of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in Israel,
Conventional Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) assumes exact knowledge of the boundaries of both referen... more Conventional Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) assumes exact knowledge of the boundaries of both reference and test sequences. However, the output of practical end point detectors is inaccurate, especially with noisy input. This results in a severe deterioration of the ...
This paper recounts the environmental history of a main waterway in Northern Israel—the Kishon, a... more This paper recounts the environmental history of a main waterway in Northern Israel—the Kishon, and deploys this history to examine the evolution of Israel water policy as it struggled to bridge the growing gap between its ambitions of development and the realities of its limited water supply. The first part of the paper describes the decay of the Kishon since the early 1950s, and the multiple scientific, political and legal attempts to alleviate its misfortunes, and discusses the reasons for their failings. Some of these reasons were administrative by nature, but the paper suggests a deeper reason, rooted in the ideological core of the infant state that was overwhelmingly concerned with the development of its infrastructure, and invited the pioneering Israeli society to consider the demise of the Kishon as a necessary sacrifice for progress. The second part of the paper describes the late-20th century developments that allowed for the recovery of the ailing river. Changing social m...
The late 19th-century discovery of X-rays befuddled not only the scientific world but also the me... more The late 19th-century discovery of X-rays befuddled not only the scientific world but also the medical and legal worlds. The possibility of looking into the human body as if through an open window challenged the time-honored medical monopoly over the inner cavities of the human body. Likewise, the possibility of visualizing objects unavailable to the naked eye challenged the established legal theories and practices of illustration and proof. This paper describes the reactions to those challenges by the medical and the legal professions in the USA. The two professions are treated as connected social institutions, producing ongoing negotiations through which legal doctrines affect medicine no less than scientific discoveries and medical applications affect the law. This joint analysis rewards us with a rich story about an early and overlooked chapter in X-ray history on the professionalization of radiology, the origins of defensive medicine, and the evolution of the legal theory and p...
The ArgumentThis paper provides a historical perspective to one of the liveliest debates in commo... more The ArgumentThis paper provides a historical perspective to one of the liveliest debates in common law courts today — the one over scientific expert testimony. Arguing against the current tendency to present the problem of expert testimony as a late twentieth-century predicament which threatens to spin out of control, the paper shows that the phenomena of conflicting scientific testimonies have been perennial for at least two centuries, and intensely debated in both the legal and the scientific communities for at least 150 years.
Visual images have come to dominate the early twentieth‐first century courtroom. A cluster of sop... more Visual images have come to dominate the early twentieth‐first century courtroom. A cluster of sophisticated visual technologies–computer‐generated animation and simulations, digitally‐enhanced images of latent fingerprints or DNA profiles,'day‐in‐a‐life'videos and ...
Historical studies in the physical and biological …, 2000
A criminal case is pending in the circuit court of Clark County, for murder, against Wm. Young. T... more A criminal case is pending in the circuit court of Clark County, for murder, against Wm. Young. The authorities have possession of a shirt and pair of pants on which there is blood, and the question is whether that blood came from a human being or from an animal. The ...
This paper provides a historical perspective to one of the liveliest debates in common law courts... more This paper provides a historical perspective to one of the liveliest debates in common law courts today the one over scientific expert testimony. Arguing against the current tendency to present the problem of expert testimony as a late twentieth-century predicament which threatens ...
The late 19th-century discovery of X-rays befuddled not only the scientific world but also the me... more The late 19th-century discovery of X-rays befuddled not only the scientific world but also the medical and legal worlds. The possibility of looking into the human body as if through an open window challenged the time-honored medical monopoly over the inner cavities ...
Location: Solis 107 Time: TuTh 11 - 12:20 Office hours: Th 1-2 (or by appointment), H&SS bld. 404... more Location: Solis 107 Time: TuTh 11 - 12:20 Office hours: Th 1-2 (or by appointment), H&SS bld. 4044 ... Part I: Some historical perspective Meeting 2 (Jan 7): Ancients and Early-Moderns Reading: René Descartes, Discourse on Method for Reasoning Well and for Seeking ...
"No two fingerprints are alike," or so it goes. For nearly a hundred years fingerprints... more "No two fingerprints are alike," or so it goes. For nearly a hundred years fingerprints have represented definitive proof of individual identity in our society. We trust them to tell us who committed a crime, whether a criminal record exists, and how to resolve questions of disputed identity. But in this text, Simon Cole reveals that the history of criminal identification is far murkier than we have been led to believe. Cole traces the modern system of fingerprint identification to the 19th-century bureaucratic state, and its desire to track and control increasingly mobile, diverse populations whose race or ethnicity made them suspect in the eyes of authorities. In an intriguing history that traverses the globe, taking us to India, Argentina, France, England, and the United States, Cole excavates the forgotten history of criminal identification - from photography to exotic anthropometric systems based on measuring body parts, from finger-printing to DNA typing. He reveals how fingerprinting ultimately won the trust of the public and the law only after a long battle against rival identification systems. As we rush headlong into the era of genetic identification, and as fingerprint errors are being exposed, this history uncovers the fascinating interplay of our elusive individuality, police and state power, and the quest for scientific certainty.
This chapter follows the intertwined careers of epidemiology and toxic tort litigation, and exami... more This chapter follows the intertwined careers of epidemiology and toxic tort litigation, and examines their effects on the relations between science and law in the late twentieth-century American courtroom. Epidemiology’s career in the American courtroom has been short but brilliant. Until the 1970s, epidemiological evidence could hardly be found in the legal system. By the 1980s, it was already announced “the best (if not the sole) available evidence in mass exposure cases,”1 and by the start of 1990s, judges were dismissing cases for not supporting themselves with solid epidemiological evidence.2 Epidemiology, I argue below, owed much of this prosperity to the equally meteoric career of mass tort litigation—a late-modern American species of litigation involving crowds of plaintiffs, all claiming to be harmed by the same exposure or mass-marketed product. Ever since the 1980s, dangerous drugs, industrial accidents, design defects, environmental pollutants, radiation exposure, and other species of technological breakdowns, have all become the subject of prolonged mass tort litigation with ever-escalating financial stakes.3 Questions about risk and causation have been central to a great majority of these cases, and when a direct proof of cause and effect has proven elusive, the courts turned to statistical evidence to resolve these questions.4
The Sixteenth Conference of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in Israel,
Conventional Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) assumes exact knowledge of the boundaries of both referen... more Conventional Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) assumes exact knowledge of the boundaries of both reference and test sequences. However, the output of practical end point detectors is inaccurate, especially with noisy input. This results in a severe deterioration of the ...
This paper recounts the environmental history of a main waterway in Northern Israel—the Kishon, a... more This paper recounts the environmental history of a main waterway in Northern Israel—the Kishon, and deploys this history to examine the evolution of Israel water policy as it struggled to bridge the growing gap between its ambitions of development and the realities of its limited water supply. The first part of the paper describes the decay of the Kishon since the early 1950s, and the multiple scientific, political and legal attempts to alleviate its misfortunes, and discusses the reasons for their failings. Some of these reasons were administrative by nature, but the paper suggests a deeper reason, rooted in the ideological core of the infant state that was overwhelmingly concerned with the development of its infrastructure, and invited the pioneering Israeli society to consider the demise of the Kishon as a necessary sacrifice for progress. The second part of the paper describes the late-20th century developments that allowed for the recovery of the ailing river. Changing social m...
The late 19th-century discovery of X-rays befuddled not only the scientific world but also the me... more The late 19th-century discovery of X-rays befuddled not only the scientific world but also the medical and legal worlds. The possibility of looking into the human body as if through an open window challenged the time-honored medical monopoly over the inner cavities of the human body. Likewise, the possibility of visualizing objects unavailable to the naked eye challenged the established legal theories and practices of illustration and proof. This paper describes the reactions to those challenges by the medical and the legal professions in the USA. The two professions are treated as connected social institutions, producing ongoing negotiations through which legal doctrines affect medicine no less than scientific discoveries and medical applications affect the law. This joint analysis rewards us with a rich story about an early and overlooked chapter in X-ray history on the professionalization of radiology, the origins of defensive medicine, and the evolution of the legal theory and p...
The ArgumentThis paper provides a historical perspective to one of the liveliest debates in commo... more The ArgumentThis paper provides a historical perspective to one of the liveliest debates in common law courts today — the one over scientific expert testimony. Arguing against the current tendency to present the problem of expert testimony as a late twentieth-century predicament which threatens to spin out of control, the paper shows that the phenomena of conflicting scientific testimonies have been perennial for at least two centuries, and intensely debated in both the legal and the scientific communities for at least 150 years.
Visual images have come to dominate the early twentieth‐first century courtroom. A cluster of sop... more Visual images have come to dominate the early twentieth‐first century courtroom. A cluster of sophisticated visual technologies–computer‐generated animation and simulations, digitally‐enhanced images of latent fingerprints or DNA profiles,'day‐in‐a‐life'videos and ...
Historical studies in the physical and biological …, 2000
A criminal case is pending in the circuit court of Clark County, for murder, against Wm. Young. T... more A criminal case is pending in the circuit court of Clark County, for murder, against Wm. Young. The authorities have possession of a shirt and pair of pants on which there is blood, and the question is whether that blood came from a human being or from an animal. The ...
This paper provides a historical perspective to one of the liveliest debates in common law courts... more This paper provides a historical perspective to one of the liveliest debates in common law courts today the one over scientific expert testimony. Arguing against the current tendency to present the problem of expert testimony as a late twentieth-century predicament which threatens ...
The late 19th-century discovery of X-rays befuddled not only the scientific world but also the me... more The late 19th-century discovery of X-rays befuddled not only the scientific world but also the medical and legal worlds. The possibility of looking into the human body as if through an open window challenged the time-honored medical monopoly over the inner cavities ...
Location: Solis 107 Time: TuTh 11 - 12:20 Office hours: Th 1-2 (or by appointment), H&SS bld. 404... more Location: Solis 107 Time: TuTh 11 - 12:20 Office hours: Th 1-2 (or by appointment), H&SS bld. 4044 ... Part I: Some historical perspective Meeting 2 (Jan 7): Ancients and Early-Moderns Reading: René Descartes, Discourse on Method for Reasoning Well and for Seeking ...
"No two fingerprints are alike," or so it goes. For nearly a hundred years fingerprints... more "No two fingerprints are alike," or so it goes. For nearly a hundred years fingerprints have represented definitive proof of individual identity in our society. We trust them to tell us who committed a crime, whether a criminal record exists, and how to resolve questions of disputed identity. But in this text, Simon Cole reveals that the history of criminal identification is far murkier than we have been led to believe. Cole traces the modern system of fingerprint identification to the 19th-century bureaucratic state, and its desire to track and control increasingly mobile, diverse populations whose race or ethnicity made them suspect in the eyes of authorities. In an intriguing history that traverses the globe, taking us to India, Argentina, France, England, and the United States, Cole excavates the forgotten history of criminal identification - from photography to exotic anthropometric systems based on measuring body parts, from finger-printing to DNA typing. He reveals how fingerprinting ultimately won the trust of the public and the law only after a long battle against rival identification systems. As we rush headlong into the era of genetic identification, and as fingerprint errors are being exposed, this history uncovers the fascinating interplay of our elusive individuality, police and state power, and the quest for scientific certainty.
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