Innocent of Empirical Rigor

Authors

Derry Ridgway, Lineberry Research Associates

First Page

165

Document Type

Article

Abstract

The paper begins, as the research did, with a review of published judicial decisions concerning the medical care of children. It then examines the role played by medical science in those decisions. The review suggests that when American courts make determinations about children's medical care, they customarily do so without knowing or crediting the relevant and available science - a failure of comprehension - or without applying the available empirical knowledge to the case at hand - a failure of scientific reasoning - or both. The paper concludes with a proposal that might bring future decisions into better alignment with current medical thinking. Difficulties at the interface of science and law occur in all sorts of cases, not just those involving medical science. The restricted class of cases in this paper is a sample of convenience for the author, an academic pediatrician with an established level of comfort for the scientific issues involved. For some categories of cases, an attempt has been made to consider every published decision; in other categories, exemplary cases were chosen to represent the scientific, though not necessarily the legal, issues found in all members of the class. The author hopes, of course, that his own familiarity with the available scientific resources and the thoroughness of his review will lend credibility to the proposals for change in the final section. Although the paper is specifically directed at readers within the legal profession, its organization resembles the traditional layout of a scientific presentation. In Part II, a catalog of cases that involve determinations about the medical care of children is presented (The Case Material). In Part III, various shortcomings of scientific knowledge and reasoning are described with examples drawn from the "sample space" presented in Part II (Results). In Part IV, the potential role for a court's own scientific expert is discussed (Discussion and Recommendation).

Recommended Citation

Derry Ridgway, Innocent of Empirical Rigor, 14 St. Thomas L. Rev. 165 (2001).
Available at: https://scholarship.stu.edu/stlr/vol14/iss1/8