ABSTRACT
Judges are not scientists, although there may be a few among them who have had scientific training. But even if they were, their scientific training would be of limited service to them in dealing with the expert evidence that scientists routinely proffer in an ever-widening range of administrative and legal disputes. Even if the instruction of the judges left something to be desired, as they frequently did on issues of both negligence and causation, jurors could fill in the gaps from their own experience. Judges of course reserved some power to overturn jury verdicts when they were against the manifest weight of the evidence. There is a universal proposition which says that it is far easier to pose a dilemma than it is to resolve it. That proposition surely holds with the use of scientific information in judicial determinations. By now the horns of the dilemma should be evident.
