ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses references to science and technology studies (STS) literature in US federal court judgments. It reconsiders the role played by STS in the seminal Daubert v Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. decision and post-Daubert jurisprudence using Sheila Jasanoff's concept of accommodation as a framing device. The chapter provides a summary of Jasanoff's interpretation of Daubert which is particularly attentive to claims about her purported accommodation in the Supreme Court decision. It offers an account of the treatment of Karl Popper and falsification and reflects on the absence of social science authority in a subsequent Supreme Court decision also concerned with the admissibility of expert opinion evidence. In these discussions Jasanoff devotes repeated attention to the manner in which her constructivist interpretations of science were included in the decision adjacent to non-constructivist views of science, such as Popper's method doctrine of falsificationism.
