ABSTRACT
Expertise is imported with regularity into legal processes and institutions, but the ethical aspects of that relationship are not at all obvious. In the regulatory or legislative policy context, of course, law might be viewed as imposing ethical constraints on science. With respect to litigation involving expert scientific testimony in US courtrooms, the dimensions of ethics are more than a little different. In US judicial opinions, when an expert's testimony is deemed inadmissible because it is not scientific, there is typically no accusation of unethical attorney conduct. Arguably in response to concerns over 'junk science' in the courtroom, the US Supreme Court in Daubert reinforced the gatekeeping role of judges and offered a legal standard for scientific validity. The image of science in post-Daubert jurisprudence, including the revisions to the federal rules of evidence following Daubert, is idealized in the sense that science is defined as or characterized by its core activities: hypothesis, data collection, careful testing, and conclusions.
