ABSTRACT
Under the landmark Frye decision, courts were constrained to admit scienti¤c evidence only as long as it was generally accepted by the scienti¤c community. Under Frye, experts were expected to explain why and how their work met the test of general acceptance. e di”culty arose when the opinion of the expert departed from those generally accepted by the scienti¤c community, regardless of merit. Under Frye, novel theories could not be presented to the jury, even when the expert’s credentials and methodology were valid. As a result, experts could not base their testimony on new and innovative approaches until those approaches were adopted or recognized by a larger scienti¤c community. Under this limitation, a community of experts essentially became a form of technical jury that ruled on the validity of the science before it was presented to the jury. At best, this sort of evaluation excluded junk testimony and avoided misleading the judge and the jury. However, it also limited the use of scienti¤c evidence that had not yet gained general acceptance in the scienti¤c community. In many circumstances, good new science takes years to become generally accepted. us, under Frye, emerging sound science that might have been of greater assistance to a jury was not available.
