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Science Manual For US Judges

Posted by samzenpus on from the listen-to-the-scientific-laws dept.

An anonymous reader writes "American court judges need to learn science. That's the message from the National Academies and the National Research Council, which today released the first new edition in 11 years of the Reference Manual of Scientific Evidence. It has new chapters about forensic science, mental health, and neuroscience, but unfortunately nothing about computer science. The manual is available as a free download and it's also online."

4 of 123 comments (clear)

  1. Just judges? by Wowsers · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Not just judges that need science education, it's the politicians who seem to thrive on junk science and present it as fact. Politicians across the globe are dangerously uneducated, which makes them dangerous when making laws.

    --
    Take Nobody's Word For It.
    1. Re:Just judges? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not just judges that need science education, it's the politicians who seem to thrive on junk science and present it as fact. Politicians across the globe are dangerously uneducated, which makes them dangerous when making laws.

      Politicians are a reflection of society. They always cater to the lowest common denominator.
      Have a well educated civil society and automatically you'll get for the most part politicians that will ignore junk science.
      Of course you'll always get the science denier etc.... but they will only infect their own stupidity and not other politicians.
      So go fix your school system first, everything else flows from there.

    2. Re:Just judges? by hrvatska · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If a lot of those politicians spouting junk science instead started using science based reasoning they wouldn't get elected. The problem, unfortunately, isn't the politicians, it's their constituents. The politicians are a symptom of a greater problem.

  2. Judicial certifications? by FriendlyPrimate · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Seems like Judges should be required to get special training and certifications (i.e. something similar to Bar Exams on specialized topics) before they are allowed to preside over cases requiring specialized knowledge like copyright, patents, medical malpractice, computer science, etc.