As the country stands poised at the advent of yet another presidential election year in which campaign promises will flow like milk and honey, all Americans should prepare for the drumbeat of deception by making a New Year’s resolution to be highly skeptical when assessing the information flowing from the respective campaigns. Recent reportage from the field of science, including psychological science, suggests that this might be an opportune moment for lawyers and judges to make their own resolution of skepticism with respect to expertise put forth in the courtroom.

Deception in Science

Most readers are likely familiar with the global warming e-mail scandal which broke to the surface a couple of years ago. The e-mails revealed efforts on the part of some prominent climate change advocates at University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit to suppress publication of opposing viewpoints in the peer-reviewed literature of the profession. As reported in the Wall Street Journal:

[E]ven a partial review of the emails is highly illuminating. In them, scientists appear to urge each other to present a “unified” view on the theory of man-made climate change while discussing the importance of the “common cause”; to advise each other on how to smooth over data so as not to compromise the favored hypothesis; to discuss ways to keep opposing views out of leading journals; and to give tips on how to “hide the decline” of temperature in certain inconvenient data.1

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