However (absent creditable grounds supporting such a link), evidence that the moon was full on a certain night will not assist the trier of fact in determining whether an individual was unusually likely to have behaved irrationally on that night. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed. Thus, the animal-cell studies, live-animal studies, and chemical-structure analyses on which petitioners had relied could not raise by themselves a reasonably disputable jury issue regarding causation. (c) Faced with a proffer of expert scientific testimony under Rule 702, the trial judge, pursuant to Rule 104(a), must make a preliminary assessment of whether the testimony's underlying reasoning or methodology is scientifically valid and properly can be applied to the facts at issue. 598 DAUBERT v. MERRELL DOW PHARMACEUTICALS, INC. cordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. The petition for certiorari in this case presents two questions: first, whether the rule of Frye v. United States, 54 App. Wash. L. Rev. 1991) (Frye lives). rics J. 592 DAUBERT v. MERRELL DOW PHARMACEUTICALS, INC. standard requires a valid scientific connection to the pertinent inquiry as a precondition to admissibility. Law, on the other hand, must resolve disputes finally and quickly. v. MERRELL DOW PHARMACEUTICALS, INC. CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT No. We interpret the legislatively enacted Federal Rules of Evidence as we would any statute. Justia Annotations is a forum for attorneys to summarize, comment on, and analyze case law published on our site. 702. scientific literature on the subject, that maternal use of Bendectin The Rule's requirement that the testimony "assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue" goes primarily to relevance by demanding a valid scientific connection to the pertinent inquiry as a precondition to admissibility. procedures, while the word "knowledge" connotes a body of known The court concluded that petitioners' evidence did not meet this standard. He has served as a consultant in birth-defect epidemiology for the National Center for Health Statistics and has published numerous articles on the magnitude of risk from exposure to various chemical and biological substances. Rule 702, governing expert testimony, provides: "If scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue, a witness qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education, may testify thereto in the form of an opinion or otherwise. applicable Rules. The reliability standard is established by Rule 702's requirement that an expert's testimony pertain to "scientific ... knowledge," since the adjective "scientific" implies a grounding in science's methods and procedures, while the word "knowledge" connotes a body of known facts or of ideas inferred from such facts or accepted as true on good grounds. denied, 494 U. S. 1046 (1990); Green 680-681. This is particularly unfortunate in a case such as this, where the ultimate legal question depends on an appreciation of one or more bodies of knowledge not judicially noticeable, and subject to different interpretations in the briefs of the parties and their amici. Some propositions, moreover, are too particular, too new, or of too limited interest to be published. Presumably, this relaxation of the usual requirement of firsthand knowledge-a rule which represents "a 'most pervasive manifestation' of the common law insistence upon 'the most reliable sources of information,'" Advisory Committee's Notes on Fed. It is true that open debate is an essential part of both legal and scientific analyses. U. L. Rev. Which elements are required to meet this standard. 951 F. 2d, at 1130-1131. Id., at 1130, quoting United States v. Solomon, 753, The court emphasized that other Courts of Appeals considering the risks of Bendectin had refused to admit reanalyses of epidemiological studies that had been neither published nor subjected to peer review. Prev; Next . Moreover, such a rigid standard would be at odds with the Rules' liberal thrust and their general approach of relaxing the traditional barriers to "opinion" testimony. by Dan Morales, Attorney General of Texas, Mark Barnett, Attorney General of South Dakota, Marc Racicot, Attorney General of Montana, Larry EchoHawk, Attorney General of Idaho, and Brian Stuart Koukoutchos; for the American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics et al. 727 F. Supp. Finally, Rule 403 permits the exclusion of relevant evidence "if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, or misleading the jury .... " Judge Weinstein has explained: "Expert evidence can be both powerful and quite misleading because of the difficulty in evaluating it. Respondent removed the suits to federal court on diversity grounds. The scientific project is advanced by broad and wide-ranging consideration of a multitude of hypotheses, for those that are incorrect will eventually be shown to be so, and that in itself is an advance. The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been 5 Like the question of Frye's merit, the dispute over its survival has divided courts and commentators. Kennedy, Souter, and Thomas, JJ., joined. 592-595. Petitioners did not (and do not) contest this characterization of the published record regarding Bendectin. Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for the United States by Acting Solicitor General Wallace, Assistant Attorney General Gerson, Miguel A. Estrada, Michael Jay Singer, and John P. Schnitker; for the American Insurance Association by William J. Kilberg, Paul Blankenstein, Bradford R. Clark, and Craig A. Berrington; for the American Medical Association et al. The focus, of course, must be solely on principles and methodology, not on the conclusions that they generate. See Rules 702 and 703. Finally, "general acceptance" can yet have a bearing on the inquiry. Conjectures that are probably wrong are of little use, however, in the project of reaching a quick, final, and binding legal judgment-often of great consequence-about a particular set of events in the past. J. Med. "general acceptance" is a necessary precondition to the admissibility 4 See, e. g., Green, Expert Witnesses and Sufficiency of Evidence in Toxic Substances Litigation: The Legacy of Agent Orange and Bendectin Litigation, 86 Nw. Given the Rules' permissive backdrop and their inclusion of a specific rule on expert testimony that does not mention "general acceptance," the assertion that the Rules somehow assimilated Frye is unconvincing. I do not doubt that Rule 702 confides to the judge some gatekeeping responsibility in deciding questions of the admissibility of proffered expert testimony. on a reliable foundation and is relevant to the task at hand. Ibid. and "reliability" (does application of the principle produce consistent results?). for admitting expert scientific testimony in a federal trial. See Black, 56 Ford. Indeed, theories that are so firmly established as to have attained the status of scientific law, such as the laws of thermodynamics, properly are subject to judicial notice under Federal Rule of Evidence 201. ology underlying the testimony is scientifically valid and of whether that reasoning or methodology properly can be applied to the facts in issue. 827 (1989). In short, the requirement that an expert's testimony pertain to "scientific knowledge" establishes a standard of evidentiary reliability.9, 8 Rule 702 also applies to "technical, or other specialized knowledge.". The Court speaks of its confidence that federal judges can make a "preliminary assessment of whether the reasoning or methodology underlying the testimony is scientifically valid and of whether that reasoning or methodology properly can be applied to the facts in issue." Following this sentence are three quotations from treatises, which not only speak of empirical testing, but one of which states that the" 'criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.' 357 (1989); Black, A Unified Theory of Scientific Evidence, 56 Ford. In the endless process of testing and retesting, there is a constant rejection of the dross and a constant retention of whatever is pure and sound and fine." See Behringer, Introduction, Proposals for a Model Rule on the Admissibility of Scientific Evidence, 26 Jurimetrics J. knowledge." Accessed 15 Dec. 2020. (d) Cross-examination, presentation of contrary evidence, and Green 645. In Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993), the Supreme Court effectively overruled Frye in federal courts, holding that the case law was inconsistent with the applicable evidentiary rules, namely, Rule 702 of the Federal Rules of Evidence. 54 App. 602, 28 U. S. C. Rule Evid. Along with their parents, they sued Merrell Dow Pharmaceutical Inc., based on the claim that the drug Bendectin had caused their birth defects. "Scientific methodology today is based on generating hypotheses and testing them to see if they can be falsified; indeed, this methodology is what distinguishes science from other fields of human inquiry." In this case we are called upon to determine the standard for admitting expert scientific testimony in a federal trial. Of course, it would be unreasonable to conclude that the subject of scientific testimony must be "known" to a certainty; arguably, there are no certainties in science. Michael H. Gottesman argued the cause for petitioners. DAUBERT v. MERRELL DOW PHARMACEUTICALS, INC.(1993) No. Id., at 54-56. See also United States v. Downing, 753 F.2d 1224, 1242 (CA3 1985) ("An additional consideration under Rule 702-and another aspect of relevancy-is whether expert testimony proffered in the case is sufficiently tied to the facts of the case that it will aid the jury in resolving a factual dispute"). NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is denied, 439 U. S. 1117 (1979), with Christophersen v. Allied-Signal Corp., 939 F.2d 1106, 1111, 1115-1116 (CA5 1991) (en banc) (Frye and the Rules coexist), cert. Although under increasing attack of late, the rule continues to be followed by a majority of courts, including the Ninth Circuit.3. Gena, M., Shaken Baby Syndrome: Medical Uncertainty Casts Doubt on Convictions, 2007 Wisconsin Law Review 701. Frye, of course, predated the Rules by half a century. Argued March 30, 1993-Decided June 28,1993 4-17. expert's affidavit concluding, upon reviewing the extensive published But even if it were desirable to make "general observations" not necessary to decide the questions presented, I cannot subscribe to some of the observations made by the Court. The fact of publication (or lack thereof) in a peer reviewed journal thus will be a relevant, though not dispositive, consideration in assessing the scientific validity of a particular technique or methodology on which an opinion is premised. 92-102 Argued: March 30, 1993 Decided: June 28, 1993. 92-102. Ordinarily, a key question to be answered in determining whether a theory or technique is scientific knowledge that will assist the trier of fact will be whether it can be (and has been) tested. Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. 4 . Petitioners, two minor children and their parents, alleged in their suit against respondent that the children's serious birth defects had been caused by the mothers' prenatal ingestion of Bendectin, a prescription drug marketed by respondent. In a case involving scientific evidence, evidentiary reliability will be based upon scientific validity. Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Media. D. C. 358, 363364, 809 F.2d 54, 59-60 (applying the "general acceptance" standard), cert. 249, 258 (1986). "Expert testimony which does not relate to any issue in the case is not relevant and, ergo, non-helpful." ", Nothing in the text of this Rule establishes "general acceptance" as an absolute prerequisite to admissibility. B. Cardozo, The Nature of the Judicial Process 178-179 (1921). CHIEF JUSTICE REHNQUIST, with whom JUSTICE STEVENS joins, concurring in part and dissenting in part. 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