Scientific and legal standards of statistical evidence in toxic tort and discrimination suits

Many legal disputes turn on scientific, especially statistical, evidence. Traditionally scientists have accepted only that statistical evidence which satisfies a 95 percent (or 99 percent) rule — that is, only evidence which has less than five percent (or one percent) probability of resulting from chance.The rationale for this rule is the reluctance of scientists to accept anything less than the best-supported new knowledge. The rule reflects the internal needs of scientific practice. However, when uncritically adopted as a rule for admitting legal evidence, the seemingly innocuous 95 percent rule distorts the balance of interests historically protected by the legal system. In particular, plaintiffs in toxic tort and employment discrimination suits are effectively held to a heavier burden of proof in showing that their injuries were more probably than not caused by the defendant's actions. The result is that too many victims of toxic torts or employment discrimination cannot win legal redress for their injuries.Proposals to adopt stringent scientific rules of evidence thus implicate significant philosophical issues about the relation of evidence to belief and to practical action. The underlying objectives of the tort law system are not those of scientific practice, and each set of objectives has standards of evidence specific to it.Previous versions of this paper were read at the UCLA Law and Philosophy Discussion Group and at the Orange County Moral and Political Philosophy Discussion Group. We have benefitted from comments by Steve Munzer, Peter Aranella, Craig Ihara, Gary Watson, David Estlund, and Alex Rosenberg. A longer version of this paper is in preparation. In that paper we hope to develop some of the items merely sketched in this paper.     

The determination of cocaine in hair: a review

The explosion of literature related to the analysis of hair for cocaine and its products is reviewed. In the commonly accepted applications of hair testing for cocaine, those related to criminal or civil investigations and pharmacotoxicologic studies occupy most of the relevant published work. This review uses detailed, ‘binary’ (yes/no) tables to demonstrate trends in the literature, and allows researchers and caseworkers quick access to the literature most important for answering a variety of questions.     

The “Middle Power” Concept in Australian Foreign Policy

During the early 1990s, the Hawke and Keating Labor governments promoted Australia's diplomatic credentials as an activist and independent middle power. Labor claimed that by acting as a middle power Australia was constructing a novel diplomatic response to the challenges of the post-Cold War world. But a closer reading of the official foreign policy record since 1945 reveals that previous conservative governments have also taken a similar view of Australia's place and position on the international stage. This essay traces the historical evolution of the middle power concept in Australian foreign policy and concludes with an assessment of the Howard government's more recent reluctance to use this label and its implications for Australia's future middle power credentials. Although its use has waxed and waned in official policy discourse and it is more commonly associated with Labor governments, the middle power concept itself and the general diplomatic style it conveys have been one of the most durable and consistent elements of Australia's diplomatic practice.     

Sentence dispositions accorded assault and burglary offenders: An exploratory study in twelve California counties

This study using offender-based transaction statistics (OBTS) examined sentence dispositions accorded assault and burglary offenders in selected California counties. The data cover a three-year period (1969 to 1971), and include a number of social and legal factors frequently thought likely to influence sentence disposition. The age, race, sex, and criminal histories of these offender groups are considered in light of incarceration dispositions occurring at both municipal and superior court levels. Using the method of predictive attribute analysis, this study assesses the importance of social and legal factors in the probability of receiving an incarceration disposition.     

Fatal bromethalin poisoning

Bromethalin is a neurotoxin found in some rodenticides. A delusional 21-year-old male presented to a hospital with altered mental status the day after ingesting a bromethalin-based rodenticide. He died 7 days after his self-reported exposure to c. 17 mg bromethalin (equivalent to 0.33 mg bromethalin/kg). His clinicopathologic course was characterized by altered mental status, obtundation, increased cerebrospinal fluid pressure, cerebral edema, death, and diffuse histologic vacuolization of the white matter in the central nervous system seen on microscopic examination at autopsy. The presence of a demethylated form of bromethalin in the patient's liver and brain was confirmed by gas chromatography with mass spectrometry. Clinical signs and lesions observed in this patient are similar to those seen in animals poisoned with bromethalin. This case illustrates the potential for bromethalin ingestion to result in fatal human poisoning.     

Effects on academia-industry collaboration of extending university property rights

Several recent studies show European university scientists contributing far more frequently to company-owned patented inventions than they do to patents owned by universities or by the academic scientists themselves. Recognising the significance of this channel for direct commercialisation of European academic research makes it important to understand its response to current Bayh-Dole inspired reforms of university patenting rights. This paper studies the contribution from university scientists to inventions patented by dedicated biotech firms (DBFs) specialised in drug discovery in Denmark and Sweden, which in this respect share a number of structural and historic characteristics. It examines effects of the Danish Law on University Patenting (LUP) effective January 2000, which transferred to the employer university rights to patents on inventions made by Danish university scientists alone or as participants in collaborative research with industry. Sweden so far has left property rights with academic scientists, as they also were in Denmark prior to the reform. Consequently, comparison of Danish and Swedish research collaboration before and after LUP offers a quasi-controlled experiment, bringing out effects on joint research of university IPR reform. In original data on all 3,640 inventor contributions behind the 1,087 patents filed by Danish and Swedish DBFs 1990–2004, Difference-in-Difference regressions uncover notable LUP-induced effects in the form of significant reductions in contributions from Danish domestic academic inventors, combined with a simultaneous substitutive increase of non-Danish academic inventors. A moderate increase in academic inventions channelled into university owned-patents does appear after LUP. But the larger part of the inventive potential of academia, previously mobilised into company-owned patents, seems to have been rendered inactive as a result of the reform. As a likely explanation of these effects the paper suggests that exploratory research, the typical target of joint university-DBF projects in drug discovery, fits poorly into LUP’s requirement for ex ante allocation of IPR. The Pre-LUP convention of IPR allocated to the industrial partner in return for research funding and publication rights to the academic partner may have offered more effective contracting for this type of research. There are indications that LUP, outside the exploratory agenda of drug discovery, offers a more productive framework for inventions requiring less complicated and uncertain post-discovery R&D.