Specious Claiming in Multi-District Litigation
In a recent article in an American Bar Association newsletter, Paul Rheingold notes with some concern that, in the last two years or so, there has been a rash of dismissals of entire multi-district...
View ArticleSophisticated Intermediary Defense in Asbestos Cases – Use With Discretion
“Discretion is the better part of valor.” Shakespeare, King Henry the Fourth. A recent asbestos case illustrates the perils of improvidently asserting a sophisticated intermediary defense, when the...
View ArticleCreators of ToxicDocs Show Off Their Biases
Columbia Magazine’s most recent issue includes a laudatory story about David Rosner, a professor of history in Columbia University.1 The “story” focuses on Rosner’s website, ToxicDocs, which has become...
View ArticleCalifornia Roasts Fear-Mongering Industry
A year ago, California set out to create an exemption for coffee from its Proposition 65 regulations. The lawsuit industry, represented by the Council for Education and Research on Toxics (CERT) had...
View ArticleThe Shmeta-Analysis in Paoli
In the Paoli Railroad yard litigation, plaintiffs claimed injuries and increased risk of future cancers from environmental exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). This massive litigation showed...
View ArticleScience Bench Book for Judges
On July 1st of this year, the National Judicial College and the Justice Speakers Institute, LLC released an online publication of the Science Bench Book for Judges [Bench Book]. The Bench Book sets out...
View ArticleStatistical Significance at the New England Journal of Medicine
Some wild stuff has been going on in the world of statistics, at the American Statistical Association, and elsewhere. A very few obscure journals have declared p-values to be verboten, and presumably...
View ArticleMass Torts Made Less Bad – The Zambelli-Weiner Affair in the Zofran MDL
Judge Saylor, who presides over the Zofran MDL, handed down his opinion on the Zambelli-Weiner affair, on July 25, 2019.[1] As discussed on these pages back in April of this year,[2] GlaxoSmithKline...
View ArticlePalavering About P-Values
The American Statistical Association’s most recent confused and confusing communication about statistical significance testing has given rise to great mischief in the world of science and science...
View ArticleEverything She Just Said Was Bullshit
At this point, most products liability lawyers have read about the New Jersey verdicts returned earlier this month against Johnson & Johnson in four mesothelioma cases.[1] The Middlesex County jury...
View ArticleDoes the California State Bar Discriminate Unlawfully?
Earlier this month, various news outlets announced a finding in a California study that black male attorneys are three times more likely to be disciplined by the State Bar than their white male...
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Is the IARC Lost in the Weeds?
A couple of years ago, I met David Zaruk at a Society for Risk Analysis meeting, where we were both presenting. I was aware of David’s blogging and investigative journalism, but meeting him gave me a...
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American Statistical Association – Consensus versus Personal Opinion
Lawyers and judges pay close attention to standards, guidances, and consenus statements from respected and recognized professional organizations. Deviations from these standards may be presumptive...
View ArticleJudicial Gatekeeping Cures Claims That Viagra Can Cause Melonoma
The phosphodiesterases 5 inhibitor medications (PDE5i) seem to arouse the litigation propensities of the lawsuit industry. The PDE5i medications (sildenafil, tadalafil, etc.) have multiple indications,...
View ArticleCounter Cancel Culture – The NAS Conference on Irreproducibility
“The meaning of the world is the separation of wish and fact.” Kurt Gödel Back in October 2019, David Randall, the Director of Research, of the National Association of Scholars, contacted me to ask...
View ArticleCounter Cancel Culture – Part II: The Fixing Science Conference
So this is what it is like to be denounced? My ancestors fled the Czar’s lands before they could be tyrannized by denunciations of Stalin’s Soviets. The work of contemporary denunciators is surely much...
View ArticleCounter Cancel Culture Part III – Fixing Science
This is the last of three posts about Cancel Culture, and the National Association of Scholars (NAS) conference on Fixing Science, held February 7th and 8th, in Oakland, California. In finding my...
View ArticleA New Egilman Bully Pulpit
Larding Up the Literature Another bio-medical journal? In October 2019, The Journal of Scientific Practice and Integrity published its inaugural volume one, number one issue, online. This journal...
View ArticleScience Journalism – UnDark Noir
Critics of the National Association of Scholars’ conference on Fixing Science pointed readers to an article in Undark, an on-line popular science site for lay audiences, and they touted the site for...
View ArticlePractical Solutions for the Irreproducibility Crisis
I have previously praised the efforts of the National Association of Scholars (NAS) for its efforts to sponsor a conference on “Fixing Science: Practical Solutions for the Irreproducibility Crisis.”...
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