Muddling the Judiciary’s Understanding of Science

by Sharon Camp

While an educational manual for federal judges was improved when a biased representation of climate change was removed, a remaining chapter on the fundamentals of science would poison the judiciary with quackery.

The “How Science Works” chapter of the “Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence” allows for an overreliance on the unproven assumptions of computer models and an acceptance of “consensus” as proof even when contradicted by empirical evidence.

This violates tenets of the hundreds-year-old Scientific Method that require data obtained through experimentation or observation of the physical world as the means of supporting scientific conclusions. The undue regard for models and consensus is emblematic of climate alarmists whose claims fail scrupulous examination and whose views are shared by at least one of the chapter’s authors.

In defining the concepts of hypothesis, theory and scientific law, the writers exclude the elements of testing, observation and experimentation. Neither is it acknowledged that all three can be disproven, even though the ability to demonstrate the falseness of a conclusion has long been recognized as the path to advancing scientific knowledge.

Along these lines, the chapter even says that science cannot “disprove hypotheses,” although science has done so many times. A famous example is geocentricism that was supplanted in the 1500s by the heliocentric theory of Copernicus. Others include phrenology, eugenics, spontaneous generation and miasma theory of disease. All were embraced by much of the scientific community of their time – a consensus – until proven false. German scientist Alfred Wegener was dead for 30 years – and rejected by a consensus of his peers – before his theory of plate tectonics gained support in the last half of the 20^th century.

The authors may misunderstand the Scientific Method. Or perhaps they believe that computer models relying on unproven assumptions that fail to explain or predict outcomes should be accepted over the extensive experimentation and observation required by the Scientific Method.

The chapter also misses the mark with this statement: “In the context of testing hypotheses, the term prediction refers to a logical consequence of a hypothesis, not necessarily what will happen in the future.” On the contrary, a prediction is all about what will happen in the future. Either objects of different weights dropped from the same height in a vacuum hit the ground at the same time or don’t. (They do.) A hypothesis also can be tested by determining whether it can explain something that has happened in the past.

Are the authors saying that a hypothesis paired with a model is sufficient confirmation, even when they fail to predict the future or explain the past? Or perhaps they believe that computer models predicting the climate 50-100 years in the future are more accurate than weather models that are reliable less than a week in advance — and sometimes failing that.

Apparently, there is no need to fret about such failures because the authors say: “The fact that there is room for improvement in the process of science does not necessitate distrust of hypotheses that have gained widespread acceptance in the scientific community and about which consensus has been achieved.” This is a justification for using consensus as a defense against evidence that challenges a popular narrative – a common ploy of climate alarmists.

In places, the chapter is self-contradictory. For example, the writers seem to embrace key elements of the Scientific Method when they say that a testable hypothesis must ultimately predict a set of observations that could or could not be made. This suggests a less cavalier relationship with traditional science than exhibited elsewhere, such as when key features of hypotheses and theories are omitted from their definitions. Unfortunately, the contradiction conveys a desire “to have it both ways” more than a commitment to rigorous scientific inquiry.

Ultimately, the chapter’s confusions and inordinate 62-page length muddy a reader’s understanding of the Scientific Method. More problematic, the writers introduce wrongheaded practices like the overuse of models and consensus in settling important questions. Such departures from the empirical tradition of Isaac Newton and Marie Curie make for superficial and specious investigations of reality known as pseudoscience.

Having received objections from state attorneys general and others, U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg excised the offending chapter on climate change from the reference manual. This is a remedy that needs to be applied by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, which still includes the chapter on its website.

In the meantime, as head of the Federal Judicial Center, the manual’s publisher, Judge Rosenberg should do the same with “How Science Works.” The judiciary and the public it serves deserve nothing less.

Originally published in The Blaze on March 3, 2026.

Sharon Camp, senior education advisor for the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia, has a Ph.D. in analytical chemistry, Georgia Institute of Technology, and has worked for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and as an advanced placement science teacher.

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