The Unending Saga of Legal Controls Over Scientific Misconduct: A Clash of Cultures Needing Resolution

There are a remarkable number of similarities between science and the law. Each discipline sets as a gold standard a search for precision. For example, scientists utilize the scientific method—a specific set of principles and procedures designed to aid them in a systematic pursuit of knowledge. Following the scientific method involves the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and possibly experimentation, the formulation of a hypothesis and the testing and confirmation of the hypothesis formulated. The law, in turn, seeks its form of precision through the careful use of words, as in finely crafted statutes or regulations and contractual language that seek to eliminate the possibility of vagueness or confusion. Each discipline utilizes an approach or methodology that strives to minimize or eliminate the possibility of error and to arrive at a form of “truth” that it recognizes as being maximal within the confines of the rules it has established, be they rules of scientific method or legal rules of evidence.