As far back as 1835, when the New York Sun reported that there was life on the moon,1 false claims have been presented as scientific fact. In modern times, the principal remedy to such misrepresentations is the injunction of “peer review and publication” stressed in the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report, “Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward.” However, due to an uptick of dubious scientific data appearing in scholarly journals, another level of validation is required—citation analysis.
Opposites Retract
“Law and science have their own patterns of information creation, storage, indexing and dissemination. While the scientific method has little in common with legal analysis, the former has been struggling to make peace with the latter in the courtroom for a long time. As a result, it is within the precincts of Frye, Daubert and Khumo that forensic evidence is weighed and judged.”2 Indeed, a key element in the evaluative process of forensic evidence is the literature review.
